Small town media Mecca in Sturbridge
Turley, Stonebridge fight for advertising dollars
The troubles in the newspaper world are widely known.
Staff layoffs are common at many papers, including the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and the Boston Globe. Circulation numbers are falling. And many are scratching their heads as to why Rupert Murdoch was willing to pay $5 billion for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Co.
That may be the story nationally, but locally - particularly in the quaint town of Sturbridge - print is heating up.
Until this summer, the only truly local news source available to Sturbridge residents was Your Hometown Shopper, a little monthly freebee that published school lunch menus, movie schedules and a column called "Tree Tips" written by the town's tree warden, along with ads from local businesses.
Since July, though, the town's citizens have been bombarded by local papers delivered directly to their homes. First, they found The Sturbridge Times, a monthly paper created by local marketing professional Paul Carr, on their doorsteps. Then, less than a month later, two regional chains, Turley Publications and Stonebridge Press, rolled out their own free, total-market weekly papers covering Sturbridge and other local towns.
"In my opinion, there's way too many newspapers in this town," said Russ Penny, a local resident and the owner of Penny's Appliance and Lawn Supply. "I don't understand why there's so many newspapers all of the sudden."
According to Carr, who moved to town just under two years ago, one reason may be that Sturbridge is rapidly filling up with new residents with plenty of disposable income. That translates into a strong interest from advertisers, something Carr said he saw when he began approaching area businesses about his paper.
The median income in Sturbridge is a healthy $65,500.
"There was obviously a pent-up need for the advertisers to get the word out and get it out to Sturbridge," he said.
Still, Carr said he was surprised when, shortly before the second issue of The Sturbridge Times came out, he heard from advertisers that the two weeklies were coming. He said he had assumed Stonebridge would not want to compete against its own daily publication, the Southbridge Evening News, which also covers the area, and he thought if Turley had wanted to cover the town it would have launched a paper already.
Competitive publishing
Keith Turley, executive vice president of Turley publications, is a Sturbridge resident himself, and he said he has wanted a paper in town for years. But he acknowledges that his company created the Tantasqua Town Common only after catching wind of Stonebridge's plans to bring the Sturbridge Villager to town. He said the company already covered some of the towns in the area through other publications. The new paper reconfigures the chain's coverage, following the geography of the Tantasqua Regional School District, which covers Sturbridge, Brimfield Holland, Wales and Brookfield. The Villager covers four of the same towns, leaving out only Brookfield.
"It was a competitive move," Turley said. "We're protecting our flanks."
Stonebridge President Frank Chilinski, meanwhile, said his company had been planning the Villager for two years, but pushed the inaugural issue up from September to July after hearing about Turley's planned paper.
"It's in our own backyard and, quite frankly, we probably should have done it about five years ago," he said.
Chilinski said he was not concerned about competing with the Southbridge Evening News since the new paper is a weekly rather than a daily and offers far more intense local coverage.
Who will survive?
Turley insists that competition is good for all parties, pushing the three papers to perform for advertisers and readers. But to many in town it seems unlikely that all three papers will last long. The question is, which will survive.
Penny said he wonders if an independent paper can compete against the chains, and Carr said that is a question he's heard from others as well.
"I think in some corners initial perceptions for some were that the Sturbridge Times went from being on the vanguard to being bumped into the 'little engine that could' position," he said.
But the publisher said he expects his paper to survive because of its intensely local focus - it is the only one of the three papers to cover Sturbridge exclusively - and because, as a monthly, it concentrates more on features than hard news. But like many other observers in town, he doesn't expect all three papers to continue forever.
"We can work well with another paper in town," he said. "I think the area doesn't need two weekly papers, and I think eventually that situation will correct itself."
Already, local businesses are thinking about which paper deserves their advertising dollars. Penney and Joe Klimavich, a marketing consultant who handles advertising for Hometown Bank, both said they are placing advertisements in the various publications as a test and will look to see how they perform.
Discerning advertisers
"We don't advertise everywhere," Klimavich said. "We do make marketing decisions that are based on our need to reach local customers."
Each publisher argues that its product can offer advertisers what Chilinski calls a "ruthlessly local" focus. Beyond that, Turley said the Town Common distinguishes itself by covering all the Tantasqua towns. Carr promises a distinctive, homegrown Sturbridge product. Stonebridge offers deals to business that place ads in both the Sturbridge Villager and the Charlton Villager, another weekly the publisher rolled out this summer, giving them a chance to reach a larger local audience.
Whatever the publishers' arguments are, they had better be persuasive. Klimavich said the influx of papers comes at a time when advertisers are increasingly questioning whether ads in any print publication are the best way to get their message out.
"It's not apparent to us that people are continuing to read print material to the same degree that they used to," he said. "It would be a lot easier for all of us if people would read the things that we're getting in the mail, but we can't go into their homes to make that happen."
Meanwhile, Penney said that, as a town resident, he just doesn't know how much local news there is to cover.
"I'm concerned that a lot of this is going to be repeat stories," he said, adding that he doesn't see a lot that's newsworthy happening in town. "We're not really a troublesome area."
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