The Augusta Press launched in January of 2021 as a wholly digital publication, and it might have proven to be part of a vanguard of local newspapers transitioning to mostly, or entirely, online formats.
Late last month, The Augusta Chronicle announced that its print edition would be distributed by mail, starting April 22, responding to upticks in demand for its digital edition.
In the article announcing the change, the Chronicle alluded to the incessant online news cycle leading to the outlet effectively prioritizing its digital over its print content.
“The transition from carrier to U.S. Postal Service delivery ensures a more consistent experience for our valued subscriber,” said Gannett Co. Inc., which owns and publishes The Augusta Chronicle, in a statement emailed to The Augusta Press, encouraging the paper’s readership toward its digital platform.
The same article also notes that Gannett, which operates more than 200 daily papers, has already spread this initiative across “dozens of markets across the country.”
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Last year, The Aiken Standard, published by the Charleston-based Post and Courier, phased out its Monday print edition and reduced its home delivery from seven to five days a week.
One glaring reason could be simple economics.
The Challenger Report, issued by consulting company Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., recounted that more than 500 layoffs in the U.S. digital, broadcast and print news media industry in January of this year, alone.
By the end of 2023, the news media sector had cut 3,087 jobs, Challenger also reported. This was the largest cut in the industry since 2020, which showed more than 16,000 news jobs cut.
David Bulla, journalism professor and chair of the Department of Communications at Augusta University, attributes a lot of these changes to simply cost-cutting, part of a trajectory in the industry over the last 30 years.
“The people who own newspapers… wanted a certain level of profits, and I don’t think that level was sustainable,” said Bulla. “And I think everybody made huge strategic mistakes in the late 90s and early 2000s, by not realizing you can’t give this stuff away for free.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 Service Annual Survey (SAS), also known as the Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES), revenue for U.S. newspaper publishers dropped by an estimated 52% from 2002 to 2020.
The Pew Research Center estimated that circulation of daily newspapers dropped from 55.8 million to 24.2 million within that same period. Pew Research also found that digital advertising accounted for 48% of newspaper advertising revenue in 2022, based on an analysis of publicly traded newspaper companies. In 2011, when Pew Research started this analysis, that number was at 17%.
“This is just the last gasp, I think, of the print newspaper industry,” said Bulla. “And also, I think they’re forcing themselves to, to fully commit to digital journalism and digital advertising.”
The advent of widespread internet use in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, the Apple iPhone in 2007 and the subsequent pervasiveness of smartphones kickstarted a revolution in news media consumption comparable to the Gutenberg printing press, according to Bulla, making information easier to find, access and distribute for consumers and journalists alike.
But it may behoove news readers to count the cost of this convenience as print dwindles to, perhaps inevitably, toward an era of all-digital news media.
“If we’re on our phones all the time, and phones are mostly talking and video, or digital images, both still and moving—and we’re not reading, what’s that going to do to our literacy?” Bulla said. “I’m not saying we’re becoming an illiterate country, but we’re becoming an aliterate country.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
