Are small-town newspapers thriving because they're better, or because they happen to be located in small towns?

Here's a list of the top five newspapers by market penetration, representing the percentage of adults who read the print paper during the past five weekdays or Sunday:

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: 80%
Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers (including the Appleton Post-Crescent, Fond Du Lac Reporter, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter and Oshkosh Northwestern): 74%
The Des Moines Register: 68%
The (Syracuse) Post-Standard: 67%
The Buffalo News: 65%

The source on that is Scarborough Research. Senior VP Gary Meo notes that those newspapers are all located in cold weather cities with relatively small markets.

As someone who has been in and out of publishing (albeit not newspapers) for almost 20 years, I'm more inclined to agree with your thesis. Small market papers are able to maintain more of a monopoly on local news reporting than are metro papers. I wonder if that also flows to local ad dollars?

I would argue something else.

The smaller the town, the more likely it is that a newspaper will be more relevant to more people. Consequently, people in that locale would be more inclined to read it.

You're absolutely correct, but you missed two biggies:

* The median age of residents in small markets is much higher than the median age of residents in metro areas. And people who are older are much more likely to read newspapers than the under-35 set.

• The level of PRINT competition in major markets dwarfs that which exists in smaller communities. Every top-25 market has dozens of mostly free, niche publications.

Richard Karpel
Executive Director
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
1250 Eye Street N.W., Suite 804
Washington, D.C. 20005-5982
202/289-8484
http://aan.org
http://AltWeeklies.com

You nailed it. I dropped the "Gannett big city paper" two years ago but kept the local paper. Everything that was in the Gannett you can find on the net plus their customer service was AWFUL. They didn't care one iota about where I was. They are trying to be like plain white bread - easily digestible to everyone but nothing unique or special. It's more Star magazine than a newspaper now.

The hometown paper should thrive - I want to see my kids on the honor roll. I want to see who had the biggest tomato at the fair. I want to know who smacked who outside the Dairy Queen. That stuff will never be on the net!

True.

We read the SF Chronicle and the Contra Costa Times - yes, we're in the older set and do the puzzles! I would say that the Chronicle is suffering more than the Times and their coverage is getting steadily worse.

Jason said: "That stuff will never be on the net!"

Really? Here in Peoria, the blogs are full of that sort of thing. Lots of original reporting, too.

And consider this: How many online reporters would it take compete against a metro daily? Many dozens at least, for even a medium-sized city.

How many to create an online only news source serving a small town? 1 or 2 if they have some journalism skills.

So in terms of penetration and ad sales, small community papers may be doing well compared to their troubled big city dailies. But these smaller papers will be easier to replace when the online start-ups start to happen in a big way.

Peoria Pundit,

However, there's a key thing missing in small communities-lack of penetration for high speed internet. ...and...I'd hardly call Peoria small.

Corey: And you think there aren't bloggers in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles writing in detail about the criminal foibles of their neighbors? If you are a journalist and don't know who these bloggers are, then you better find out. Your readers know them.

And Peoria is small, compared to the big metro papers everyone is so concerned about.

Peoria is huge compared with Tuskegee. When people talk about community newspapers, they generally mean operations much smaller than the Peoria Times.

Peoria Pundit..

Towanda is small. Peoria is medium

Note to others: Towanda is a very small town right off I-55 north of Bloomington, IL.

This is a great conversation to explore. I take some issue with:
"The rest is a load of hooey, though. A few community newspapers do a great job of serving their readers and exposing corrupt public servants. Many more do a great job of publishing photos of their readers, but generally shy away from any exposing of corruption. And some are complete crap."
There are more than 1,400 dailies ... You could say the same for several of them. I don't know that you could say the vast majority, or even majority, do a great job of exposing corrupt public servants, etc. Ditto TV or radio news. And I think the author might be surprised at how many of the 8,000 small town papers take their best shot at it (without the resources of the big papers). A bit of a throwaway comment or red herring.
About that list of market penetration by Scarborough. That research firm focuses on the top 100 and top 250 dailies. They don't track the 8,000 weeklies out there. There are many small town papers with that 80% penetration, some approaching 100%. But because they are smaller papers, and they tend not to make the time to fill out surveys, they fly under the radar of all the mass media reports. I wouldn't call Rochester, Buffalo or Syracuse papers "small."
Brian Steffens
Executive Director
National Newspaper Association
Columbia, MO
http://www.nna.org