Size DOES Matter When it Comes to Newspapers

But it may surprise you to find out that smaller may be better...

As I touched on in a previous post, smaller community newspapers are continuing to flourish even in these tough times for the industry.

The AP reports that the hyperlocal focus of these daily and weekly papers makes them an asset to the communities they serve:

CNN is not coming to my town to cover the news and there aren't a whole lot of bloggers here either," said Robert M. Williams Jr., The Times' editor and publisher. "Community newspapers are still a great investment because we provide something you can't get anywhere else."

The scarcity of other media in small- and medium-sized cities has helped shield hundreds of newspapers from the upheaval that's causing dailies in big cities to shrink in size and scope as their print circulations and advertising sales decline.

Less competition means the print editions and Web sites of smaller newspapers remain the focal points for finding out what's happening in their coverage areas.

In contrast, large newspapers carry more national news, as well as local, and have many competitors, including Web sites and television and radio stations. They report much of the news the day before printed newspapers reach homes and newsstands. Large newspapers' Web sites also provide the news for free a day ahead of print editions.

And the larger the paper, the higher the operating costs. While the major players have had huge staff layoffs, fought with the unions, and stopped printing on certain days of the week, the small papers don't have many of those concerns simply due to their size.

That's not to say that community papers don't face challenges - the changing marketplace has affected everyone across the board.

"It would be wrong to assume there is some sort of bubble over our market," said Chris Doyle, president and publisher of the Naples Daily News, a daily newspaper in southwestern Florida with a circulation averaging about 64,000 during the six months ending in March. "We are becoming leaner, more scrappy and more aggressive than ever before."

So if you're looking to market your products or business in newspapers, go where the readers are:

Rather than filling their pages with material that is readily available on the Internet, smaller newspapers focus on the politics, business, sports, crime and community affairs occurring in narrowly defined geographic areas — a county, a town or, in some cases, even a few neighborhood blocks.

"If it walks, talks or spits on the concrete in our area, we cover it," said John D. Montgomery Jr., editor and publisher of The Purcell Register in Oklahoma.

(Courtesy of the Associated Press)