Burlington Free Press Loses Ground in Vermont

The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Monday, October 01, 2012

Burlington Free Press Loses Ground in Vermont

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Vermonters may be quick to boast about their locally sourced foods, their ability to tolerate bitter winters and their celebrated entrepreneurs like Ben & Jerry’s and Burton Snowboards. But lately, they have not extended that praise to their newspaper.

That is because the 185-year-old Burlington Free Press, the state’s largest daily, went through some radical changes in June. Management shrunk the newspaper from a broadsheet to a tabloid (a format from its distant past) and added color to all of its pages. It raised delivery prices, started charging for online access and rebuilt its 45-year-old presses.

As Lynne Hefferon and Candice Swenson, both teachers, split a brownie at the August First cafe here, they complained about The Free Press’s reduced content in print, sporadic delivery and long customer-service waiting times. Ms. Swenson said she was considering canceling the subscription she has had since 1974. Ms. Hefferon said she had canceled after 22 years and dropped it a second time after The Free Press offered her a Walmart gift card to come back. Both women have been reading Seven Days, a free alternative weekly, instead.

“I don’t like the new layout,” Ms. Swenson said. “Most of the comments I’ve heard have not been particularly positive. Nobody has said, ‘I love The Free Press.’ ”

The reaction in Burlington reflects the broader challenges facing Gannett, which owns The Free Press, and other newspaper chains as they try to retool local papers for the digital age.

Gannett, which also owns USA Today, 80 other newspapers and 23 television stations, is in the middle of an overhaul of its newspaper properties, redesigning print pages, introducing pay walls for online access and turning print reporters into multimedia journalists.

But local readers have not immediately taken to Gannett’s vision. It takes a long time for loyal readers to embrace the big changes their papers are making. The Free Press, like many newspapers across the nation, has been trying to reinvent itself in a devastating environment. Its weekday circulation declined to 30,558 from 48,871 over the last decade, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. It has made a lot of changes at once.

“It was like giving me keys to an 18-wheeler for the first time and driving it through Chicago,” said Michael Townsend, The Free Press’s executive editor, as he described how his colleagues spoke about the changes. “We’ve learned that you’ve got to give things a little time.”

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.