A subsidiary of a 43-year-old US technology company, CherryRoad Media is continuing on its path of applying tech solutions to support the survival of some of the country’s oldest newspapers.
Latest of these is the Bellefontaine Examiner, in Bellefontaine, Ohio, which has come back to life after a hiatus of more than six-months, thanks to the company.
Founded as the Weekly Examiner in 1871, the paper returned this mont as a tri-weekly, publishing on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Jeremy Gulban’s Cherry Road Media worked with T.J. Hubbard – a member of the founding family – to re-establish the Examiner.
Gulban is enthusiastic about community newspapers, and their importance to civic life and local democracy, and talks about “patient, responsible ownership, supporting strong local reporting and building sustainable operations”; his deputy publisher Jen Fischer describes the mission as “to restore hyper-local news coverage and the community conversations that come with it.”
But there is another factor in the equation: exploiting technology to make them possible and viable.
Last year, Gulban visited communities in Arkansas following a switch to digital printing for the five newspapers he publishes there. Six mastheads are now being printed digitally at sites in Salem and Corning, a change from offset production in Hutchinson, Kansas, which provides back-up and avoids “multiple logistical issues”. Cherry Road also owns plants in Delphos (Ohio) and Clayton (Minnesota).
With all but eight of the group’s mastheads weekly, savings were envisaged from the change, with Gulban quoted as saying he sees the use of digital printing as a game changer: “It allows us to print exactly the number of copies for which we have paying customers, allowing us to survive on 500 copies or less” he was quoted saying last year.”
The process – which permits a direct dialogue with subscribers, even to the extent of reminding of renewals – brings them closer to online publishing, and there are suggestions the “more elegant” tabloid look may also keep copies in circulation for longer.
Another tech contribution in the news has been the adoption of standardised IT systems, apparently partly the result of a direct approach by SCS sales vice president Phil Curtolo and the firm’s owner Kurt Jackson, which has led to Cherry Road commissioning their ‘community advertising system’ “in record time”.
As the media business – a subsidiary of a business that began in New Jersey as DataStudy – tops more than 100 newspapers in 19 states, that balance between traditional publishing values and tech becomes increasingly important.
Peter Coleman
Pictured (top) Vince and Shauna Marshall show off the digitally-printed Area News at the Salem meeting; and (above) Jeremy Gulban with an earlier acquisition; and the 19 states in which Cherry Road now publishes