The People’s Choice

Its circulation may be declining, and it has its share of detractors, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is still remarkably popular.

Some 70 percent of Milwaukee-area adults read the Sunday Journal Sentinel, more than any newspaper in the nation’s 50 largest metro areas. For the daily JS, the number is less dramatic – just 47 percent of area adults – but even that is second only to Long Island’s Newsday (50 percent) among the top 50 metros.

These rankings don’t come from circulation figures, which show actual subscriptions and single copy sales, but from surveys by Scarborough Research. In the Milwaukee-Waukesha market, Scarborough interviewed a sample of more than 1,500 people and reports a 3 percent margin of error.

Advertisers find this data at least as reliable as any other research, says Sue Colegrove, vice president of media operations at Zizzo Group Advertising and Public Relations. They add an important dimension that circulation numbers (which, as recent scandals show, have their own problems) miss. “We know people pick up a publication, in the workplace, for instance,” Colegrove says. “That pass-along use is not shown in circulation numbers.”

So why is readership so high here? Gary Meo, a Scarborough senior VP, says communities with more education, higher employment rates and older populations tend to have higher market penetration. The first two factors don’t really fit metro Milwaukee. Its unemployment rate topped 5 percent in July, higher than the national average, and one think tank ranks it 32nd in the nation for educational attainment. Age may be a factor: While another Scarborough survey finds the median age of newspaper readers here is close to the national average, one academic survey finds Milwaukee’s white population is older than in most cities.

A different demographic may help explain reader loyalty: More adults in Milwaukee grew up here compared to the average city, so they may have deeper community attachments. Milwaukeeans “eat their vegetables,” and are more concerned about civic issues, as a researcher told JS executives. JS Editor Martin Kaiser offered that anecdote to retired TV anchor Mike Gousha during a public Q&A session at Marquette University in August.

Cold-weather climates also tend to have higher readership, Meo notes. Then there’s the absence of competition: Newspapers with penetration rates ranked at the bottom of the 50 largest cities are in places like Chicago, Philadelphia and L.A., where several papers still compete.

Whatever the reasons, the JS market penetration rate is impressive. But will it endure? Younger readers increasingly turn to the Web rather than the printed page.

A report from Outsell Inc., an industry consultant, warns that circulation and advertising declines will create a $20 billion revenue gap for newspapers by 2010. Indeed, in early October, the JS announced a buyout program that aims to slash its staff by as many as 50 employees.

In his talk with Gousha, Kaiser noted his own children, now in their 20s, mostly get their news on the Web: “The people dying at one end, we’re not replacing them fast enough with 20-to-30-year-olds.”

To turn that around, the JS has focused ever more on local news. National and world news is now less likely both to run on Page 1 and to be covered by a JS staffer.

“Twelve years ago you had to go down to the newsstand to buy the New York Times,” Kaiser said. Today the Times is on your computer and “we have less staff.” So the JS directs that smaller crew toward stories readers won’t find elsewhere.

One avenue for more local news has been the paper’s new suburban tabloids, which descended from the weeklies it acquired from Community Newspapers Inc. (CNI). Renamed “NOW,” the new tabs are increasingly homogenous and operating with ever-shrinking staffs.

Another problem is labor tensions. Last summer CNI staffers launched an effort to unionize with The Newspaper Guild, the union that represents JS editorial employees. But that campaign went dormant when two activists left for other jobs. Denise Lockwood, a part-time reporter now at the Kenosha News, describes her former workplace as one where fewer reporters had to cover ever more and faced wrenching decisions on what to pass up. At one point, she says, JS Publisher Betsy Brenner – whose job was expanded to include oversight of CNI in 2006 – dismissed the concerns of a group of CNI employees, telling them, “stories don’t generate revenue.” (Brenner declined to be interviewed.)

The departure of Lockwood and fellow activist Brendan O’Brien “was a big blow” to the union drive, says Jennie Tunkieicz, a JS reporter who is president of the Guild’s JS local 51. Meanwhile, her union is “in discussions with” management over concerns that CNI reporters’ work is getting mingled online with that of JS union-represented staffers.

“We’re concerned the company’s trying to get away with paying less for the same work,” Tunkieicz told Pressroom.

All of which suggests more struggles to come, even for a nationally successful newspaper.