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AC-T Publisher Randy Hammer hands a copy of his newspaper and issued a friendly challenge to a critic — who said if one eliminated the advertisements, there would only be about three pages of news — to prove that contention, based on the Nov. 18 edition.

By JOHN NORTH

The Asheville Citizen-Times “will definitely be in the print business” as a daily newspaper 10 years from now, according to Publisher Randy Hammer.

In a brief interview with the Daily Planet, following his Nov. 18 address to a Leadership Asheville Forum, Hammer asserted, “We’re not at all sick. We’re a healthy business. And I think the economy’s picking up.”

The AC-T’s print, Web site and other operations grossed around $20 million last year, he told the Planet, resulting in a profit for its owner, McLean, Va.-based Gannett Company Inc. Hammer declined to specify how much profit the Asheville operation made.

However, Gannett Blog, a Web site critical of Gannett that reports on its operations, reported on Nov. 8, 2008 that the AC-T grossed $20.6 and netted 23.49 percent. By that formula, the AC-T’s profit would total $4.8 million. The paper has 170 employees, according to its Web site.

In his speech to the LAF, Hammer addressed “Will Asheville Have a Daily Newspaper in 10 Years” to an audience of about 50 people at the Buncombe County Board of Education Office in West Asheville.

In promoting Hammer’s talk, the LAF’s promotion declared, “Seattle, Ann Arbor and Denver each have lost their dailies. Readership of newspapers is down across the country, as people get their news instantly from the Internet or cable news networks.” Thus, the LAF promo noted that Hammer “will discuss the state of the daily newspaper in America and the fate of the daily paper in Asheville.

Hammer began by providing each attendee with a color bar chart, headlined, “Our typical Sunday newspaper readership and monthly Citizen-Times.com readership have grown — resulting in a combined print and online reach of 73.9 percent every seven days in Buncombe County.”

Hammer said he actually was “surprised” at the AC-T’s ability to retain as many print readers as it has, in light of the trend toward digital news sources. He added that the AC-T’s Web site has been “the fastest-growing” part of the operation.

Hammer did not state specific print circulation figures, nor did anyone ask him specifically about them, but the paper’s annual sworn Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation, required to be published each fall by the U.S. Post Office, shows the AC-T in decline — averaging 43,149 paid daily circulation as of Sept. 25, 2009; 50,039 as of Sept. 29, 2008; and 51,520 as of Sept. 21, 2007.

Comparable Sunday figures, which would tend to be significantly higher, were not available.

However, on its Web site, the AC-T lists daily circulation of 58,504 and Sunday circulation of 68,116.
“Will we have a newspaper in 10 years? I think so,” Hammer told the audience. “If the technology remains the way it is now, I think we’ll still have” dailies in print, “but I think it will change” over the next decade.

Based on extensive readership studies, Hammer said, “People don’t like to read anything that’s long” on computers. He even noted that some UNC Asheville students with whom he had conferred admitted to him that “they never like to read a long story.”

He noted the advances of technology, include the Kindle, which is impacting the book business; and the iPod, “and how quickly that changed the music industry.” A similar technological change could revolutionize the newspaper business, too.

“In Asheville, because we’re an older population and have so many (baby) boomers, we’re pretty safe” for a print newspaper, Hammer said. “Newspapers have lost 10 pecent of their readership on average in recent years, “but we’ve basically been able to maintain it” at the AC-T.

However, challenges in the industry have required “some difficult changes,” Hammer said, incuding the shutdown of the AC-T’s production plant and shifting its printing to a sister paper in Greenville, S.C.

“We live in a 24/7 news environment — and we really haven’t lost much readership” at the AC-T, he said. “So many of the boomers like the feel of a print product.

“When you really think of our economic model, we cut down trees, use a lot of energy. You can see” how efficiencies could be achieved by going digital.

“What’s going to happen in 10 years? I really don’t know. When I look back at the last 10 years, I was taken by surprise.

“The piece I think is most dangerous to our future is symbolized by what happened in our recent City Council election, where only 20 percent of voters showed up ... They’re (too) busy on FaceBook,” he said in a jab at the registered voters who did not cast a ballot.

Hammer expressed concern about community and democracy in the face of an increasingly narcissistic American culture. He noted that newspapers traditionally have helped in building a sense of community and by reporting on stories that keep the citizenry informed on important issues.

To his dismay, many of today’s Americans, especially the younger ones, express little or no interest in reading news of local government activity.

This presents a dilemma because local dailies tend to feature news of local government. “People say, ‘It needs to be sexy,’ but you’ve got City Council — and it’s hard to make that sexy,” Hammer quipped, prompting much laughter from the audience.