Item going through things, for real

When they say "stop the presses," they don't mean for good. But someone at the Huntsville Item didn't get the memo. The presses that have printed it and newspapers from throughout the region for decades have shut down permanently.

And that's not all. Editor Brenda Poe and another office employee also left the paper recently, part of a reshuffling that saw general manager Traci Gallin promoted to publisher. It is a response to problems that have been building at the paper for years – and it's not clear whether it will work.

Less is not more

Over the last two decades, newspapers have been through it. Nationally, circulation has fallen by more than half.

But the Item's troubles go well beyond that. In late 2005, the paper reported that it had 45 full-time employees and a circulation of 7,000. Twenty years later, its head count and circulation are each down 90%. It is a shell of what it was.

Staffing issues are one reason for this decline. Since 2021, the editor position has turned over three times and the sports editor position once; reporters have been a revolving door. The vacancies left by departures often go unfilled for months. To fill this gap, the paper has relied on press releases, wire service reports, and syndicated columns – not the news subscribers are looking for.

This news isn't just a dollar short – it's a day late. Several, actually. Most subscribers still receive the paper in print. These copies, now printed out of town, are mailed to subscribers. By the time they arrive, the news they contain is old.

While that system is unlikely to change, a new editor begins next week, and the paper is currently seeking a lead reporter. That might put staffing issues to bed for the moment.

Newspapers are a business, right? Righhttt????

Gallin wants to "make the paper better," but will have her work cut out for her. Her biggest foe: her own employer. The company that owns the Item and 76 other papers, CNHI, likes to pay low and sell high.

The listed salary range for the Item's recently-filled editor position was below market, and it is currently advertising for a lead reporter at $12-15 per hour – less than you can make bagging groceries down the street. No wonder there has been so much turnover.

Meanwhile, the cost of subscribing is up there. CNHI owns five papers in East Texas. In print, subscriptions generally run $200-$300 per year, even though each paper comes out only once or twice a week. At $273, the Item is the most expensive of the bunch.

This aggressive pricing contrasts with other papers in our area, which cost about $50 annually – one fifth as much. That's so cheap everyone subscribes, so you can get a lot of advertising to make up the difference in revenue. It's a win-win-win – for the paper, the readers, and the businesses advertising in it.

In contrast, advertising in the Item – also not cheap – is thin.

Follow the money

If CNHI charges a lot for subscriptions but pays its employees poorly, then where does the money go?

One answer is corporate overhead. CNHI has not one "leadership team" but four, comprising 25 people total. That's a lot of executives for a company that publishes maybe 200 papers per week. And they aren't making $12-15 per hour.

In 2018, the company moved to a "regional editor" system that facilitated "collaboration on projects across newspapers." But the promised collaboration has been minimal, and the extra layer of management hasn't made CNHI more responsive to local needs.

How can a company with three levels of vice presidents let the Item's scarcity of hard news persist for years? What do you people do all day? It makes The Huntsvillan's famous aversion to corporate overhead seem sensible.

Necessity, the mother of invention

Declining circulation at the Item has inspired a profusion of local media upstarts, each with its own focus and style.

The oldest and largest in readership is New Waverly Community News and Events, which combines frequent Facebook updates with longer stories on their website. They embrace hard news, as does The Huntsvillan, currently publishing weekly, deeply-reported articles. Complementing these two is Hello Huntsville, whose upbeat, business-oriented news can be found on video and the web.

None of these three sites are run by old-school journalists. But innovation extends even to more traditional outlets. Sam Houston State University's student newspaper, The Houstonian, has been moving away from print toward a larger online presence, including weekly radio shows.

The biggest innovator of all might be the Item itself. Make no mistake: bringing in an experienced editor, looking to hire a second reporter, and dedicating a publisher to a single paper are distinct departures from business-as-usual for CNHI in Texas. If this is Gallin's doing, she's off to a good start.

Did last year's joke about the Item making bank hit home a little too hard? Were the Anakin Skywalker memes too much? Or has this new competition brought out the best in the Huntsville Item? Either way, Walker County stands to win.

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