the 941

Ed. note: This piece, by MC Coolidge, will appear in next week’s issue of Creative Loafing.

Sarasota’s print pubs are no longer the cash cows they were in the halcyon boom days… and both writers and readers are paying the price.

Staff cutbacks and smaller page counts are the new norm; the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and Biz 941 magazine are impersonating the Thin Man, and two magazines — Sarasota Arts and Culture (previously Senses) Sarasota Downtown & Beyond have disappeared altogether.

Some publications seem to be staying afloat by cutting content even as they increase advertising. A recent issue of Sarasota Magazine devoted roughly 64 percent of its pages to advertising, much of it advertorial.

Advertorial or advertiser-friendly writing is an increasingly popular trend in print publications across the country — one that can run a murky range from only reviewing restaurants that buy advertisements in a newspaper to running a paid advertisement that is written and laid out to resemble a “real” article or editorial in a magazine.

Su Byron, a regularly published freelance writer and editor — she published Sarasota Arts and Entertainment, a monthly newspaper, for over 10 years — understands the pressure editors are under to pay for staff and printing through advertising dollars, but laments the trend toward reliance on paid advertising posing as content.

Not only does it dilute the content for readers, she says, but it impacts writers’ bottom lines. “If what you offer as a publication is advertorial or advertiser-friendly editorial — that’s advertorial in all but name — that changes the nature of the content. This kind of content can be written by anyone including, sometimes, the advertiser … so real writers lose any clout they would have negotiating fair prices for their work.”

Several writers told me they view writing for free or low fees as essentially giving the milk away, but negotiating is out of the question in a town where editors can easily get accomplished retirees or hungry interns to write for next to nothing. The established writers I spoke with agreed that when editors seek free or low-paid writers, lower quality writing is the inevitable result.

Here’s my question: Would those editors ask their housekeeper to clean for free? Would they ask their printer to print for one-third the going rate? Would they ask their Botox injectors to give them a cut rate until the economy turns around?

But, even if editors paid more for better work, they’d still be stymied by space restrictions due to printing costs. Even at Creative Loafing, which is this year pulling out of its 2008 bankruptcy, my ability to report fully on this multi-faced subject is undermined by a strict word-count limit.

Are Sarasota readers displeased with the cuts in content and the ubiquitous advertising? Maybe they’re not reading at all; maybe they’re just looking at the pictures.

Despite the hemorrhaging of tried and true editors, beat reporters and a lot of other folks at the Herald-Trib (The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that from 2006 to 2009, the H-T has “reduced its work force by 40 percent to 350 employees”; that means roughly 240 people have lost their jobs there) that paper still devotes a rather impressive amount of ink to society page photographs and stories. I’ve got nothing against those items, but am surprised readers so uncomplainingly accept the continued loss of well-written, long-standing columns such as those by former outdoors H-T writer Steve Gibson.

According to Pelican Press veteran reporter Stan Zimmerman, local weekly newspapers focused on community reporting are holding their own. “I’m sure the cost-per-ad is down,” he says, “but somebody’s still paying the printer and the payroll.” Meaning local advertisers are putting their limited ad dollars into weekly pubs.

Creative Loafing publisher Nadiene Raia agrees. “A lot of our customers are rethinking the way they advertise,” Raia says. “They need return-on-investment and are finding weekly community papers have hyper-local content and people are visiting them in print and online. Their budgets don’t allow them the luxury of the traditional daily paper that no longer provides local content or glossies that cater to big advertisers.”

Ultimately, this rethinking is good for readers, Raia says. “The industry is no longer top-down; now the audience chooses what content they want and where they are going to get it … particularly as content continues to segment across multiple platforms.”

So maybe readers are able to pick and choose what they read… but what are they reading? CL Editor Cooper Levey-Baker tells me Britney Spears stories pull big reader numbers while beefier, more substantial stories often seem to go unnoticed.

And Zimmerman says hard news cutbacks means more citizen reporting, i.e., blogging, which can spell trouble for in-depth reporting. “It’s hard to capture the atmosphere of the Congressional Press Gallery by watching a debate on C-SPAN,” Zimmerman says, referring to bloggers’ tendencies toward computer-screen reporting. Fewer reporters are actually going out and covering the news as it happens live and in person, he says, and that could mean Florida returns to its “good-ol’-boy backroom-deal roots because nobody’s around to cover its Government in the Sunshine meetings.”

As Zimmerman suggests, fewer writers means fewer stories of substance will be told. Fewer diverse opinions will be shared. Fewer stories of the real jewels of this could-be cultural coast will be written, and fewer investigative pieces will shed light on things that happen in the dark.

Here’s hoping those of us who love the written word find a collective way to leave the lights on.

MC Coolidge will be discussing this subject and others at Sarasota News & Books at 7 p.m. Thurs., July 23, along with Creative Loafing columnist Theresa Rose. She’ll take audience questions and sign copies of her book, Sideways in Sarasota. Read more Coolidge reality at mcrealityonline.com.

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