Washblog

In the Vancouver B.C. metro area, BC interior and the Kitsap Peninsula Black Press publishes networks of more-than-weekly and weekly newspapers that effectively compete with the dailies in the same area. On the Kitsap Peninsula, Sound Publishing (the Black Press subsidiary there) also publishes a free daily newspaper, cobbling together wire stories and locally produced content.

Black competes with Kitsap and BC dailies because they don't try to take the same ground, something the old owners of the King County Journal kept on losing at. Daily newspaper and weeklies/more-than-weeklies occupy different business niches in the same geographic area. By pushing harder in the non-daily area, Black Press will actually improve their stance in the market. Closing the Journal isn't a retreat, but rather an advance in different form.

The real story in King County isn't the loss of the daily Journal, but rather the gain of six new twice-weekly papers and two new weekly papers. Taking into consideration the number of papers that are switching from publishing twice a month to twice a week, the number of editions published weekly by the King County newspaper group will grow from 12.5 to 15. This is even with the Mercer Island and Snoqualmie Valley papers, two of the strongest in the group, stay weeklies. And, also not including the other papers Black Press already owned in King County, the Federal Way and Vashon Island papers.  Several papers in the B.C. group -- a similar suburban network -- are even published three times a week, an expansion we might see down here.

Another gain to King County will be several new newspaper websites. Though, not a part of the press coverage so far, the most important change will likely be the launch of several websites for each paper. Under the old owners, even the Bellevue paper (what you might think as being a crown jewel weekly) lacked a real website. Black Publishing websites aren't cutting edge by any stretch, but they are an improvement over nothing. They tend to replicate the print editions, but there is nothing to say that they won't improve in that area soon.

Key to the future down south?

Another example of a series of weeklies competing well with a large metro daily is the Pamplin Media Group, a series of suburban weeklies and the thrice-weekly Portland Tribune. Similar to the Black Press groups, Pamplin competes with the Oregonian by doing better in the smaller communities surrounding Portland. Two inovations, the free Portland Tribune and the LocalDailyNews.com, a every day online aggregation of stories in their other papers, puts a spin on the weekly network model. LocalDailyNews especially competes with the dominant Oregonian on similar ground, online daily news.

It is possible, with so many small publications in the Puget Sound from the San Juans, through Kitsap and King counties and down to Tacoma that Black Press might launch an online daily news source. At least I suspect they'll supliment their free daily on the Kitsap side with some King County news.