Rural readers in the Great Plains are more willing to support newspapers with alternative revenue than publishers think

As rural newspapers adapt to the digital age and look for more revenue, a new study suggests that their readers are more willing to support them with non-subscription revenue than publishers think.

That's what researchers found in Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas when they asked 106 rural publishers and people in rural areas (without a town of 10,000 or more population) about new ways to finance newspapers. They found "a clear disconnect between what revenue streams publishers are willing to implement and what revenue streams readers are potentially willing to endorse," says the paper, published in Journalism Research.

Teri Finneman

Teri Finneman of the University of Kansas, Patrick Ferrucci of the University of Colorado and Nick Mathews of the University of Missouri-Kansas City asked publishers about the viability of 16 possible revenue sources: print subscriptions, digital subscriptions, legal notices, other advertising, marketing services, graphic-design services, email newsletters, memberships (defined as a perk beyond a subscription), events, government support, grants, donations, foundations and other large donors, commercial printing, and sale of office supplies. The 414 readers (who were not necessarily readers of the surveyed publishers' papers) were asked about 12 sources: print subscriptions, digital subscriptions, advertising, taxpayer support, donations, events, memberships, email newsletters, marketing services, graphic design services, and office supplies and/or commercial printing.

The publishers' top four were advertising, print subscriptions, digital subscriptions and legal notices, all getting at least 70 percent support and the rest with less than 50 percent. Readers' top choice was events. "The popularity of this option is not surprising coming from rural areas where 'there’s nothing to do,' and arguably provides an opportunity for newspapers to fill a central community engagement role in person, not just in print," the researchers wrote. "The second option that rural residents were very likely or somewhat likely to support was print subscriptions, adding further evidence that print is still a mainstay in rural America."

Graph by The Daily Yonder, adapted by The Rural Blog, shows revenue preferences of rural newspaper publishers and rural readers (not necessarily of those publishers' newspapers) in Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

But the next three options — email newsletters, memberships and donations, all in the 40-50% range — were "a striking contrast to the publishers, who ranked e-newsletters and memberships toward the bottom of their choices. . . . the results of the reader survey overwhelmingly illustrate how community members would support their local news organizations in a multitude of manners not available to them currently."

Why didn't digital subscriptions score better with readers? "Many rural news organizations utilize digital subscriptions that are essentially only a PDF version of the print product," the researchers write, noting previous research that found "Readers, historically, find PDFs of newspapers not engaging, not something worth much time and, therefore, not innovative."

The paper is the completion of research discussed by Finneman at the second National Summit on Journalism in Rural America, where she revealed only data for North Dakota. At the third Summit, to be held in Lexington, Ky., July 7, Mathews will discuss the research and another project, looking at experimentation with new revenue sources by a small newspaper group in southeast Kansas.