The newspaper industry has undergone huge change during the internet age. The funding models have changed. Many papers have changed ownership. Reporting and editing jobs have evaporated.
In 2016, Rob Curley became the executive editor of the Spokesman-Review. During his tenure, he has helped the newspaper adapt during a changing news climate.
This interview is edited for length and clarity.
Rob Curley: When I got here, we had a little more than 70 people. And now we're at 55, 56. Roughly half of that would represent reporters and photographers, maybe a little more. And the other half of that is our copy desk and designers and admin staff.
Doug Nadvornick: When you came here nine or 10 years ago, how was the news business different than it is now? And how is it the same?
RC: I kind of have to back up a little bit to explain it. When I first get into the newspaper industry in 96, there were whispers of the internet, but it wasn't our complete focus. Interestingly enough, my skills as a journalist involved the internet. Back in the mid-90s, late 90s, I was one of a handful of journalists who could write sentences in code. We were oddly cherished because you could hire a programmer or you could hire a journalist, but it was hard to find one that was both. And so I ended up getting moved around a lot because the five, six of us who had the skills were kind of worth a lot. So we were always being moved around.
Interestingly enough, that's when I learned the skills that I needed for now and it had nothing to do with digital because in those early days, they didn't know what to do with the internet. I was in my late 20s, but I was immediately sitting in all of the C-level meetings.
I was in all of the pitch meetings for vendors and I was seeing how budgets were being billed. I was kind of seeing the part of the business that most journalists don't get to see. And it's so interesting because on more than one occasion, I'd had journalists and editors and people I respected and looked up to say, look, what you're doing is so important because you're going to help us save journalism. And I believe what they said, but I don't believe it was because of my internet skills. I learned a bunch of things during that era and it was things that allowed me to do what's doing now. By the time I get here in 2016, the wheels have largely fallen off.
Our business model by and large has been the same since the Revolutionary War. I mean, we sold subscriptions and we sold advertising, you know, and advertising is what really paid the bills.
I remember when I was at the Washington Post, one day, every week or so, I got to spend a couple hours with Don Graham and it was back when the Graham family still owned the paper. And one day I asked Don Graham, who is funding our coverage of the Middle East? I just can't even believe how good it is. And without even dropping a beat, he goes, 'Macy's.'
We think it's the subscribers, but it wasn't. So in 2008, the recession really takes away a huge part of our revenues, more than what people think. And at the same time, classifieds were so big in generating revenue, more than anyone thought. And when you see all those home for sale ads go away and all the car ads in the Saturday paper go away, well, those are all classifieds. So it was the perfect storm.
When I got here in 2016, I was convinced advertising wasn't coming back. And that made how I wanted to do things very different. It meant that because of my time on the internet, I really knew what people were reading. And I used to go to these conferences, and editors would say, well, if we give readers what they want, it's going to be just this light Britney Spears stuff. And it always struck me as wrong because I was looking at what people read, and it wasn't that. If you had a story go viral, it very well could be something like that. But if you were looking at what your local readers were reading, it wasn't that. The interesting thing is it wasn't the stories that we were typically putting on our front page either.
It was a different sort of story. But a story that any editor would agree is news. So I really began analyzing what people read. And when I got here, that becomes the first thing I focus on. How do you build something you know people will really read? Because for the longest time, people have said, if it bleeds, it leads. And my view has been, no, if it seeds, it leads. Are we telling stories that will seed change? That doesn't mean you don't tell bad stories. Of course you do. But is there an outcome? Is it just a story that if we ask tomorrow what was on yesterday's front page, would they remember? If the answer is no, then we've picked the wrong story. And also that means celebrating things because it encourages others to do good. You shouldn't just be able to do bad things to be on the front page. So if it seeds, it leads really became a mantra to me.
But you also see this mix of stories that are different than normal. We start kind of over covering certain things. And that's because in the age of the internet, people really gravitate to what they love. If I look at anyone's browsing history, I can tell them what they love. And some people are going to be embarrassed. So the idea was how do you identify the things that people are passionate about? And you become the definitive source on those things because you're going to ultimately go from not charging very much to subscribe to having to charge a lot.
When I got here, you could still subscribe for a dollar a week if you could find the right deal. We were still running penny deals on Groupon and our circulation fell every year since 1994. Which meant, in essence, we couldn't give it away. So you got to fix that. You have to build a product that people would pay for. So that became the focus of the first couple of years. How do you build something? And we did a real emphasis on kind of splashy design. And why? Well, it was an Instagram world. And it was like, how do we bring that sensory to our world? So all of these ideas were coming forward. And our circulation goes up. It didn't go up a little bit. It goes up for the first time since 1994. And it goes from 68,000 to 82,000. This is unprecedented.
So now you can start he process of now we have to start charging more. Because now you're building a product and you know you're going to lose people. But how many are you going to lose?
So it was this weird trade-off that you were having to deal with in your mind. And I knew we were going to do that. It just so happens that when our numbers fell, they didn't fall like everyone else's did because we were building a different product. The big change was you go from building a product that's really a vehicle for Sears ads to a product that's like, no, we're going direct to the consumer. And they have to pay for it. And it's going to be expensive. So how are you going to build that? Well, that's what we focused on.
When I got here, circulation was like 20% of our total revenue. And now it's completely flipped. We've been very vocal about what the number is. It's close to $14 million. That is an unheard of number. But it meant that the tide had changed now. The content was the revenue driver, not the advertising. And that lets you behave differently.
That's where things like Northwest Passages come into play, where we're building this community engagement, where we can talk about what our journalists are doing. We can have people sit in a crowd and see a journalist interview somebody. And they literally see an act of journalism happen in front of them.
It becomes this powerful tool. And slowly but surely, it became a fundraising mechanism. And it gets to the point where, first, we can fund a health reporter. And this is when you know fate is on your side, is we fund a health reporter. And within a year, COVID happens. I mean, and then you become the smallest news organization in America with a DC bureau.
Doug Nadvornick: The future of the Spokesman Review won't necessarily be in the hands of the Cowles family. It'll be in the hands of a nonprofit. Can you talk about that?
Rob Curley: The idea behind Camas was, of course, you want to do everything you can to keep the Spokesman-Review alive. And part of the reason of that is, by and large, newspapers are the backbone of a lot of local journalism. What you see is on all these studies, when the local newspaper dies, what do researchers immediately call the area? They call it a news desert. So that becomes a big focal point of the idea.
What if you could keep the newspaper alive? But knowing that its infrastructure was built for 1994, when you would have 600 or 700 employees across the building. Well, now they're managing 200.
What if you knew that they were capable of that? And you could start layering in a lab underneath this, where student journalists could be a part of this, whether it was with their student newspapers at high school or college level. You could do things like the Black Lens (a Spokane publication now under the umbrella of the S-R) because you've already proven now that you have the infrastructure to do the production for all of these things.
So the idea became, if you keep the Spokesman alive, it also gives you the ability to put together this community lab, which lets a bunch of other news organizations survive because you can take a bunch of their biggest expenses right off their top line. You don't have to worry about their management anymore, because there's going to be unified management. You don't have to worry about production, because there's going to be unified production.
The irony in all of this is, it's operating almost like a hedge fund. But instead of operating that way to throw off cash to the shareholders, it's so you can hire more journalists. So the idea here is that you're taking that lesson of efficiencies. We can handle the production. But we can also layer in these other things. Well, the good part about that is, if we're all partnering, and you see that a student newspaper has written this humdinger of a story that you wish you had, well, you can have it. So that's been the precedent we've been trying to set all along.
You look at our high school internship. Those students began writing on the first day. And by the end of their eight weeks, our core readers know who they are, because they've written so much. That's the idea is that you want them in your paper. And part of it isn't just because you're trying to get new people interested in journalism. It's because if we really want to be the voice of the people, if we go to a high school and say, do you feel like your voice is in it? They're going to say no. The irony is, almost all of these businesses, they're going to say no. They don't hear their voices in it. How do you get their voices in it? How do you really become journalism for the people?
DN: There's a fundamental question of competition versus cooperation, and you make a lot of your stories available to other news organizations if they want to have them. Was that a hard thing for you as a journalist who was brought up in this competitive world to change?
RC: I grew up in a world where we still had afternoon newspapers, where there were so many talk radio stations that had, and as you slowly see that the afternoon newspapers go away, and you see the talk radio stations go away, we can either wish for an era that what used to be or we can build what will work now. And for me, it was, I can't look back at that. I mean, going forward means knowing your past and respecting it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you do it, but you better understand it.
I get asked a lot, several years ago, we brought back the Chronicle, but as an e-edition. And, you know, in the heyday, the Chronicle and the Spokesman were completely separate, and the newsrooms didn't like each other at all. It was fantastic, and it would be so amazing to have that back. But right now, what it means is we just lost that other paper. Finding a way to bring it back to me was more important than figuring out how it could be a separate thing.
The way a lab works in this way, though, it isn't like one single editor says, you know, we all don't need to go cover this because this entity is going to cover it. Well, that's foolish, because the student newspapers are going to cover it for their audiences, and the Black Lens is going to cover it for its audiences. The idea is that there are certain things where you have to encourage everybody to go write their own stories, and then there are certain things where we don't need everyone to write. We don't need everyone to write the same volleyball story. There are certain things we don't need to double up on, but there are certain things where we absolutely need that.
And to me, that's the same thing. If we let them die, then there's no way that can happen. But if we find a way to keep it alive, that means all those different newspapers can cover the same press conference by the mayor and tell the angles that were important to their audience. It's not the same as it was 25 or 30 years ago, but it's how it could work now, and let's keep all those voices alive.
