Here was where the story began. This post on The Public’s website (and later in the paper itself) was the first look at the turmoil that’s been going down at the region’s major daily.
Because The Public was the initial publisher of this piece, I’m going to give you the first six paragraphs of this post, followed by a link to its website to read the rest:
What’s Happening with the Buffalo News?
What the hell is happening with the Buffalo News?
That’s a question I’ve heard a lot over the past month. I haven’t worked there in nearly 10 years, but I’ve got friends who are still in the business and I keep an eye on industry trends, so I’ll try to parse it out as best I can.
For years the News looked like the safest bet in regional journalism (sizable metropolitan dailies that aren’t the New York Times or Washington Post). The paper, thanks to its ownership by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Company, wasn’t burdened with the debt that had turned countless newspapers into money pits in the last 20 years. Its market penetration remained among the nation’s highest for a long time.
Even the News’s late move into the digital world didn’t hurt it too badly. It was able to avoid some of the mistakes other papers had made.
The News had also gone deeply into the printing business to make up for some of the ad revenue it had lost in recent years. It prints the regional edition of the New York Times and a number of other local publications (Pennysavers, college newspapers, etc.)
But the perfect storm striking newspapers specifically and print publications in general didn’t skip the News. Every time a department store goes out of business (think Bon-Ton, for example), it can mean as much as a million dollars in lost advertising in a year. Those Sunday inserts don’t come cheap. And multiply it by all of the other businesses that have folded.
