Aspen, Colorado gets a lot of notice from media types because it manages to support two daily newspapers. There are few other cities in the U.S. that can play host to competing dailies.
But this rarity is very simple. Aspen has two dailies because both are provided free to readers. We don’t make people fumble around for spare change to buy one. After all, it would cost 12 quarters to buy the New York Times today. Who carries around that kind of loot?
The reason Aspen has two dailies isn’t economic. It really has little to do with a flock of brilliant writers, either. It’s in the “psychology of close substitutes.”
Since the beginning of time, it seems, newspapers have been hawked on the streets or in shops. You’d buy one out of habit. But if there were two, you’d pick one or the other, because you regarded them as too similar to buy both. You didn’t need both The Aspen Times and Aspen Daily News. But you’d pick up both if they were free.
This psychology made Aspen a two-newspaper town. The Daily News started in 1978 as a daily; The Aspen Times, a weekly, converted to a daily in 1988.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have favorites. It just means that readers don’t have to pay extra for a second local paper.
That little twist of psychology has brought doom and destruction to local dailies across the country. Papers are dying one by one, because most still require a buck or so to buy them. That whittles the choice of dailies down to one. You only need to eat one lunch. So you pick your buy.
Newspapers have historically always charged a cover price. Daily papers in the U.K. would cause a sensation when they cut their price from three British pennies to one in the 19th century. That was similar to a price cut from $1.20 to 40 cents today.
But when radio and television arrived, life changed for papers, although they didn’t pick up on it. The name of the game changed from single copies to mass markets. Newspapers were no longer in the business of selling single copies; they were in the business of selling advertising. But most didn’t realize it.
This brings us to Aspen in 1978. There was one paper, charging a quarter per copy. Then a second started. It couldn’t charge anything because it was effectively a wall poster — two pages, front and back. But by 1988, when The Times went daily it felt it had to match the then-growing Daily News. That brought the town two free papers. Neither of the papers had to charge because free circulation meant big boosts in circulation. Overall finances improved. Why had nobody thought of this before?
Newspapers were then owned by families whose grandparents had been charging for the papers. They saw to reason to change, even though that particular bit of psychology would hurt them.
There was another big gorilla in the room — the wide belief that if a paper was free, It must have nothing worth reading inside. If the Washington Post were to go free today, would it be a worthless freebie — or still the Washington Post.
The news world was altered a little in Aspen when The Times recently fell into the hands of a traditional newspaper company, Ogden Newspapers. The Times, begun in 1881, had appeared as a weekly. It was sold to legendary writer Bil Dunaway in 1956, and then to a local group. By 2000, it fell into the hands of a chain called Swift. The new group bought several other papers including dailies in Glenwood Springs, Vail and Summit County.
Last year, Ogden arrived. It stumbled out of the chute by appearing to preside over a mass staff cost-cutting purge. It Is now trying to rid itself of the mantle of party-crasher. But publishing in Aspen brought it into a new world where daily papers don’t sell for a single-copy fee. Local writers have enough recognition that the departure of any one of them is noticed.
And suddenly, Ogden Newspapers is being likened to the arrival of a hedge fund. Such creatures often strip down acquired papers to only necessary parts. They are, not surprisingly, in it for whatever cash flow they can squeeze out of an industry thought to be gasping for breath.
None of this is necessarily true, but it is the surefire business plan for a hedge fund. Even Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway concluded that newspapering today is merely a game of squeezing excess of cash out of a dying crop of fruit.
But the game has changed radically due to non-paid circulation. This allows all papers a wider reach. They need not be shackled by the traditions of paid circulation. It is a new game for Ogden, but not for Aspen readers since 1988. The challenge: without the psychology of paid circulation weighing them down, how will Ogden and its competitors adapt?
The writer (dukeofdanforth@gmail.com) is a founder of the Aspen Daily News and his column appears here on Sundays.