Weekly reader | Portland's affluent suburbs prove an irresistible target for newspaper publishers

On Feb. 3, the Community Leader newspaper in Falmouth celebrated its one-year anniversary with a return to its roots. The paper was launched last year by Maine Community Publications, a subsidiary of Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc., with a brief free trial period, after which it charged 75 cents a copy. This month, the Community Leader, which covers the Portland suburbs of Falmouth, Cumberland, Yarmouth, North Yarmouth and Freeport, will again begin offering the paper for no charge; the word "free" is now featured in large red letters over the paper's mast. In addition, Maine Community Publications will begin mailing complimentary copies of the weekly to all 7,000 area subscribers of the daily Portland Press Herald, which also is owned by Blethen.

According to Editor Maggie Daigle and Publisher Dave Morse, the decision to drop the Community Leader's price tag and to piggy-back on mailings of its parent company's daily is not a sign of a weak bottom line, but rather a logical next step in the continuation of what they claim has been a healthy start. (Daigle and Morse, like all the newspaper executives interviewed for this story, declined to provide revenue figures or other indications of their business' financial viability.)

In the beginning, says Daigle, the Community Leader offices off Route One were bombarded with 50 calls a day from locals interested in subscribing. The paper's circulation peaked at just over 7,000 during the last fiscal quarter, and Daigle and Morse say it has carved a place for itself despite competition from the well-established Falmouth Forecaster, a neighboring weekly that was founded in 1986 and purchased by the publisher of the Lewiston Sun Journal in 2003. With the latest tweaks to the paper's business model, Morse hopes to nearly double circulation during the next year. "After six to eight months in business, we begin to think about how to take this to the next level," says Morse. "How do we take it there? Well, one of the models is to go with the free model. I think that is the industry trend. We are just getting on board."

Morse's attempt to carve out a niche for his weekly is something with which other publishers of community papers in greater Portland are familiar. In a market distinguished by an affluent and well-educated population ˆ— which traditionally translates to avid readers with a tendency to act on advertisements ˆ— weeklies have sprouted up and expanded in recent years. Since 2001, four new weeklies have joined the handful of community papers already covering the suburbs of Portland, and one long-standing weekly was purchased by a new owner and updated. Still, despite tight competition around Portland and in other suburban areas nationwide, analysts say the weekly market shows no signs of slowing.

In part, the continued rise of weeklies stems from a decrease in daily newspapers' coverage of local news, according to Brian Steffers, executive director of the Columbia, Mo.-based National Newspaper Association, which has 3,200 members ˆ— both dailies and weeklies ˆ— nationwide. "We gave up the refrigerator news" at urban dailies, he says, referring to local-interest stories. "There's just not enough pages. But weeklies, on the other hand, that's all they cover. There's Johnny on the front page in his soccer uniform at the game, and that gets mailed to grandma. Real people don't have a lot of opportunity to get into the major metropolitan dailies. The attraction to the weeklies is people and pictures."

Affluent and educated
Earl Brechlin, vice president of the weekly Maine Press Association and editor of the Mount Desert Islander, says the weekly market in greater Portland is easily the most competitive in the state, but he doesn't think any of the papers necessarily will buckle under the pressure. (By contrast, the downeast region recently saw the Ellsworth Weekly cease publication and merge with The Bar Harbor Times.) Brechlin says most communities ˆ— especially the affluent suburbs around Portland ˆ— can support at least two weeklies. "These papers [around Portland] are all healthy, from what I can tell," says Brechlin. "The advertisers are seeing the value in the readers those papers bring to the table."

These readers, residents of the suburbs of the state's largest city, are distinguished by relatively high income and education when compared to the population of the rest of Maine. According to Morse and Lee Hews Casler, publisher of four community papers from Gorham to Alfred, this makes the market an appealing one. For example, residents of Falmouth, which is served by three weekly newspapers ˆ— the Community Leader, the Forecaster and the Notes, which is published by Mark and Andrew LaBrie, ˆ— make a median income of $66,855, according to 2000 U.S. Census data, the most recent available. Slightly more than half of Falmouth residents hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Statewide, the median income of residents is $37,240, according to 2000 statistics, and 23% of the population holds a college degree or higher.

John Christie, president of Central Maine Newspapers, the division of Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. that publishes the Community Leader, says he and other Blethen executives began discussing expanding the company's products from dailies to weeklies and niche publications in 2003, in part to take advantage of those demographics. The company created Maine Community Publications, he says, to further diversify its publications and to capitalize on local advertising rather than regional and national ads, which tend to be placed in urban dailies.

"This is an area with a high interest in local news and a lot of retailers and potential [local] advertisers," says Christie of Portland's northern suburbs. "Once up, [weeklies] are cheaper to run than dailies because they have a smaller expense base, smaller print run and a smaller distribution territory. What weeklies can do is be more local than dailies."

Brenda Reed, executive director of the Boston-based New England Press Association, says the weekly market has grown stronger nationwide over the past decade ˆ— strong enough, she believes, to support more than one weekly in small markets like the Portland suburbs. According to preliminary data from a NEPA readership study scheduled for release in March, six out of every 10 New England residents read at least one weekly newspaper during an average week, and almost half of those polled read two or more a week.

The retail connection
Reed says the steady creation of new weeklies in the region also is proof of the market's vitality. She estimates that since 2001, when NEPA first created an electronic database of members, about 50 new weeklies have registered with the association. In 2004 alone, Reed says the region welcomed 14 new weeklies. Meanwhile, the number of daily newspaper members has remained constant at 91 since she joined NEPA in 1999.

"The numbers [in New England] are consistent with what we see around the country," says Reed. "The reality is it's a little different starting a newspaper now than it was 20 years ago" when mechanized printing and layout was the norm, Reed says. "It's easier with the technology. If you have the talent and the business sense, you can start a weekly newspaper."

Casler might concur. Since 2001, she has started or purchased four weekly newspapers in greater Portland and southern Maine, building herself a mini-empire of community papers from Gorham to Alfred. Last October, Casler purchased her newest weekly, the Reporter, which is mailed free in Waterboro, Alfred, Shapleigh, Limerick and Newfield.

All of her weeklies compete with similar community papers in their respective coverage areas; her oldest weekly, the Current in Scarborough, is in close competition with the Forecaster and the Scarborough Leader, which is published by Mainely Newspapers, for advertising and readership in a suburb with a population of just under 17,000. "We wanted to have a group of papers in the greater Portland market which would be contiguous for logistical reasons," says Casler. "The market is good. In general, there is a place for weeklies in most markets to cover community and local news."

Steffers of the National Newspaper Association says that competition like that in the Portland weekly market is happening elsewhere in the country, and, as long as the local retail market is growing, many suburbs can support more than one local paper. "If you're seeing new stores then the advertising base is going up," he says. "If there are no new stores, no new Lowe's or Targets, and existing stores are closing, then the market could be in trouble."

In greater Portland, of course, retail development ˆ— particularly of big-box stores ˆ— is on the rise. And it seems that the diversity in business models among the region's weeklies is appealing to local advertisers. In interviews for this story, retail and restaurant advertisers in the Current, the Forecaster and the Community Leader cited varying reasons for their interest in each paper: Some are looking for a paper with small, paid circulation, others want a large circulation that's free and others simply look for the cheapest ad rate. (Rates at the weeklies vary; for example, a quarter-page ad in the Community Leader, with a circulation of 7,000, costs $180 to $234, while a quarter-page the northern edition of the Forecaster runs $236, for a circulation of 24,000. By way of comparison, a quarter-page in all three Forecaster editions, with a total circulation of 55,000, costs $348.)

When David Costello's family, which owns and publishes the daily Lewiston Sun Journal, bought the Forecaster in 2003, Costello announced that the free weekly would add a Portland edition, expanding its coverage to the city proper and eight suburbs to the north and south and increasing circulation from 36,500 to 55,000. Under Costello, who is vice president of the Sun Journal IT department and president of the Forecaster papers, the weekly moved its offices to a larger building in Falmouth and updated technology in the editorial and production departments.

According to longtime Forecaster Publisher Karen Rajotte, the change streamlined the editorial and production process at the paper. "Now production can actually design things," she says. "We've moved deadlines for the news department so they have more time." Rajotte says staff used to spend two to three days laying out the paper by hand. With Costello's improvements, each of the Forecaster's three incarnations takes one day to design.

Costello declined to release financial information about the company but says the Portland Press Herald, not the Community Leader down the road, is the paper's biggest competition for advertising revenue and editorial content.

The decision to purchase the Forecaster developed organically, he says, because the Sun Journal had been printing the paper for years and had developed a working relationship with editor and former owner Marian McCue. "It was a good fit all around," says Costello. "[McCue] was wanting to expand and we were there and it seemed like the right fit. What appealed to us a lot about the Forecaster was it's a different market from the Sun Journal coverage area."

Costello says his family has no plans to buy any more weeklies in the near future, although, he adds, "You never know."