A newspaper is as important as a museum or orchestra to the livelihood of the community it covers, and deserves the same level of philanthropic support as those institutions, according to Terry Egger, chief executive officer and publisher of the Philadelphia Media Network.

“What do you think is more important to your community’s livelihood: the museum, the orchestra, the journalism?” Egger, a former publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, said. “All are important, but isn’t journalism every bit as important or more than the art museum, and other things that people give to?”

Egger was invited to the New England Newspaper Conference Oct. 6 to share his thoughts on paying for the future of journalism through exploring alternative business models. He focused primarily on the benefits of tying journalism to philanthropy, saying that advertising revenue will never again sustain the industry.

He told a group of publishers and editors from throughout New England that philanthropy, while not representing the industry’s sole savior, does provide a “meaningful revenue stream” to support and foster projects in innovation and intensive reporting.

To convince nonprofits or donors to write checks, news companies must show them what might happen if the floundering industry fails. That reality sometimes keeps him awake at night, he said.

“If we fail to find a sustainable business model to support journalism, and our credible reports in our communities start to go dark, our investigative work starts to go dark, it’s a very, very bad place for us to be,” he said. “Most people don’t think about that; I think about it all the time.”

Egger’s experience with nonprofit journalism comes through his role at the Philadelphia Media Network, parent company of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com, which he joined in August 2015. The company has tried to revitalize journalism in Philadelphia with an unorthodox business model. In January, the owner of the company, H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, donated a majority of his shares to The Institute for Journalism in New Media, a nonprofit, giving it ownership of the three news outlets.

The institute does not have a direct say in the company’s day-to-day operations, but can pay for its journalism through contributions and endowment, Egger said. It has also aimed to “create a lab of innovation” and to partner with universities to experiment on new product development, delivery services and revenue models, he said.

The institute, whose board includes representatives of some of the top journalism schools in the country, will also finance specific reporting projects, Egger said.

“If you had art or education writers, you may be able to get funding to endow chairs for that journalism in your operation, thereby offsetting your costs,” he said.

Egger acknowledged that the Philadelphia Media Network has a unique business model, but pointed out that the strategies it has used are easily transferable. He urged those gathered at the conference to begin by cultivating relationships with local universities and philanthropists.

A member of the audience asks a question at Terry Egger’s talk.

‘We are trying to find a sustainable business model that keeps journalism alive in our communities. It’s a matter of how successful we can be going forward in spreading that important value proposition to our readers, our advertisers, our sponsorship partners and, potentially, philanthropy.’

— Terry Egger

A newspaper is as important as a museum or orchestra to the livelihood of the community it covers, and deserves the same level of philanthropic support as those institutions, according to Terry Egger, chief executive officer and publisher of the Philadelphia Media Network.

“What do you think is more important to your community’s livelihood: the museum, the orchestra, the journalism?” Egger, a former publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, said. “All are important, but isn’t journalism every bit as important or more than the art museum, and other things that people give to?”

Egger was invited to the New England Newspaper Conference Oct. 6 to share his thoughts on paying for the future of journalism through exploring alternative business models. He focused primarily on the benefits of tying journalism to philanthropy, saying that advertising revenue will never again sustain the industry.

He told a group of publishers and editors from throughout New England that philanthropy, while not representing the industry’s sole savior, does provide a “meaningful revenue stream” to support and foster projects in innovation and intensive reporting.

To convince nonprofits or donors to write checks, news companies must show them what might happen if the floundering industry fails. That reality sometimes keeps him awake at night, he said.

“If we fail to find a sustainable business model to support journalism, and our credible reports in our communities start to go dark, our investigative work starts to go dark, it’s a very, very bad place for us to be,” he said. “Most people don’t think about that; I think about it all the time.”

Egger’s experience with nonprofit journalism comes through his role at the Philadelphia Media Network, parent company of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com, which he joined in August 2015. The company has tried to revitalize journalism in Philadelphia with an unorthodox business model. In January, the owner of the company, H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, donated a majority of his shares to The Institute for Journalism in New Media, a nonprofit, giving it ownership of the three news outlets.

The institute does not have a direct say in the company’s day-to-day operations, but can pay for its journalism through contributions and endowment, Egger said. It has also aimed to “create a lab of innovation” and to partner with universities to experiment on new product development, delivery services and revenue models, he said.

The institute, whose board includes representatives of some of the top journalism schools in the country, will also finance specific reporting projects, Egger said.

“If you had art or education writers, you may be able to get funding to endow chairs for that journalism in your operation, thereby offsetting your costs,” he said.

Egger acknowledged that the Philadelphia Media Network has a unique business model, but pointed out that the strategies it has used are easily transferable. He urged those gathered at the conference to begin by cultivating relationships with local universities and philanthropists.

Newsrooms should consider hiring a videographer to work on the kind of polished videos that will attract advertisers, according to Vince Johnson, publisher of the award-winning Forsyth County News.

Although reporters can usually handle a camera, it is essential to have at least one staff member solely for planning and editing, so the videos achieve “that next level of production,” Johnson advised his audience at the New England Newspaper Conference Oct. 6.

Johnson was invited to the conference, held at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Natick, Mass., to talk about his success with the Forsyth County News, a 12,000-circulation triweekly newspaper in Cumming, Ga.

The Forsyth County News, which has 14 full-time employees, won the 2016 Mega-Innovation Award, presented at the Key Executives Mega-Conference hosted by the Inland Press Association, Local Media Association and the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association. The County News won the award for its adept use of social media and video production to market the paper and grow its presence in the community.

Johnson spearheaded the paper’s transformation, in part by tying video to advertising. Before producing a new video, the paper finds a business to sponsor it, he said. Typically, the paper will create a “dummy video” or trailer to bring to advertisers first.

“We identify an advertiser that could be interested, then we develop a show based on that advertiser and pitch it,” he said. “If they approve it, we move forward. It’s very important to be driving revenue while we’re producing this content.”

The partnerships have allowed the Forsyth County News to create several popular online video shows, including a high school football training camp series inspired by HBO’s “Hard Knocks” and one that spotlights the paper’s top three stories for the week.

One of the first video shows the paper released was “Studio Forsyth,” a magazine-style news show with two segments.

“It’s a play for brand advertisers: your hospital, your chamber of commerce, your economic development board – people that really want to talk about the good news that’s happening in the community,” Johnson, whose background is in video production, said. “We don’t include things like crime.”

Other interesting advertising strategies that Johnson initiated include “Own the Day,” a program where advertisers pay for a full-page print ad, select space on the paper’s website all day, and a spot in its top stories email.

“You are the top advertiser for that day,” he said.

Another factor in the paper’s recent success has been its more frequent use of social media, Johnson said. When he arrived in 2014, he quickly did away with one of the paper’s more antiquated social media rules.

“There was a rule at the Forsyth County News: Only one social media post per day – and it was always at 6 a.m.,” he said. “We immediately changed that and helped grow our audience.”

And he allows anyone on the newspaper’s staff to post on its Facebook page.

“I don’t think that it’s a problem. We have rules about how to post,” he said. “It’s about letting everyone pitch in and help with the social media platforms.”

The staff posts on Facebook about six to eight times a day, and the page has grown from about 1,000 followers when Johnson arrived to having more than 16,000 “likes” today, he said.

Members of the audience at Vince Johnson’s speech.

“People have been predicting the death of print for a long time, and it’s been wrong every time,” according to Joshua Benton, director and founder of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University.

Benton then examined some of the main reasons for that prediction, and ultimately concluded that the future of print journalism remains unknown.

To do that, Benton asked and attempted to answer five key questions at the New England Newspaper Conference Oct. 6:

• Will print advertising continue to be a sustainable source of revenue for newspapers?
• Will technology companies control everything in the news industry?
• Will digital advertising ever increase to a point where it will sustain the cost of producing news?
• What will be the next new technology development affecting news after mobile devices?
• Will broadcast news be as disrupted by technology as print was?

To answer the first question, Benton highlighted the decline print journalism has undergone in recent years, noting that instead of shutting down, most newspapers just keep shrinking. He noted that print advertising revenue is down to $15 billion from $65 billion in the past 10 years.

He also made note of Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post, as an example of a world in which wealthy investors with no experience in the news industry can buy a newspaper and be successful. Bezos’ success has largely come from his ability to focus on the digital side of the Washington Post, rather than the print side. Benton said.

When tackling the question “Will technology companies control everything in the news industry?”, Benton noted that eight of every 10 links to a new website comes from Facebook and Google. That shows how much control technology companies have already, he said.

Benton also commented on ways in which journalists are already responding to the rise in social media’s influence in the news industry, using Facebook Live as an example. Facebook Live allows users to post live videos from anywhere in the world, and Benton said many news organizations have begun using it to connect more directly with their audience by posting brief videos several times a day.

Benton also noted the dominance Facebook already has, simply because of its ability to maintain the attention of the American people. According to Benton, on average Americans spend about 50 minutes a day on Facebook.

“If they have your attention for 50 minutes a day, they can suck up any part of the American economy they want to,” he said.

On the third question, Benton provided examples of how digital advertising is improving. Benton said two resurgent technologies are on the rise to combat ad blockers and other means of hindering digital advertising: e-mail newsletters and podcasts. Benton said e-mail newsletters are a direct-to-consumer solution that help to “re-create the regular news consumption habit.”

Regarding the fourth question, Benton said the news industry has spent too much attention on tablets, and not enough on smartphones. He said new and interesting news apps make phones a much more important resource for news companies than tablets and other technologies.

Benton also provided some examples of what might come after the mobile phone to revolutionize the way people get their news. He discussed Amazon Echo, a hands-free speaker that can be controlled by the user’s voice, as well as its competitor, Google Home, a similar device.

To answer the fifth question, about broadcast news, Benton said radio has remained strong, giving NPR as an example.

Benton was pessimistic, though, about the future for television news. According to recent studies, younger Americans are more likely to want to read their news, not watch it, he said. That conflicts with conventional wisdom; according to Benton, although younger Americans want to watch videos for entertainment, they do not want to get their news in that format. Benton said the decline in the percentage of younger viewers of TV news combined with new alternatives to TV news such as Netflix and Sling, a service that allows customers to select which channels they like and to pay only for those, has led him to question the role of local TV news in the future.

Benton concluded by providing reasons for optimism and reasons for pessimism for today’s news industry:

While the demand for media continues to grow and social media technology allows news companies to target their audience better, the rise of Facebook and Google and the lack of a new business model spell danger for the mainstream news industry.

Benton’s talk was presented at the New England Society of News Editors Journalism Conference during the daylong New England Newspaper Conference. The conference was held in the Crowne Plaza hotel in Natick, Mass.