Here’s what scares me for newspapers

How are we supposed to compete with Ted Lasso?”

Bryan Chester, 2026 MPA President

October seems like the right month to talk about things that scare us.

I thought about writing something about the convention this month, but by the time you read this, the convention will already be in the rearview mirror. And, frankly, I have spent enough of this year telling you to show up. Hopefully you did.

So instead, I thought I’d tell you about a few things that actually scare me. Not ghosts. Not haunted houses. Not even a deadline. I’m talking about the things that keep me up at night as someone who works in the newspaper business.

I’m afraid we are going to run out of places to print before we run out of print subscribers.

We have seen several printing facilities close over the last few years, and there aren’t new presses opening to take their place. When a press closes, the newspapers that relied on it don’t disappear. They have to find somewhere else to print, and increasingly, that means looking farther away.

Publishers are often left with very little time to find a new printing partner. They may have to expand their search area, find transportation and figure out how to fit their newspaper into a press schedule that is already full. For a daily newspaper, there are only so many options when your printing partner is several hours away. But even for weeklies, the distance matters. More miles mean more transportation costs at a time when transportation is already getting more expensive.

And then there is the question of available press time. As more printing facilities disappear, more newspapers are competing for space on fewer presses.

The problem isn’t simply finding a printer. It is finding a printer that has room for you. That scares me.

The postal service scares me, too.

I know there are people who have strong opinions about the United States Postal Service, but I’m less interested in assigning blame than I am in talking about the reality our readers experience.

We depend on the mail to deliver newspapers. When newspapers arrive later than expected, readers notice. When periodical postage rates increase, publishers have to make difficult decisions about subscription prices and budgets. And when a reader isn’t sure whether their newspaper will arrive today, tomorrow or several days from now, eventually they start looking for other ways to get their news.

The frustrating part is that this isn’t necessarily because they don’t want the newspaper. They just want it consistently. That is a reasonable expectation, and it is increasingly difficult for us to control something that happens after the newspaper leaves our hands. Which brings me to the third thing that scares me.

Subscription fatigue.

For years, we’ve talked about getting more people to pay for news digitally, and I absolutely believe people will pay for things they value. But look at what we are asking them to pay for now. Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV+, Spotify, Amazon Prime. Maybe a sports package or a fitness app. Possibly a few other subscriptions they signed up for and forgot about. Then we come along and say, “Hey, we’d like you to pay for your local newspaper, too.” How are we supposed to compete with Ted Lasso?

I’m only half joking. People have a finite amount of money and a finite amount of attention.

As household budgets get tighter, consumers are going to look at every recurring charge and ask whether it is worth keeping.

And newspapers aren’t just competing with other news organizations anymore. We’re competing for a place in the same monthly budget as entertainment, music, shopping and everything else that promises to make someone’s life a little easier or more enjoyable. That is a real challenge. It is an even bigger challenge when someone can find what they think is the same information for free on Facebook.

Of course, we know it isn’t the same thing. We know what local reporting costs. We know what it takes to put a reporter in a city council meeting, cover a high school football game, investigate a local issue or simply make sure someone knows what is happening in their community. Our readers may know that, too, but knowing something has value and being willing to pay for it are two different things.

So, yes, these things scare me. But I don’t think fear is necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes fear is what makes us pay attention. If we are going to continue producing printed newspapers, we need to pay attention to the health of the printing network that makes them possible. If we depend on the mail, we need to keep paying attention to the cost and reliability of that delivery system. And if we want people to pay for local journalism, we need to keep proving that what we produce is worth paying for.

None of these problems has a simple solution. There probably isn’t one big fix waiting around the corner. But I do think there is one thing we can control. We can refuse to take our readers, our products and our place in our communities for granted.

The newspaper business has plenty to be afraid of, but Halloween only lasts a day. The rest of the year, we get to do something about it.