TEXARKANA - The Texarkana Gazette on Tuesday begins a campaign to transform its newspaper experience more fully from print to digital, providing a free iPad to subscribers as part of the conversion.
An online replica edition - it looks and reads like the printed edition only with more features - will become the Gazette's primary news platform.
The Texarkana Gazette's shift to a digital replica follows a similar path its publisher, Walter E. Hussman, Jr., took the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette down starting in early 2018. In doing so, he took a newspaper that had begun losing money out of the red and created a business model that was sustainable.
Moving away from printing is necessary, Hussman says, calling that model "totally" broken.
"It's not going to work anywhere," he said. "Too much advertising is gone. It was down 75% in 2017 from its peak in 2006. It's not coming back. Google and Facebook have created a better mousetrap."
The good news is that the digital version is actually better and once they try it readers will actually like it better, he said.
"It's a good experience," he said, adding, its good for the community, as well, because the business model looks to be sustainable.
Hussman is chairman of WEHCO Media, Inc., which is the parent company of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Texarkana Gazette and other media properties.
By shrinking print and delivery costs, the newspaper can keep its focus and resources directed at news gathering.
In addition to an Apple iPad, the Sunday Texarkana Gazette will continue to be delivered in print. Many businesses advertise in the Sunday edition and many people want the print edition on Sunday, Hussman said. It will continue to be available on Sunday for single-copy sales at locations in Texarkana and the surrounding area.
By the end of the year, however, home delivery of the Monday-Saturday Gazette will be discontinued.
"We are convinced the only way for the Texarkana Gazette to continue daily publication is with a digital replica edition delivered to tablets like iPads seven days a week, along with delivering the Sunday print edition," said Hussman in a letter to subscribers that was mailed Friday. "The digital replica is identical to the print edition but delivered on an iPad. Given our subscriber base, we can only make this work economically at higher subscription rates."
The rollout is similar to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette conversion plan, which has now been implemented in all 75 Arkansas counties. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has been able to convert more than 80% of its audience from print to the digital replica.
"Our family company has owned the Texarkana newspaper now for over 111 years," Hussman said in a letter to his customer base here. "We want to do everything we possibly can to continue it as a daily newspaper. A tremendous amount of money is being invested in Texarkana, from the revitalization of downtown, to the creation of AR-TX REDI, along with other initiatives. We think it's important for Texarkana to have a good daily newspaper if it all possible."
The capital outlay to get the iPad program up and running here is substantial.
"The alternative is to die a slow death.," Hussman said. "To me, that is not acceptable. It's also a bad outcome for communities."
Texarkana Gazette subscribers will have the opportunity to claim an iPad with which to access the digital replica - a platform the Gazette has been enhancing for several years now. They can keep iPads as long as they continue to subscribe.
Training sessions will be scheduled to help readers who need tutorials on iPad operation. Customer service staff members are very flexible on where the training is done: A person's home, a conference room, "we've actually done it from a car," Hussman said, referring to the initiative in other parts of the state.
"While six feet apart, we can explain all the features with the iPad in the hands of the subscriber, and they can ask any questions of our representatives," he said.
Hussman said reading the replica version of the newspaper on an iPad is a vast improvement on many levels. Many readers say they prefer it to print. Also, the iPads can be used to watch movies, surf the internet and read other publications.
Hussman said older readers have handled the change very well, and many who switched reluctantly became fans. "I think it surprised them," he said. "It surprised us."
He said a 103-year-old user in Magnolia is a replica edition reader. One obvious advantage is that size of the type in a story can be easily enlarged.
Extra media, like videos and photo galleries, are part of the replica experience - readers can watch videos for more context on news stories or see expanded photo collections to get a better picture of what they're reading about.
While the replica edition can be viewed on desktops, laptops or even their smart phones, most tell us the best experience is viewing it on a tablet like an iPad, Hussman said.
Advantages
Hussman outlined these advantages:
- photo galleries. providing more images of the story or event.
- More pages than our printed edition.
- more recent news
- Paper arrives earlier than our printed delivery, almost always by 4 a.m. You don't have to fetch your paper on bad weather days.
- photos and color reproduction on the electronic edition are far superior to the print edition. Almost all photos in the electronic replica are in color.
- very easy to share articles with a friend, either via email or social media.
- the replica edition will read stories to you if you would like to listen to them.
- once your download an edition, you can read it anywhere, even without an Internet connection.
- when you are out of town, you can always download the Texarkana Gazette, no matter where you are in the world, as long as there is an Internet connection.
- you can save up to 60 days of past editions of the Texarkana Gazette on your iPad. On the app, by scrolling horizontally, you can see all the previous digital replica editions. By scrolling vertically, you will get all the latest news since the last digital replica edition was released.
- free access to newspaper archives.
- The app on the iPad is identical to the app on your smartphone, so you can easily follow and read the news on either, or both devices. Each household can connect five devices for each household subscription.
- You will need an internet connection to download the paper. You may already have one at your home. If not, and if you have a smart phone with a cellular plan, you may be able to use the internet connection from your phone to the iPad. If not, there are places - such as the public library - where you can go and download the newspaper onto your iPad.
A New Way
As part of the program, extensive, one-on-one training is available to all subscribers to show them not only how to use their iPad, but how to use our app on the iPad, as well as the identical app on their smart phones.
A letter that should be hitting the mailboxes of subscribers and advertisers this week details how the program works. Additional information will follow.
Hussman says the plan is to to start distributing iPads immediately so subscribers have time to get used to the new delivery method before Dec. 7, when print delivery of the Monday through Saturday papers will be discontinued.
Hussman says the move is the only viable way to continue producing community journalism.
"Rather than reducing the number of pages of news, the days we publish, or the existing size of their news staff, the Texarkana Gazette is choosing to reduce production and distribution costs instead," he said.
"The Texarkana Gazette has lost money now for two consecutive years, and the losses are increasing each year." he said. "Even before the COVID-19 crisis, which has made matters even worse, we were confronting some very hard decisions about the future of the newspaper."
While the one-on-one iPad instruction is expensive, the goal is not quick profit, Hussman says. "If we can get pretty close to our full (subscription) rate, we don't have to cut a dollar out of the newsroom. We don't have to cut staff. We don't have to cut any news hole."
The goal, he said, is simply sustainability.