Why Prov’l Newspapers go Bankrupt?

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

While inside my car going for a dinner at the Niña's Café owned by the mayor-missus of billionaire businessman Cezar T. Quiambao of Bayambang, Pangasinan after the latter invited some reporters to have some sumptous chows there, seasoned writer the septuagenarian Rhee Fer Hortaleza told me that a long time publishing provincial weekly newspaper in Pangasinan has folded out.

A NEWSSTAND OWNER fixes her national and local newspapers she peddles at the sidewalk of Baguio City. Photo credit: Joseph Manzano

As a former publisher and the present Editor-in-Chief of the Northern Watch Newspaper I know like the palm of my hand the financial woes of weeklies in the gargantuan province: Printing cost  weekly that runs to eight to ten thousand pesos if the front and back are colored and it is 10 pages and the monthly salaries of the writers, errand boy, and the editor. This not to mention the P800 to P1,000 per week remuneration of the layout artist if the newspaper has eight to ten pages. The cost of production is miniscule if the newspaper has enough advertisement that runs from six thousand pesos to twelve thousand pesos per whole page – as it depends on the kind of pages (the cheaper inside page or the expensive back page) or either it’s black and white or colored printed. 

But with the advent of the internet that turned newspapering publication into website and blog like the vaunted Facebook Page -- where they expand their reach even to readers as far a Burkina Faso in Africa, Turkmenistan in Central Asia and Antartica whenever there are those Filipino diasporas and as near as Barangay Matictic in Norzagary, Bulacan and Barangays Lareg-lareg and Bakitiw in Malasiqui, Pangasinan for free --, traditional newspapering have been meeting their demise while the others are on their borrowed time as they bleed their publishers' pocket. Environmentalist however applauded the tragedy brought by the internet's technology because they save a lot of paper trees.

Legendary Baguio City's Newspaper Gone Under

Just this morning, I saw at Facebook that Baguio Midland Courier just announced that it would close shop on July 22 this year.

Excerpt:

“Your Baguio Midland Courier, after 77 years of unparalleled and credible publication by providing news and information that matter to the public, is ceasing its operation effective July 22, 2024,” statement signed by Gloria Antoinette M. Hamada, Publisher and Chief Operation Officer of Hamada Printers and Publishers Corporation and Baguio Midland Courier.

When I was growing up at the Philippines Military Academy in Baguio City at the early 1970’s, I saw my military father wielded a Baguio Midland Courier and a broadsheet whenever he arrived at our house from the city. When I worked at the public information office of the PMA in the late 1980’s, I bought too the Courier at one of the countless newsstands  - including the daily Sun Star Newspaper - when I trudged the Session Road after attending my Sunday's worship at the Evangelical Church at the then U.S military ran Camp John Hay.  I bought too at the U.S government leased military camp its military newspaper the colored Stars and Stripes before licking my ice cream in cone that tasted Stateside I bought at the ice cream parlor there for some U.S cents (of course convertible to the Philippines currency).

Why Provinical Newspapers Go South?

The predicament for local newspaper publishers why they go in the red not only on the expenses but because of the dearth of advertisers who absconded them by going to those online publication being patronized by the masa. But you wonder why there are still more than 20 newspapers in Pangasinan that still circulate –some at 200 copies only per week publication, susmariosep! - despite the economic malaise they are facing? Most of these weeklies are ubiquitous not on the newsstands of some of the 44 towns and four cities’ province but inside the offices of the judges of the municipal and regional trial courts.

These weeklies survived on the hefty payments of court petitioners who need to meet the legal requisite of a three-week publication of their Self-Adjudication with Deed of Donation, Extra-Judicial Settlement of Estate with Quit Claim, Deed of Extra Judicial Settlement of Real Property with Deed of Absolute Sale, Deed of Extra Judicial Settlement Among the Estate heirs of XYZ, to name a few.

 A four inches in width and six inches in length publication on a newspaper page cost more or less P20, 000 for a litigant who will pay the publisher in exchange for the latter to issue a signed Affidavit of Publication – of course notarized by a lawyer – to consummate the requirement.

These more than 20 weeklies – whose news items are less interesting because they’re mostly taken gratis from government propaganda offices -  agreed to get their publication from the office of the executive judge through raffles or a pro rata distribution among themselves. The problem however if there are few legal publications to be distributed and the publisher needs to pay the printing press, the reporters (but most of them in the province are not paid at all because they use the paper for P.R with politicians in a quid pro quo for some sums), and the layout artist, these give headache to the owners where some of them have closed shops even some decades ago. Those who survived until now are the publishers who owned the printing press. Some of them even owned five newspapers fronted by their dummies. A few of them told me that despite being recipient of countless of publications from the court the revenues are still not profitable enough.

“Pang prestige at power projection na lang para sa akin na malaman ng community at mga pulitiko na meron akong newspaper,” a publisher told me once. She could tap her writers and columnists to attack a government official she thinks crossed her path.

Was this foresight similar to the Taipans who bought the Philippines Daily Inquirer and the Philippines Star from their previous publishers who saw that the venture was no longer profitable?

She said that her less profitable newspaper business is offset by the other lucrative printing jobs like books and magazines contracted with her by the public - particularly the Department of Education - and private sectors.

Why Other Newspapers Survive?

Other traditional Pangasinan newspapers – like my Northern Watch Newspaper – avoided extinction because some folks – like those big time politico and trader - funded if not bought them to perpetuate their interest. My 2007 founded newspaper was funded by Abono Partylist where two of us columnists and our editor were hired as consultant and later as monthly paid workers – it means we have monthly remuneration that made us an envy of writers in other newspapers who turned green eyed upon discovering that even the payments from the court petitioners - that were tens of thousands of pesos monthly - we divide them among ourselves.  The Party even paid the printing cost of Northern Watch to advance its agenda by distributing the Watch to folks all over the province for free. The downside, however, nobody dared to buy our newspaper because it usually bannered the conceited news of Abono and they were like plague to serious readers. Our financial heydays since 2010 ended in 2020 when the lethal pandemic Corona Virus 19  ripped off the economy that our patron dropped us like hot potato.

Luckily, my businesswoman friend bought it from us in late 2020 seeing the profit she could get as Northern Watch is certified by the courts – through my tireless efforts before - to join raffles and bill the litigants who were ordered by the court to publish their concern at our paper.

“Bahala ka nang maglagay ng mga news mo diyan,” she exhorted me thus those fiery and screaming headlines being carried by the Watch that you folks could read on my blog in advance as newspaper take three days from layout, completion of the printing job, and landing at the newsstands. Publication at my three personal blogs took only some minutes for posting for all and sundry to read after I drafted my column and my reporters submit their news reports.

Online Publications get the Ads

I was amused more than a month ago when the public relation officer of SM Supermalls haggled with me for the price I billed for her principal’s regular advertisement cum P.R news not on the newspaper I edit but on its popular online version – that I still owned.

“Pero Sir lagyan niyo rin ng isang news ng SM ang newspaper niyo every week. Ang ex-deal namin kumain na lang kayo ng libre sa lahat ng stores ng SM dito sa central and northern Luzon pag andoon ako,” she said.

“Okay!” I retorted for the free meal and the compensation on the ads at my blog.

So my poser for everybody, who said that newspapering business is dead for the pocket and the tummy?