A paper that’s defying the odds in Florida

By Mark S. Smith

This article is part of a Media Life series “Reinventing the American Newspaper.”Click here to read other stories in the series.

You see them at the Starbucks that dot the strip malls of South Florida. Hordes of senior citizens sipping nonfat lattes, as the pages of their newspapers flutter in the Florida breeze.

These elderly are the core readership of the print newspapers in the area, America’s retirement Mecca, where people over 65 make up as many as one in three residents in some counties.

But, alas, while they’re great for business at the local Starbucks, they present a real problem for the area’s dailies.

As they die off, and they do in large numbers, newspapers are losing their base of print readership, and fast. The Miami Herald, Sun Sentinel and Palm Beach Post have all suffered double-digit percentage declines in circulation in recent years.

While there’s been a steady influx of new, younger residents, they are typically not print readers and not much in the way online newspaper readers either.

From all this, it’s tempting to say this area’s newspapers are fated to die right along with their aged readers.

Except there’s the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which puts a lie to it all.

Far from dying, the paper is thriving. Print circulation is actually up, to 81,434 daily from 63,864 in 2011. Web traffic is up 35 percent jump since 2013.

It’s warded off decline the old fashioned way, by publishing first-rate journalism, with an emphasis on covering the diverse communities in its market and investigative stories.

It’s won a slew of state journalism awards, and earlier this week it won a Pulitzer Prize, its second in five years.

The paper’s Pulitzer series, a collaboration with the Tampa Bay Times, was an investigation of the state’s mental hospitals that found a pattern of neglect and budget cuts that resulted in violence and the death of patients.

It was investigative journalism at its best, and the sort only top newspapers do, exposing the failings, missteps and often corrupt behavior of powerful institutions. It takes lots of work, talent, and above all patience and commitment.

In covering its communities, the Herald-Tribune has published stories such as “Home to Havana,” the tale of a Cuban ballet family in Sarasota that travels to the land of their birth to see their son perform in a prestigious international competition, and “TransSarasota,” which profiles transgender people and their concerns in Southwest Florida.

The paper’s growth in readers is a remarkable achievement by any standards, but especially so for a Florida market in which 34 percent of the population is over age 65.  That’s almost three times the number in most American cities.

By returning to the basics of what readers expect from a newspaper-real journalism-the Sarasota Herald Tribune has revealed a lead others might follow.

Herald Tribune Editor Bill Church believes it’s a matter of adapting to change while holding onto your core values.

“Legacy media organizations can change with the times while still embracing readers’ long-held expectations of the newspaper,” Church told Editor & Publisher.

Tags: aging readership, florida newspapers, newspapers, newspapers florida, reinventing the american newspaper