The Future is the Coastal Point.
When I was down in beautiful Sussex County for the Christmas holiday (my parents live near Bethany Beach), I had a chance to read their local paper, The Coastal Point. I believe it is a weekly newspaper. It has all the local news and events you could need. This is the future of local newspapers across this country. It is the future of the News Journal.
Today, the NJ announced format changes as a step in that direction:
Business has moved into the “A” section, along with our best Delaware stories and the national and international report. The editorial pages continue to anchor the back of the section.
Life has merged into Local. Comics, puzzles and TV grids will now be found each day in this combined section, which will continue to carry obituaries.
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The new format is leaner. But The News Journal will continue to cover all of Delaware, and we’ve tried to package the news to make your reading experience enjoyable.
There will come a point where regional newspapers like the News Journal will have to stop covering national and international events (even if those stories are coming from the AP) and economic news, for they simply cannot afford the paper and ink those stories take up. Indeed, trimming the News Journal to solely local news and events is probably the next step the News Journal will take in order to peserve the daily format. But I think the future of the local newspaper, especially if that local newspaper exists in a large metropolitian area that has a much larger newspaper, is weeklies like the Coastal Point. Think about all the local daily newspapers surrounding Philadelphia besides the News Journal. Each suburban county as at least one. That is redundacy and during this period of downsizing such fat is going to be cut.
Simply put, consumers get their national and regional news online now. I don’t go to the News Journal for the latest on the conflict in the Middle East, or for information on how the Stock Market is doing. No, I go to CNBC or the Wall Street Journal or CNN or MSNBC or the BBC.
I don’t think the daily newspaper will disappear everywhere, like in major cities like Philadelphia and New York and Washington. But they will disappear in satellite regions surrounding those major cities. The Star Ledger of Newark (near New York). The Wilmington News Journal (near Philadelphia)? The Delaware County Times? The Bucks County Courier or the other suburban newspapers surrounding Philly? They are all daily papers and they will all be gone from that format in the next few years.
The future of these local newspapers is that of the Coastal Point.
I feel sorry if this comes as great insight to you. Community weeklies have long been cash cows, because they cover the stuff that people actually need – road closures, church calendars, school menus, local police news.
Unfortunately, what they often don’t provide is any sort of skeptical or big-picture news coverage. Because they have neither the time nor training to do so, almost all their news coverage is incrementalist reporting from meetings. They reprint press releases verbatim because their reporters are also out taking grip-and-grin photos of check presentations and ribbon-cuttings.
This is a generalized statement, of course, and there are exceptions.
It is nice to see the News Journal adapting. It would be a plus if they could work on their web presence a bit more and not hide their reporters blogs. The front page of the NJ website is not very conducive to reading or finding where you want to go. I understand the need for ads, but if they could get us to click a headline or two they could easily place the ads in the second click.
Spot on Nemski.
The NJ’s website is atrocious. Unfortunately, they have zero say in how it’s done. Check out any other Gannett newspaper – they’re all the same, a universal corporate template. All they can do is update the stories and photos.
Do any of their reporters still blog any more? I didn’t think they had enough time.
DelDem-I for one, hope what you write comes true, which 20 years ago these locals fought for survival.
Whatever little hamlet or village I’ve lived or visited, I’ve always enjoyed the “local”–and the regional tone and style of reporting.
Interesting though, if you talk to some of these employees of a local–it is all doom and gloom of where they think their paper is going. I hope not. Maybe, what’s old will be new–and the resurrection will happen. I have said before, the paper memorializes much for folks–births, obituaries, little league wins, all the “stuff” that is too “trivial” for today’s world to mention (unless of course you deliver triplets out of your ear, or the little league team has a 3 year old), and real folks do like to connect, recognize, and “clip” those things that matter to their (our) little world, and go elsewhere for the more “worldly” stuff. Long live the Middletown Transcript!!! and the Coastal Point, and the Davis County Clipper, the Roxborough Review…
The Dover Post…..They seem to do a better job of local news than even the Delaware State News down here in Kent County. It’s a paper I look forward to reading every week when it comes out.
The News Journal will be out of business in ten years no matter what it does.
The best hope is it will fold itself into a network of community newspapers.
Coastal Point, Cape Gazette, and others (excluding the Coast Press which is a reprint of the Snooze Journal) are great for the news that we really need down here in Sussex (county commission, water projects, etc.). One paper needs to fire a couple of its “writers” since they have no idea what they are doing, but otherwise, I prefer to read these than the NJ. For national news, I read the NY Times and Washington Post.
I read the NJ for the local news. I can get national and international news from more timely sources. I don’t really understand why more local papers don’t try blogging and trying to deliver local news in a more timely manner. Newspapers will thrive where they are offering something unique – and that is local news and covering local events.
the coastal point is the best weekly newspaper in the country…i should know…the editor is my son…
Tell your son that I enjoyed reading it, and my parents must too.