Subscribers: A solution to sustainability

In the future, the only newspapers that will be successful are the ones that focus on quality, Walter E. Hussman Jr., publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, told attendees at the News Industry Summit.

Quality journalism is what enabled the Little Rock paper to change its business strategy in 2012 in response to declines in ad revenues.  The paper moved to a more subscription-based revenue model – with the help of Mather Economics – and now is seeing a larger share of total newspaper revenues coming from circulation.

On June 1, 2012, the paper increased its single copy rates in the City/RTZ zones daily from 50 cents to $1, and on Sunday from $1.25 to $2.  In the All Other zone, daily went from 75 cents to $1 and on Sunday from $1.50 to $2.

Home delivery rates increased for daily/Sunday from $16 per month to $28, and Sunday-only from $7.95 per month to $13.95.

"This strategy has been successful for us," Hussman said, "But it will only be successful if you put out a quality newspaper.  You've got to have unique, relevant, local, engaging content in your newspaper that people can't get anywhere else. You can't put out a skeleton of a newspaper and have this type of a rate increase."

In his presentation, Hussman outlined how the paper increased rates 40 percent among 10 percent of its renewals in the first 14 weeks of the rate increase campaign; 90 percent of its renewals experienced no increase during that time. 

After seeing positive results during those 14 weeks, the paper took bold steps and raised rates among 90 percent of the next subscriptions up for renewal.  Eighty percent of those people saw rate increases of 50 percent; 20 percent of them had rate increases of 70 percent.

In the video at the top of this page, Hussman talks openly about how – as of July 12, 2013, the paper has raised rates on 103,464 subscribers, with just 5.9 percent of stops coming from those who experienced rate increases.

• A Letter to Our Readers
• View videos of all conference sessions released as of today