Paper’s Rivals Likely Will Gain Readers, but at a Price
Los Angeles-area newspapers are gearing up to capture the readers and advertisers of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, which will publish its last edition today.
But any circulation gains might be costly in the short run, say industry officials and analysts, and there will be very little Herald advertising to go around, because most of it is already carried by its competitors.
“The surviving newspapers will get some additional readers but are not going to get much incremental advertising,” said J. Kendrick Noble Jr., a media industry analyst at Paine Webber Group.
Furthermore, analysts say the Herald’s competitors may suffer financially in the short term because they won’t be able to pass on the cost of printing additional papers to advertisers for at least six months.
“I would think there will be some costs before there are some benefits,” said newspaper industry analyst John S. Reidy at Drexel Burnham Lambert.
Still, players in the hotly competitive market are not wasting any time carving up the Herald’s 238,392-daily circulation and advertisers.
“We intend to beef up all three (of our newspapers) to pick up as much circulation as we can,” said Thomas J. Wafer Jr., general manager of Copley Los Angeles, which owns the Outlook in Santa Monica, the Daily Breeze in Torrance and the San Pedro News Pilot. “We will be looking to beef up coverage in certain areas and pick up street sales.
“I don’t want to seem cold about this thing,” Wafer said. “It’s a sad thing when any newspaper dies. But the readers don’t automatically go to other newspapers. We lose them as newspaper readers, and we need newspaper readers.”
The Long Beach Press-Telegram said it will increase the number of its news racks and might launch an advertising campaign to attract the 16,000 Herald readers in its market.
“I don’t believe we would get all those readers,” said Mack Quintana, senior vice president of sales and marketing of the Press-Telegram, which has a daily circulation of 128,000. “I’m sure all of us will be vying for a piece of those readers.”
The Los Angeles Times said it will purchase the paper’s subscription lists, some comics and syndicated features and more than 10,000 of the Herald’s news racks. The Times said it might pick up at most 50,000 Herald readers.
“We hope to convert them to Times readers,” said Times Publisher David Laventhol. But, he noted, “you are dealing with a relatively small pie here, and it probably won’t affect the marketplace. It’s sad but true.”
The Herald has seen its circulation and influence dwindle since 1967, when circulation peaked at 729,000. Since then, the paper’s circulation fell by nearly half a million, and it recently claimed about 8% of the 4 million households in the five-county greater Los Angeles area. The Times, by comparison, claims about 25%, according to industry estimates.
Analysts say most of the Herald’s readership was concentrated in Los Angeles and was relatively insignificant in suburban areas such as Orange County. “They are spread out over the entire Los Angeles market and even beyond,” said David J. Auger, publisher of the Daily News in the San Fernando Valley. But “the impact is fairly negligible in our market.”
The paper’s mostly blue-collar readership also did not appeal to advertisers who prefer more affluent, professional workers.
“If Hughes Aircraft had recruitment ads, the Herald would not be the place to go to if you wanted to reach someone in the aerospace industry,” said Ron Lawrence, media director at the Los Angeles office of D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, an advertising agency.
“It was never a must buy,” Lawrence said. “We will probably look to fill the gap by going to more local papers, some of which are distributed free of charge.”
Industry observers said it is unlikely that another newspaper company would come in to fill the gap left by the Herald.
