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Newspapers at the Crossroads |
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Related Links Check out the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press or Journal Sentinel online. Compare the circulation of these newspapers. |
Competition comes across the Mississippi
By Andy Karr For Features Reporter Delma Francis, beating the competition to a story is
what journalism is all about. The 8-year veteran of the Minneapolis Star
Tribune sees her paper’s competition with the St. Paul Pioneer Press as a
boost to the overall quality of each. That sentiment was echoed by some respondents of a survey of journalists
in Wisconsin and the Twin Cities, which was conducted by a journalism class
at UW – Eau Claire. A majority of respondents, about 56 percent, described
their paper as “much better” or “somewhat better” compared to 23 percent who
described their paper as “somewhat worse” or “much worse.” A majority of
respondents saw that level of quality increasing while the level of
competition at their paper increase or stay the same. Competition and quality
are up according to journalists who took the poll. For Francis, this is a good thing. She sees the competition between media
outlets as a driving force in journalism. A good illustration of how
competition fuels decision-making came last month when Francis was assigned
to cover the opening of Minnesota’s first Krispy Kreme in Maple Grove, Minn.
The doughnut shop was slated to open on the morning of April 24, and the
story Francis was to write was scheduled for April 25. Living in the area by
the new Krispy Kreme, Francis drove by the building on Monday evening and was
surprised to see a crowd of people gathering outside. When she stopped to
investigate, Francis discovered that people were beginning to get in line to
be served when the store opened the next day. While she was there, people
continued to arrive. Then, like the snowflakes that start the avalanche, the
gathering attracted other media organizations, including the rival Pioneer
Press. Francis had her story bumped up to the next morning so it wouldn’t be
old news after the competition already ran it. The desire to beat the competition moved a seemingly unimportant feature
story on doughnuts up a day to keep up with other media. “We were entirely driven by what other people were doing and that’s just
kind of the way it goes in this business,” Francis said. The added pressure to beat the Pioneer Press is something Francis thrives
on. Even with the constant pressure to get the story first, Francis said she
still would like to have competition drive the Star Tribune even more than it
does already. “It makes us all better. It makes us all sharper,” she said. “For me,
journalism has always been about being first and being best. Sometimes people
tend to sit on things too long.” Across the river at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, employees are watching to
see what’s going on at their competitor. With a circulation of 194,870, the
Pioneer Press is just over half the Star Tribune’s weekday circulation, which
averages about 375,000, though the number changes depending on which day of
the week it’s published according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The
Pioneer Press has a Sunday circulation of 247,517 while the Star Tribune has a
Sunday circulation of 669,290. With such a difference in circulation size, as well as in staff size,
employees at both papers do not necessarily see each other as complete
equals. Francis said the Pioneer Press is good competition, but she thinks of
it more as “a little terrier nipping at your heels.” Ellen Tomson, staff
writer at the Pioneer Press used the analogy of the “little engine that
could” to describe the paper where she works. “I get the overall sense that we have become more second-rate, more of the
underdog,” she said of how the Pioneer Press’s role changed since she began
working there in February of 1987. Duchesne Paul Drew, an assistant metropolitan team leader at the Star
Tribune, sees the “underdog” status of the Pioneer Press when he goes with
reporters on assignments. He once accompanied three other reporters as well
as a photographer to an event and the airport in Minneapolis. The Star
Tribune had four reporters at the event and the Pioneer Press only sent one.
Drew said He has seen this happen frequently and that he tries to send
multiple reporters whenever he has the opportunity. “You can do that when you have more people,” he said. Tomson said that she thinks because of the differences in size and
resources, the Star Tribune does not take the Pioneer Press as seriously on a
daily basis. “I do sense that they pay less attention to us as far as day-to-day competition
on stories,” Tomson said. In 1987, when she first came to the paper, Tomson remembers the Pioneer
Press as being particularly strong on spot news by taking advantage of their
small staff size. With the smaller staff, the paper didn’t take as long to
mobilize reporters as the Star Tribune, she said. At that time, Tomson said
she saw the Pioneer Press as more of a writer’s paper. “We’ve won more Pulitzers than they have since I’ve been here,” she said.
“Those kind of things help give us a sense that we’re in the race even though
they have a larger staff, circulation and more money.” Still, though, even with the smaller staff, communication can break down.
At times, Tomson said the Pioneer Press runs a story and a month later the
Star Tribune picks up on it. Then the editors at the Pioneer Press see it in
the Star Tribune and question their reporters as to why they missed that
story, only to have the reporter who did the old story have to point it out. And having fewer staff members has other disadvantages. It means having to
spread human resources a little more than the big neighbor to the west does.
Tomson said the Pioneer Press has suburban reporters in some areas covering
five different communities. “I think it’s very difficult for them to cover it all and make sure
they’ve got stuff before the Star Tribune,” she said. Although Francis sees this competition in an entirely positive way because
it forces reporters to stay sharp, others see some drawbacks. Drew notices
that at times, the rush to beat the competition can cause stories to be sent
to the paper sooner than they otherwise would be. “There are probably some stories where if we had another day, we’d wait,”
he said. “But because of competition with (the Pioneer Press) and television,
you need to pull the trigger. “As a writer, there are times I wish I had another day.” The effort to get ahead of each other may keep the papers constantly
pressing deadlines, but there are those times when one paper just flat out
beats the other to a story, scooping them — like when the Pioneer Press broke
the story about the cheating scandal involving the University of Minnesota’s
men’s basketball team. “I think it hurt our pride,” Drew said. “It always stinks when you get
beat on the big stories.” The Pioneer Press won a Pulitzer Prize for that story and continues to
duke it out with the Star Tribune in their effort to increase circulation. In
the past, there was more of an effort to win readers in Minneapolis suburbs,
though now, Tomson said, the paper is focusing more attention on readership
areas east of the Mississippi River, including Northern and Southern suburbs
and Western Wisconsin. And while the competition may keep reporters sharp,
certainly if the Star Tribune didn’t exist it would benefit the Pioneer Press
in terms of increasing circulation, Tomson said. But even though the push to invade the circulation area of the Star
Tribune is not as strong as it once was and even though the competition
affects the paper’s bottom line, Tomson still sees the competition as a
benefit for readers. Indeed, the competition does give readers in the Twin Cities area
different perspectives to choose from when seeking a news source. Larry
Bulinski, Forest Lake, Minn., chooses to read the Pioneer Press over the Star
Tribune. “It’s more because it’s St. Paul’s paper — more of a St. Paul perspective,”
he said. “Minneapolis is more arrogant. That’s just my impression.” Bulinski also does not agree with the approach of the columnists in the
Star Tribune. Drew Noren, St. Paul, Minn., has just the opposite opinion. He
reads the Star Tribune because he enjoys its columnists more than he does the
columnists at the Pioneer Press. “The guys in the Trib are more genuine,” he said. “The columnists I’ve
read in the Pioneer Press don’t seem as smart.” Like Tomson, Drew views the competition as a good thing for the readers in
the Twin Cities, keeping pressure on the papers to perform well. “I don’t think that same kind of pressure exists in markets where there
isn’t competition,” he said. Michele Kenner, a news designer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, shares
a similar point-of-view, at least, as it pertains to her paper. Kenner has
worked for the Journal Sentinel since the merger of the papers in 1995 and
before that, she worked for the Milwaukee Journal. The Journal was an
afternoon daily and the Sentinel operated as a morning paper. Kenner said she
enjoyed the hours she worked more before the merger, but she said the Journal
Sentinel is a stronger all around paper now. “I think that the newspaper we put out now is better than the Sentinel
used to be,” she said, though she was unwilling to compare the morning
published Journal Sentinel with the afternoon published Milwaukee Journal. While the Journal Sentinel is not without competition, it does not have
the added pressure of having to compete with a second large daily paper in
the same metro area. This leads to a different mentality when making news
decisions at times. “(For) some things we think, ‘well, that’s been all over TV and we don’t want
to do that,’” Kenner said. The Journal Sentinel also has a different approach from the Pioneer Press
on the business side. While the Pioneer Press has been spending additional
time trying to nab extra subscribers in Western Wisconsin, the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel has been cutting back delivery, leaving some longtime
readers in outlying areas without a way to subscribe. Doris Lazewski, Antigo,
Wis., said she and her husband had been longtime subscribers to the Journal
Sentinel before the paper suddenly decided to stop delivering in their area
last January. The couple was never given a reason for the move. “My husband made several phone calls about it,” she said, “but we didn’t
get any response. “I miss it very much and my husband does, too.” Now the only way the Lazewskis can read the Journal Sentinel is to buy a
copy of the paper in town. Switching to the Antigo paper is not an option as
far as Doris Lazewski is concerned. “The world news is not covered to the extent it is in the Milwaukee
paper,” she said. According Tom Pierce, vice president of marketing services for Journal
Sentinel Inc. in an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the decision
to cut distribution was a deliberate business move. As a result of the decision, the circulation of the paper fell from
267,156 on weekdays to 249,723 during the six-month period ending March 31,
continuing a trend of declining circulation for the paper. Kenner said that
while there is always some concern over the loss of circulation, she did not
believe that lack of competition had anything to do with it. Meanwhile, the Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press continue to
hover at about the same circulation levels, sometimes losing circulation as
is typical for newspapers. As long as each paper is competing with the other,
that should continue to be the case. |
