A copy The Birmingham News The newspaper rests on a rack in the Birmingham public library. According to the company that manages the newspaper and its sister papers, it will stop printing after Feb. 26, 2023.
Debbie Elliott/NPR
Caption hidden
Change the caption
Debbie Elliott/NPR
A copy The Birmingham News The newspaper rests on a rack in the Birmingham public library. The newspaper’s owner and two sister papers, the company that owns it, has announced that they will cease printing publications after February 26, 2023.
Debbie Elliott/NPR
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — It’s gotten harder to find a sidewalk newspaper box to buy a copy of The Birmingham NewsYou can also find the most recent edition at the downtown public library.
Sherrel Stewart pulls off a food stain-splattered copy hanging from the spindle.
She says, “Many people have read it.” “Look at this sauce.”
Stewart, a former reporter and editor who worked for the newspaper for almost two decades, has fond memories.
Stewart said, “The frontpage used to be that sacred place,” Stewart explained. You can pick up a Sunday paper and find your name on the top. It was special.
However, Sunday papers will soon disappear.
Birmingham is suffering a huge loss
The Alabama Media Group states that the presses will cease permanently after Sunday, February 26, 2023. The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times Mobile and Tablet Press-Register. The company had already curtailed publishing from daily to three times a week in 2012 — part of a restructuring by parent company Advance Publications that also affected New Orleans’ The Times-Picayune.
Stewart states that moving to digital is not a loss for cities like Birmingham or the nearly 200,000 people who reside there.
She said, “It is just not a good idea.” “Birmingham’s on the move. A city like Birmingham should have a newspaper.
Although she might be sad at the end of the printed era, she admits that she gets most of her news from AL.com, the digital version of the paper.
According to newspaper executives, that is where the audience is.
President Tom Bates of Alabama Media Group states that the decision was made to cease printing next year in an effort to provide more news to people and follow their movements.
The numbers prove it. Bates states that the combined daily circulation of the Birmingham News, Huntsville Times Press-Register The number was approximately 260,000 He says it is now at around 30,0000. This compares to AL.com’s daily reach which averages about a million people per hour.
Bates said that “the growth on the digital side has been extraordinary.” “If we want to get important stories out there, we have to make sure they are available in the format that people want. … Our goal, and not our job, is to do more journalism.
This shift will result in the closing of Mobile’s printing plant and the loss or more than 100 jobs in advertising, production, circulation, and production. Kelly Ann Scott, editor in chief and vice-president of content at Alabama Media Group, said that no newsroom cuts were expected. She intends to expand her investigative teams and other areas.
Scott says, “As our audiences have developed with us to tell stories differently on different platforms and in different ways, we’ve added people in many directions.” You can take the example of podcasters and videographers. “We have definitely diversified the types and positions that we have in our space.”
The transition from print to digital has been long overdue
This day was predicted by long-time local journalists.
John Archibald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and journalist for AL.com. He said, “I grieved the newspaper twelve years ago, frankly.” The Birmingham News Since 1986.
Archibald claims that he rarely sees the printed edition. Although it might seem absurd for an old-school newspaperman to say this, he believes that this is the future of journalism.
“While I still love print and have a nostalgic love for it, it’s not the newspaper that I love. He says it’s the idea of going out and reporting on news that people want to know. “We all work in this industry and are learning how to do this in this environment.”
According to Penny Muse Abernathy (a visiting professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism), what is happening in Alabama is the direction that local newspapers have been heading for a while.
She says, “It’s part of a larger progression as we have seen the decline of daily newspapers over two decades.”
Abernathy writes annual reports on the state and future of local news across the nation. According to the 2022 report, at least one in five of the 100 largest newspapers are now publishing fewer than two times per week in a printed edition.
Natalie Davis, a retired political scientist and group of others were gathered at the lunch Buffet at the American Legion Homewood, Ala. The Birmingham News It is gone.
Debbie Elliott/NPR
Caption hidden
Change the caption
Debbie Elliott/NPR
Natalie Davis, a retired political scientist, and others gathered at the lunch buffet at American Legion in Homewood. Davis worries about what will happen to her. The Birmingham News It is gone.
Debbie Elliott/NPR
Newspapers can be a strong community anchor
Abernathy says that as papers disappear, the question is now whether digital publications can fulfill the same civic role as newspapers.
Abernathy said that “the best, strongest, and most committed daily newspaper really help bind a state together.” “And that’s really what we’re dealing with, I think is what is the relevancy of these papers in an electronic age? Who decides the topics to be discussed and debated?
Alabamians have been learning The Birmingham News Since the late 1800s.
Randall Woodfin, Birmingham Mayor, says that it will be an adjustment to no longer have a printed edition.
He says, “It’ll be a shock for the system.”
Woodfin, 41 years old, is a digital first news consumer. However, he does not know everyone in this area is wired the same way.
He said, “We embrace innovation.” “I hope that we can still communicate with each generation.
He cites his stepmother Yvonne Fluker Woodfin. She has been diligently collecting and clipping newspaper articles about Woodfin’s political life. She is concerned when he calls her to ask for her opinion on the closing of the newspapers’ printed publication.
“Well, I think that it will make many people not be aware what’s happening,” Mrs. Woodfin said.
Digital access is a concern. Public schools found that 1 in 5 families did not have internet access at all during the pandemic.
Even so, newspapers don’t appear as scattered around the tables at local coffee shops or lunch counters anymore.
Some may be for a long time Birmingham News A recent lunch buffet at Homewood American Legion was attended by subscribers who discussed the death of the paper.
Al LaPierre, former executive director of Alabama Democratic Party, says that “we call this our government-in exile table back there.” He is sitting at a table that includes a number of politicalos who gather here every Wednesday.
LaPierre said that he is not surprised that the newspaper’s days have come to an end.
“I noticed a few years ago even — you bought the Birmingham News on a Saturday or Sunday and then you’d seen it on their media site the day before, so why get it?”
Natalie Davis, a retired political scientist and historian, is defending the paper. She subscribes and worries about the paper’s future.
Davis says that newspapers are the only remaining thing where everyone can read the story the exact same way and get the same facts. “That’s the job of newspapers.”
Chandler McGee, a former veterinarian, stops by and thanks the paper for saving his life.
He said, “I’m now 84 years of age.” “Reading the newspaper is one of the greatest joys in my life.”
He lives in an elderly community, where he claims that few residents have access to online news.
McGee states, “It means, especially for seniors, that we will be cut off from the happenings in our city, and our state.”
Alabama Media Group executives insist that this is not their intention and feel that everyone should be able to access the free content they offer online from their three metro areas.
Roy Johnson, AL.com columnist came to Birmingham in 2015 He was a long-time sports writer at AL.com. Sports Illustrated The New York Times, as well diverse national magazines that are no longer in print.
Johnson says Johnson: “I truly have lived the life which represents the evolution in the media industry.”
He believes that while the distribution process might have changed, the mission has not.
“One day, we will have to explain to our grandkids how we wrote words on a piece paper, then rolled it up and put it in a truck or car, drove it around, and threw it onto people’s driveways. He says that this is how they got their news. “It will be similar to the Pony Express for us.”
Johnson’s advice for long-time print readers is: This is the digital age. So come along.