August 21, 2006
Weekly wars | Mount Desert Island is the battleground for competing coastal newspaper operations
By Douglas Rooks
There are only a handful of two-newspaper towns in Maine. But in Bar Harbor, best known as a summer playground, two newspapers have been going toe-to-toe for readers and advertisers for more than four years, with no letup in sight. There, some of the state's most respected weekly journalists vie for the favor of Mount Desert Island's growing year-round population and its legions of seasonal visitors.
Since 2002, the Bar Harbor Times, founded in 1913, has competed with the fledgling Mount Desert Islander. While the Times currently holds a nearly 2-1 advantage in paid circulation, the Islander has been making gains and both papers seem to be in it for the long haul. As in markets across Maine, the contest also reflects the nationwide trend toward chain ownership of most daily newspapers and many weeklies ˆ and the resistance that ownership has met in some quarters.
Both papers have won many awards, with the Islander taking top prize for general excellence in its circulation class this year in the New England Newspaper Association contest. Although owned by Courier Publications in Rockland ˆ which also owns the Republican Journal in Belfast and the Camden Herald ˆ the Times is not a stodgy, colorless chain paper. Nor is the Islander a typical shoestring startup, as it is owned by the 150-year old Ellsworth American, the state's largest weekly paper. And the story behind the current rivalry has several twists and turns, including editors jumping ship, competition for choice newsstand space and heated competition for spot news. Alan Baker, publisher of the Mount Desert Islander seems to relish the rivalry, saying it gives his paper, "a lot of energy, even though it's not heavy on profits."
The resulting robust news coverage also has many fans. Michael Boland, who owns two restaurants in Bar Harbor ˆ Havana and Rupununi ˆ and is primary partner in two others as well as the downtown Criterion Theater, advertises in both newspapers and says he knows "quite a few people who read both every week, and equal numbers that refuse to read one or the other, due to some long-ago slight."
While he has detected some "Enquirer-like" reporting and "looking for the sensational side," he also believes most people appreciate having two voices in town. "They are different papers with different personalities," Boland says. "And to have that in a small town is a rare treat."
Head-to-head competition
Like several other papers in Maine, the Bar Harbor Times was independently owned before being acquired by Courier Publications in Rockland, whose flagship remains the Courier Gazette, Maine's only three-times-a-week newspaper. Courier's aggressive expansion strategy in the 1980s and '90s was led by former publisher David Morse, who resigned in 2003, and included at one time the York County Coast Star and York Weekly as well as weeklies in Augusta, Damariscotta and Ellsworth.
The company's decision to launch the Ellsworth Weekly in 2000, soon after Courier acquired the Bar Harbor Times, was a clear challenge to the established Ellsworth American, one of the region's oldest newspapers ˆ it was founded in 1851. Alan Baker, who had taken over as the American's publisher from the legendary James Russell Wiggins (former Washington Post editor and friend of E.B. White), admits he thought about a counter-move almost from the beginning.
The moment of opportunity came when Earl Brechlin, the veteran editor at the Bar Harbor Times, who had worked under the previous owners, was asked to cut the editorial budget one more time, despite what he says were record profits at the paper. Brechlin resigned in late 2001 after reaching an agreement with Baker to launch a new paper on MDI, and the Islander began publishing in a matter of months.
The Times staff remained otherwise intact, and Courier brought in Greg Fish, who had been hired to edit the Ellsworth Weekly, to replace Brechlin. In the next two years, the Weekly's circulation dropped sharply after its editorial staff was pared back, and Courier closed the paper in 2004. With the competition in Ellsworth gone, the rivalry shifted to MDI.
At the same time the Ellsworth Weekly was struggling, the Islander was making gains against its established competitor on Mount Desert Island. The Islander sold more than 2,000 copies a week in its first year. Circulation, according to its annual postal statements, rose from 2,167 in 2002 to 2,611 in 2005, and is up about 15% this year, according to Baker. Times circulation peaked in 2001 at 7,558, and declined to 5,860 in 2004 before stabilizing.
It was a rare case of an independent paper gaining at the expense of a larger chain rival, but it's not unprecedented, according to John Morton, an industry analyst based in Silver Spring, Md. Large chains have clear economies of scale, he says. "It's a big advantage for the national companies, who can get significant discounts on everything from paper clips to newsprint." But for papers in the 4,000-7,000 circulation range, such advantages are less clear, he says. And in that range, competition between papers tends to be short-lived (as it was in Ellsworth), with one folding or buying out the other.
No one seems to expect that to happen in Bar Harbor. "It's an interesting market," Bill Atkinson says of the MDI area. He took over as Courier's group publisher from David Morse in 2003, and oversaw the closing of the Ellsworth Weekly and the acquisition of the Waldo Independent in Belfast. Atkinson makes it clear that it's also an important market ˆ "the second most profitable in the company, after the Courier Gazette itself," he says. (Courier does not disclose revenues or profits for individual papers or the chain; its parent company is privately held.)
So far, the Islander has been content with its modest profits, Baker says, which are reinvested in the company. Brechlin added he knew that he was " taking a big risk by going up against one of the best papers in New England," when he jumped to the Islander. But with Baker's backing, he believed he could succeed. (The two had known each other for years, with Brechlin starting his newspaper career in the American's pressroom.)
As for reaching circulation parity with the Times, that's a long-term goal. "They had a 100-year head start, and readers don't change their minds overnight," Baker says, noting that the Waldo Independent took 20 years to draw even with the Republican Journal, just before Courier became the owner of both papers.
Atkinson acknowledged that the Times has lost readers in the last few years, but says, "Who hasn't?" referring to national circulation trends. The missing readers, he says, are not local, for the most part, but out-of-state subscribers who get their papers later and later, thanks to changes in U.S. Postal Service rules that no longer favor newspapers for long-distance delivery.
Who's more local?
Both papers' approach to news is resolutely local in focus ˆ but each seems to play up a different idea of what "local" means. The Islander features lavish color photography and extensive editorial pages, while the Times devotes more space to the details of spot news stories and its traditional town columns.
Ownership is another story, with the Times' parent company Courier Publications Inc. itself a subsidiary of Crescent Publications of Greenville, S.C., an investor-owned syndicate. And the idea of independent ownership may play better in Maine's intensely local coastal communities than elsewhere. At the time of the Islander's founding, Jill Goldthwait, a former independent state senator and now a columnist for the Islander, predicted that "an owner who lives halfway across the country may have the best intentions and a good head for business, but can't be expected to know what matters to a small townˆ the reins are in the hands of someone who is not only from away, he is away."
Crescent has not been shy about making moves. It focused on the midcoast when it acquired Courier in 1999 (the York County papers were sold to Camphall Hall, N.Y.-based Ottaway Newspapers, parent of the Portsmouth Herald), and then closed the Ellsworth Weekly and bought the Waldo Independent. Atkinson, a former publisher for three Fort Worth, Texas area dailies, says Crescent "is looking for more acquisitions," most likely in other states ˆ though he doesn't rule out more in Maine.
Baker says his ambitions are more local in scope. "We need to turn a profit, but we're also interested in the psychic rewards, what's beyond just money." Those rewards, he says, include satisfying the community's need to know and maintaining the loyalty of employees, who know their jobs are secure.
That local focus also includes the paper's advertising strategy: While full-page supermarket ads are now mostly in the past, MDI's weeklies can count on large buys from car dealers, building supply retailers and ˆ particularly at the moment ˆ real estate firms catering to the wealthy out-of-staters, which locals complain are driving up housing prices. "Our advertisers may use the Internet, but they need us to reach their customers," Baker says.
However, lately both papers have struggled with an advertising revenue slump, due largely to struggling car dealerships, Atkinson says. The newspapers are also seeing a decline of department store and supermarket ads as mainstays, though Atkinson figures the Ellsworth American has "to feel that even more than we do," since Ellsworth functions as the county's service center.
Still, advertising competition between the papers is mostly genteel, Atkinson says. In similar situations, advertisers sometimes try to bargain for better rates "and we haven't seen that here," he says. But Earl Brechlin notes that the Islander has become the publisher of all legal notices for Bar Harbor and other island towns ˆ he admits that the paper's lower circulation and hence lower advertising rates may have influenced frugal town officials' decisions.
As with the pool of advertisers, though, there's also a limit to how much unique news two papers can dig up in a small coastal community. That means the papers try to differentiate themselves on how they work with the same raw materials. "Much of the time you're going to read the same story in both papers," Brechlin says. "There's only so much news to go around. But which one has more depth? Which one clearly explains what's going on?"
He speaks generously of his old paper, though. "They've got good people working there [and] talented people are the most important thing," he says. "This is a good place to be able to apply your craft."
Greg Fish, Brechlin's counterpart at the Bar Harbor Times, says he enjoys the Bar Harbor market just as much as he did the Ellsworth readership, "but then I tend to like any town I get to cover." Fish says he has "a good staff that's been together a long time," and that Courier has maintained staffing levels since he came to the Times. He says he doesn't have any special strategy for competing with the Islander. "We just make sure we get the stories as well and as fast as we can," he says.
He adds that papers competing in the same market are "much more aggressive" about making sure stories are covered each week, and he believes it also "keeps local officials honest," since they know there will be at least two stories detailing each municipal meeting or event.
Still, staffing the papers can be a challenge for the Times, Atkinson says, because of MDI's notoriously high-priced housing. "We have a lot of people commuting onto the island and we're lucky that some people who live here are willing to treat employment as more of a hobby," he says. "That's going to be a continuing challenge for every business on the island."
Yet Fish says he knows there's a certain amount of envy from colleagues in other parts of the state about working on MDI. "We have Acadia National Park, I live 800 feet from the water, and I love this location," he says.
On that point, both editors seem to agree. Says Brechlin, "There's a reason why you find the staff here stays mostly the same, year after year."
Since 2002, the Bar Harbor Times, founded in 1913, has competed with the fledgling Mount Desert Islander. While the Times currently holds a nearly 2-1 advantage in paid circulation, the Islander has been making gains and both papers seem to be in it for the long haul. As in markets across Maine, the contest also reflects the nationwide trend toward chain ownership of most daily newspapers and many weeklies ˆ and the resistance that ownership has met in some quarters.
Both papers have won many awards, with the Islander taking top prize for general excellence in its circulation class this year in the New England Newspaper Association contest. Although owned by Courier Publications in Rockland ˆ which also owns the Republican Journal in Belfast and the Camden Herald ˆ the Times is not a stodgy, colorless chain paper. Nor is the Islander a typical shoestring startup, as it is owned by the 150-year old Ellsworth American, the state's largest weekly paper. And the story behind the current rivalry has several twists and turns, including editors jumping ship, competition for choice newsstand space and heated competition for spot news. Alan Baker, publisher of the Mount Desert Islander seems to relish the rivalry, saying it gives his paper, "a lot of energy, even though it's not heavy on profits."
The resulting robust news coverage also has many fans. Michael Boland, who owns two restaurants in Bar Harbor ˆ Havana and Rupununi ˆ and is primary partner in two others as well as the downtown Criterion Theater, advertises in both newspapers and says he knows "quite a few people who read both every week, and equal numbers that refuse to read one or the other, due to some long-ago slight."
While he has detected some "Enquirer-like" reporting and "looking for the sensational side," he also believes most people appreciate having two voices in town. "They are different papers with different personalities," Boland says. "And to have that in a small town is a rare treat."
Head-to-head competition
Like several other papers in Maine, the Bar Harbor Times was independently owned before being acquired by Courier Publications in Rockland, whose flagship remains the Courier Gazette, Maine's only three-times-a-week newspaper. Courier's aggressive expansion strategy in the 1980s and '90s was led by former publisher David Morse, who resigned in 2003, and included at one time the York County Coast Star and York Weekly as well as weeklies in Augusta, Damariscotta and Ellsworth.
The company's decision to launch the Ellsworth Weekly in 2000, soon after Courier acquired the Bar Harbor Times, was a clear challenge to the established Ellsworth American, one of the region's oldest newspapers ˆ it was founded in 1851. Alan Baker, who had taken over as the American's publisher from the legendary James Russell Wiggins (former Washington Post editor and friend of E.B. White), admits he thought about a counter-move almost from the beginning.
The moment of opportunity came when Earl Brechlin, the veteran editor at the Bar Harbor Times, who had worked under the previous owners, was asked to cut the editorial budget one more time, despite what he says were record profits at the paper. Brechlin resigned in late 2001 after reaching an agreement with Baker to launch a new paper on MDI, and the Islander began publishing in a matter of months.
The Times staff remained otherwise intact, and Courier brought in Greg Fish, who had been hired to edit the Ellsworth Weekly, to replace Brechlin. In the next two years, the Weekly's circulation dropped sharply after its editorial staff was pared back, and Courier closed the paper in 2004. With the competition in Ellsworth gone, the rivalry shifted to MDI.
At the same time the Ellsworth Weekly was struggling, the Islander was making gains against its established competitor on Mount Desert Island. The Islander sold more than 2,000 copies a week in its first year. Circulation, according to its annual postal statements, rose from 2,167 in 2002 to 2,611 in 2005, and is up about 15% this year, according to Baker. Times circulation peaked in 2001 at 7,558, and declined to 5,860 in 2004 before stabilizing.
It was a rare case of an independent paper gaining at the expense of a larger chain rival, but it's not unprecedented, according to John Morton, an industry analyst based in Silver Spring, Md. Large chains have clear economies of scale, he says. "It's a big advantage for the national companies, who can get significant discounts on everything from paper clips to newsprint." But for papers in the 4,000-7,000 circulation range, such advantages are less clear, he says. And in that range, competition between papers tends to be short-lived (as it was in Ellsworth), with one folding or buying out the other.
No one seems to expect that to happen in Bar Harbor. "It's an interesting market," Bill Atkinson says of the MDI area. He took over as Courier's group publisher from David Morse in 2003, and oversaw the closing of the Ellsworth Weekly and the acquisition of the Waldo Independent in Belfast. Atkinson makes it clear that it's also an important market ˆ "the second most profitable in the company, after the Courier Gazette itself," he says. (Courier does not disclose revenues or profits for individual papers or the chain; its parent company is privately held.)
So far, the Islander has been content with its modest profits, Baker says, which are reinvested in the company. Brechlin added he knew that he was " taking a big risk by going up against one of the best papers in New England," when he jumped to the Islander. But with Baker's backing, he believed he could succeed. (The two had known each other for years, with Brechlin starting his newspaper career in the American's pressroom.)
As for reaching circulation parity with the Times, that's a long-term goal. "They had a 100-year head start, and readers don't change their minds overnight," Baker says, noting that the Waldo Independent took 20 years to draw even with the Republican Journal, just before Courier became the owner of both papers.
Atkinson acknowledged that the Times has lost readers in the last few years, but says, "Who hasn't?" referring to national circulation trends. The missing readers, he says, are not local, for the most part, but out-of-state subscribers who get their papers later and later, thanks to changes in U.S. Postal Service rules that no longer favor newspapers for long-distance delivery.
Who's more local?
Both papers' approach to news is resolutely local in focus ˆ but each seems to play up a different idea of what "local" means. The Islander features lavish color photography and extensive editorial pages, while the Times devotes more space to the details of spot news stories and its traditional town columns.
Ownership is another story, with the Times' parent company Courier Publications Inc. itself a subsidiary of Crescent Publications of Greenville, S.C., an investor-owned syndicate. And the idea of independent ownership may play better in Maine's intensely local coastal communities than elsewhere. At the time of the Islander's founding, Jill Goldthwait, a former independent state senator and now a columnist for the Islander, predicted that "an owner who lives halfway across the country may have the best intentions and a good head for business, but can't be expected to know what matters to a small townˆ the reins are in the hands of someone who is not only from away, he is away."
Crescent has not been shy about making moves. It focused on the midcoast when it acquired Courier in 1999 (the York County papers were sold to Camphall Hall, N.Y.-based Ottaway Newspapers, parent of the Portsmouth Herald), and then closed the Ellsworth Weekly and bought the Waldo Independent. Atkinson, a former publisher for three Fort Worth, Texas area dailies, says Crescent "is looking for more acquisitions," most likely in other states ˆ though he doesn't rule out more in Maine.
Baker says his ambitions are more local in scope. "We need to turn a profit, but we're also interested in the psychic rewards, what's beyond just money." Those rewards, he says, include satisfying the community's need to know and maintaining the loyalty of employees, who know their jobs are secure.
That local focus also includes the paper's advertising strategy: While full-page supermarket ads are now mostly in the past, MDI's weeklies can count on large buys from car dealers, building supply retailers and ˆ particularly at the moment ˆ real estate firms catering to the wealthy out-of-staters, which locals complain are driving up housing prices. "Our advertisers may use the Internet, but they need us to reach their customers," Baker says.
However, lately both papers have struggled with an advertising revenue slump, due largely to struggling car dealerships, Atkinson says. The newspapers are also seeing a decline of department store and supermarket ads as mainstays, though Atkinson figures the Ellsworth American has "to feel that even more than we do," since Ellsworth functions as the county's service center.
Still, advertising competition between the papers is mostly genteel, Atkinson says. In similar situations, advertisers sometimes try to bargain for better rates "and we haven't seen that here," he says. But Earl Brechlin notes that the Islander has become the publisher of all legal notices for Bar Harbor and other island towns ˆ he admits that the paper's lower circulation and hence lower advertising rates may have influenced frugal town officials' decisions.
As with the pool of advertisers, though, there's also a limit to how much unique news two papers can dig up in a small coastal community. That means the papers try to differentiate themselves on how they work with the same raw materials. "Much of the time you're going to read the same story in both papers," Brechlin says. "There's only so much news to go around. But which one has more depth? Which one clearly explains what's going on?"
He speaks generously of his old paper, though. "They've got good people working there [and] talented people are the most important thing," he says. "This is a good place to be able to apply your craft."
Greg Fish, Brechlin's counterpart at the Bar Harbor Times, says he enjoys the Bar Harbor market just as much as he did the Ellsworth readership, "but then I tend to like any town I get to cover." Fish says he has "a good staff that's been together a long time," and that Courier has maintained staffing levels since he came to the Times. He says he doesn't have any special strategy for competing with the Islander. "We just make sure we get the stories as well and as fast as we can," he says.
He adds that papers competing in the same market are "much more aggressive" about making sure stories are covered each week, and he believes it also "keeps local officials honest," since they know there will be at least two stories detailing each municipal meeting or event.
Still, staffing the papers can be a challenge for the Times, Atkinson says, because of MDI's notoriously high-priced housing. "We have a lot of people commuting onto the island and we're lucky that some people who live here are willing to treat employment as more of a hobby," he says. "That's going to be a continuing challenge for every business on the island."
Yet Fish says he knows there's a certain amount of envy from colleagues in other parts of the state about working on MDI. "We have Acadia National Park, I live 800 feet from the water, and I love this location," he says.
On that point, both editors seem to agree. Says Brechlin, "There's a reason why you find the staff here stays mostly the same, year after year."
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