Patrick Dorsey knows better than most about the newspaper industry’s painful disruption.
Virginia newspapers he delivered as a boy are gone. Much of his career was in chain newspapers that shrank, merged and shrank again.
Yet Dorsey strongly believes the industry will endure.
“Newspapers are still a damn good business,” he said by phone last week.
No wonder Dorsey was recently named chair of America’s Newspapers, a trade group representing around 2,000 local papers.
Dorsey is publisher of the Santa Fe New Mexican, a family-owned daily that’s seen double-digit growth since he arrived in 2023.
Earlier he was publisher of dailies in Tallahassee and Sarasota, Fla., and Austin, Texas. He was a GateHouse Media executive when the chain was acquired by Gannett, then Gannett’s vice president in Texas. He rose through the business side, starting as a Gannett auditor during USA Today’s glory days.
Dorsey said there’s a tendency to generalize and say newspapers don’t work because some failed. Each situation is different, though the entire sector saw its traditional ad business evaporate.
“All of that has changed and you have a whole different economic model that you’re facing, but all that takes is pivoting,” he said.
Newspapers are now “the same as every other local business.”
“We have to be aggressive, we have to be entrepreneurial, we have to be consistently looking to change, to market ourselves, to do the investments needed to be successful within our market,” he said.
That’s a story Dorsey will tell with his new megaphone.
“Even though there is weakness in areas, and there are news deserts, there’s still a lot more places where great journalism and good service is happening around the country,” he said.
Here are edited excerpts of our conversation:
Dudley: America’s Newspapers just published a forceful defense of newspapers. Do you want it to be more assertive?
Dorsey: We’ve been trying to get more assertive and stand up for our industry because the reality is that local newspapers still employ more journalists than anybody else. We have the most journalists, we support the most communities. Even though there are business-model issues, things with publicly traded newspaper groups and hedge-fund groups, most of us are independent and family-owned newspapers spread across rural America and there’s thousands and thousands of us.
Q: Yep.
A: We hear groups saying “newspapers are failing and the model doesn’t work.” It’s just not true. The model has evolved, the industry has changed and the dynamics have changed with Big Tech moving in and we continue to evolve. You don’t hear about all the successes but when there are failures, you hear it.
Q: What’s working?
A: I’m a big believer that the best model is similar to what Seattle does, what we’re doing, what they’ve done in South Carolina at The Post and Courier, and what many papers are doing, where there’s a for-profit ethos, a for-profit independent company, but it relies on some nonprofit support to give you another leg and stabilize. In Santa Fe we have funded (reporting) positions specifically about healthcare access and why it’s so hard in New Mexico.
Q: That’s working at The Times.
A: To me that’s the more sustainable model. If you rely on donations alone, you’re not going to serve your community well long into the future. You have to have a blend of both and some partnerships. There’s room for all kinds of models and that’s going to shake out. But there’s a lot of frustration when we hear people bad-mouth newspapers, especially independent, family-owned newspapers that have been doing their part to support community journalism for years — like in Santa Fe for 176 years.
Q: New Mexico is among a few states providing journalism tax credits. What’s needed to get more support, and is that necessary nationwide?
A: I do think it’s necessary. It’s starting to pick up, you’re starting to see more states looking at supporting local media — for-profits, nonprofits, all kinds of forms, not just newspaper and broadcast. I think there’s a real sense of how important this is now.
Q: No red states yet and I don’t want them left behind. Their need is sometimes the greatest.
A: I don’t disagree with you. We’re working in every state, no matter their partisan leaning. If you toss out the red-blue discussion, you know all politics is local. You hope if you can get it down to that level you could be successful.
Q: People are getting news more from social media and video sites than news sites and apps. What’s our industry’s outlook?
A: All of that points to the challenges we have. But we have a lot of opportunities as well. We’ve done research. If you look at it, print’s not dead. Across suburban America that’s the number one place people get their news, print newspapers. Eighty percent say having a local newspaper is very important to their community, 85% of Americans agree the local press plays an important role in sustaining democracy.
Q: How do we get more than 17% to pay for news?
A: We have to keep improving our technology. We still have too much friction in making it easy to subscribe and pay. We also have to make sure, are we serving the needs of our community? Are we giving them something that is special and something they’re willing to pay for?
Q: You’ve grown subscriptions to the New Mexican. Is it profitable?
A: It definitely is. It all comes back to the journalism — what do you do, what is the content? You can’t sell junk. You have to have value, and if you’re serving your community, doing really strong journalism, people will pay for it. I’m a big believer in that. In the end, it’s the journalism that matters the most.
