N.Y. Times notes circulation reductions by metro papers, including cutbacks in rural areas

Many metropolitan newspapers have sacrificed certain categories of readers and potential readers because they are too expensive to solicit, serve and retain, writes Richard Perez-Pena, the media reporter for The New York Times. Pena's story focuses on urban circulation, but at the end he mentions cuts by papers that said rural circulation was too expensive to maintain.

You've read here about rural circulation cuts by papers in Portland, San Francisco, Louisville and Atlanta. Pena writes, "The most striking recent example is The Dallas Morning News. Last year, it stopped distribution outside a 200-mile radius, and weekday circulation tumbled 15 percent to a little over 400,00o. This year, the paper imposed a 100-mile limit. It expects to show another drop in sales when new figures are reported this month."

Jim Moroney, the paper's publisher and chief executive, told Pena, “We were distributing in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, way down in south Texas. It cost too much money getting the papers to those places, and this clearly wasn’t anything our advertisers were giving us value for.” Though many rural readers have complained, “I have no regrets,” Moroney said. “The people who really want to read The Dallas Morning News can still get it online.”

Yes, if they use the Internet and have decent access. And what about the paper's coverage in those areas? Usually, when a paper stops circulating in an area, it has less interest in news coverage there. On today's Texas/Southwest page of the Morning News' site, only two of the 10 stories are staff-written: Our friend Bob Garrett's story about foul-ups in a state program for foster children and a two-reporter article about shrinkage of a federal guest-worker program.

When metro papers become more metro, those in smaller cities and rural areas need to pick up the slack, covering the issues and providing the watchdog journalism envisioned by the First Amendment. That's one of the reasons for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.