A newspaper like few others

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Daily newspapers are tanking all over the county, including here in Buffalo. But not everywhere.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune just announced a major investment to add reporters and open bureaus across the state, share content with hyperlocal news sites, and establish a philanthropic arm. It will henceforth be known as Minnesota Star Tribune to reflect its broader scope of coverage

Reported The New York Times:

The expansion is a rare big bet in the newspaper industry. Local newspapers have been shrinking across the country in recent years. A 2023 report from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern found that almost 2,900 newspapers had shut down since 2005.

But The Star Tribune has remained a bright spot: It hasn’t made major layoffs in recent years, and its newsroom has remained around 225 people for years. “You can’t manage decline toward a profitable future,” Publisher Steve Grove  told The Times. “You’re going to have to at some point take a pretty big swing.”

The goal is to triple the paper’s digital subscriptions, which now stand at 100,000. (That’s two to three times that of The Buffalo News.)

While The Star Tribune’s print circulation has shrunk, as have that of all newspapers, it now ranks as the largest regional metro in the country, ahead of such former behemoths as the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Globe. (The Star Tribune’s average print circulation of 87,000 is about triple that of The News.)

One more comparison with The News: The Star Tribune’s staff of 225 – and growing – is around four times that of our hometown newspaper.

While legacy media — daily newspapers and local TV news — are struggling almost everywhere, entrepreneurs are setting up shop in many communities in an effort to fill at least a portion of the gap.

Philadelphia, for example, has more than a dozen nonprofit news outlets, including the Philadelphia Inquirer. Multiple digital news outlets have opened in markets as varied as Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Memphis, Baltimore and the aforementioned Minneapolis.

The growth is evidenced by the explosion of nonprofit news outlets nationally. There were about 50 nonprofits in 2012 when Investigative Post launched. Today, there are some 450 members of the Institute for Nonprofit News, or INN. In addition, there are more than 500 member outlets in Local Independent Online News, or LION Publishers, which includes both for-profit and nonprofit newsrooms.

We’ve got a stagnant news ecosystem here in WNY, however.

Investigative Post is the only serious news startup of the past decade — 12 years and running, actually. All the legacy news outlets here are owned by out-of-town chains, save for WBFO, and most are treading water, at best.

But, again, retrenchment is the M/O for most legacy outlets in most markets. There are signs of life in some places, however, as reported last week by Poynter.

In other media news, Google and lawmakers in California have struck a deal to provide funding to news outlets. This year’s budget deal here in New York includes tax credits for news outlets, but it’s unclear which types will be eligible.

And for you political junkies, Daily Kos has morphed into The Downballot. A must read in this election year

Bloomberg’s technology columnist writes that Twitter — sorry, I’m not calling it X — suffers from Failing Social Network Syndrome: 

Advertising revenue has fallen off a cliff; commercial deals have collapsed; and regulators are closing in with very real threats of catastrophic fines. A former Twitter executive has called for Musk’s arrest for stoking unrest in the UK. The company has skipped paying rent at its headquarters, so workers are moving into cheaper offices in San Jose. Two recent senior departures followed the flurry of talent walking out the door — while others who were unfairly fired are winning compensation. Musk’s pledge to rid the network of bots has failed. A promise that X would be a significant banking app by the end of this year has failed to even produce a launch date. His plan to turn X into an “everything app” hasn’t materialized — and never will. X is now in the full flailing about stage of Failing Social Network Syndrome, suing advertisers who followed Musk’s advice to stay off the platform.

Speaking of which, my Twitter feed the past week has become clogged with unsolicited posts from right-wing crazies. Anyone experiencing the same thing? Makes me wonder if Elon Musk is flooding the platform in an effort to buck up the Trump campaign.

The Buffalo News reports the Buffalo Bills are pleased with sales so far of personal seat licenses, which a lot of fans consider sky-high. I don’t know: 40 percent of season ticket holders given the chance to buy a PSL have declined, or at least demurred. That doesn’t strike me as a good batting average. 

At the other end of the price range, a new survey reports the cost of attending a Sabres game is cheap compared to most NHL teams. The average cost for a family of four (tickets, parking and concessions) was just under $310, vs. a league average of just over $430, and way below the high of nearly $705 in Toronto — or $970 in Canadian funds. No wonder Maple Leaf fans snap up tickets when their team plays in Buffalo.

The Pew Research Center sizes up the numbers for the Harris-Trump race and assesses the impact of RFK Jr. dropping out to endorse a man he previously call a “sociopath” and “terrible human being.”

Governor Ron DeSantis engineered a right-wing takeover of the New College of Florida. It’s doing the next worst thing to burning books — throwing them out. 

The New York Times has a delightful read about the afterlife of Sun Studio in Memphis, which gave birth to Elvis, The Killer and Howlin’ Wolf, among others. After being put to other uses, the building is back in use as a recording studio. Let’s hear from Sun’s most famous alumni, recorded before he was The King, back in 1955. 

Jim Heaney