And then there were two.
At the start of this year, there were four newspaper-printing facilities in Maine. The largest facility is located in South Portland and prints all of the daily papers in the state as well as quite a few of the weeklies. The other three include a small black ink-only press in Lincoln, the Ellsworth American’s facility in downtown Ellsworth, and our press here in Newcastle.
Shortly after the start of the new year, Lincoln News – the newspaper run out of Lincoln, not Lincoln County – ceased printing operations and the Ellsworth press picked up their printing.
Earlier this week, it was announced the Ellsworth print facility will close in early June, with all of their company’s products being moved to South Portland for printing and mailing.
Within a few short months, the number of newspaper print facilities in this state dropped by half.
This was not how we intended on starting our second part of the series about LCN’s future, but sometimes the story takes you where it wants to.
The topic for this part of our series will focus on expenses, something many other papers in the state are trying to manage. We have often heard from some readers they do not understand why the online-only subscription price is more than the hard copy, with some becoming quite upset with this.
What we try to explain is that advertising is what covers most of the costs of producing the newspaper, and our advertisers are not as well represented online, unless the reader is looking at the e-edition. Since there is not the same level of advertising to help support online readers, we charge slightly more to cover some of the costs associated with producing the news. Some say they just want to pay their fair share, which they feel should be less because they don’t want a paper.
The explanation we provide sometimes resolves the question, but other people seem to get infuriated, blaming us for having a poor business model. Others insist that is costs nothing for another online only subscription so it should cost less than the physical paper.
The numbers provided are totals from 2023, the last year we have been able to pull together the full picture of at this point. Information for 2024 appears to be very similar, so this is still just as relevant to the conversation today.
The costs to bring The Lincoln County News to life – both online and with the actual newspaper – came to just over $1 million in 2023. Of this, 83% of these costs are employment related, including pay, benefits, and taxes. The material costs associated with producing the physical paper account for about 13%, with overhead expenses such as vehicles, electricity, property taxes estimated to make up the other 4%. Postage accounts for almost half of the production costs.
Built into these labor costs are also some of the production costs, but this accounts for only a small percentage of the total labor costs. To put it another way, if we were to completely eliminate the physical newspaper, but still provided the same level of editorial attention, meeting attendance, online presence, etc., it would only save approximately 20% of the total costs associated with reporting in Lincoln County.
These percentages were first shared in public at a presentation put on by the Old Bristol Historical Society and the South Bristol Historical Society last fall. Part of explaining our choices and the roadmap to the future requires sharing information about the business.
The takeaway here is that a vast majority of our costs are associated with gathering, reporting, editing, and preparing the news for this county. These costs go directly to local people in terms of wages, benefits, and the ever-present payroll taxes.
Where other papers in the state have decreased their physical newspaper’s presence, we do not see this as a viable option.
If we were to eliminate the newspaper and go to a subscription-based model to completely fund an online-only media platform, it would take a big change. We would need to convert all of our current print readers to be paying subscribers. Converting 6,400 people to a virtual product offering would require a subscription price of over $125 per year, which is two and a half times more than the current online-only price. Paying slightly more for the online–only option is still relying on advertisements to cover the majority of the costs involved with bringing the news to you.
As we mentioned in the first note about our future – and we will likely continue to mention as often as possible – please support the advertisers who help bring the paper to you each week. They are helping keep the costs low so everyone can enjoy the paper. Better yet, please thank them for their support of the paper, so they may know what their contribution means to the community.
