First in a series of two stories

The questions from the audience came fast and furious from the very opening of the program, but, undeterred, Jon Ostendorf finally managed to get through his Fab Friday lunch-and-learn presentation titled “The Asheville Citizen-Times Playbook” on Sept. 26 at UNC Asheville’s Reuter Center.

Ostendorf is the AC-T’s newly named investigative reporter. He was standing in for top editor Josh Awtry, who had a scheduling conflict.

About 50 people attended the nearly 90-minute program that included questions from the audience throughout the presentation, ending with a dedicated 10-minute question-and-answer session

In a promotion of the program, a UNCA flyer noted, “In December 2013, Josh Awtry became vice president and executive editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times and Greenville (S.C.) News.

“Awtry will talk to us about what our morning paper is doing to ‘address concerns, improve our work, and fix local journalism at a national level.’

“His belief in direct conversation between journalists and the public has brought him recognition from The Columbia Journalism Review and The Society of News Design. He believes in an all-out, transparent approach to engaging with readers in the hope of creating rich discussions that will improve community discourse.”

As Ostendorf greeted the audience, someone noted that there was a letter to the editor in that morning’s AC-T, which praised Ostendorf for his conscientious work as a reporter.

Ostendor later noted he also has received “less-kind letters, even calling for me to be fired. I don’t take it personally... As long as I was getting it fairly evenly from both sides, I felt I was doing OK.”

The reporter noted that, “in it’s heyday, newspapers and printing — you couldn’t beat it” for profitability. “That’s changing....Everyone here probably has noticed the newspaper industry shrinking.”

Someone in the crowd then pointedly asked him about the recent trend of the AC-T’s advertising rates.

“The ad rates generally have increased,” Ostendorf replied, evenly. “Generally, our prices have increased for advertising and home delivery.”

In the AC-T’s defense, a woman in the audience interjected that she thinks “the paper has improved” recently, noting the addition of USA Today stories and sections.

Ostendorf explained that the AC-T has learned that “about two-thirds  (of readers) like the addition of USA Today — and one-third hate it.” He added that “this newspaper (the AC-T) is owned by Gannett. USA Today is second (in circulation) only to The Wall Street Journal. We own a ton of newspapers.” (Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, owns USA Today.)

A different woman said, “I don’t like that because I can get all of that (USA Today content) on TV. I want local and state news.”

Ostendorf replied, “That is a very common criticism. I can watch CNN” for national and international news — and get it immediately.

A man said, “USA Today can be bought anywhere, but people buying Citizen-Times” get it for local news content. Therefore, he questioned why the paper would add USA Today content.

“More of our  readers liked the addition of USA Today, then  don’t,” Ostendorf reiterated.

Continuing his presentation, he said, “Everyone knows how the newspaper works...Instead of newspapers being delivered instantaneously to a device in your pocket, if we told an alien visitor that we print something and deliver it and it’s at least 10 hours old,” the alien would wonder about its value.

Newspaper managers have come to realize that readers are wondering why they should subscribe to a print publication when “I can get it right now for free” on the Internet.

“So what do you think happened?” Ostendorf asked. “Our content started to struggle. Our content looked slow and old. Also, we created this staff of objective observers of the community... We just sat back, facelessly and objectively writing about the community. We almost became faceless news aristocrats.

“When I first started in newspapers, the editors had two meetings a day. The reporters didn’t even attend the meeting.

“We’ve changed that now. I’m inviting everyone in this room to attend our morning news meeting at 9:30 a.m. We’ve cut staff, but it’s a big group now. The public is invited to attend. We have more of a big discussion of the things” meriting coverage.

A man interjected that he sees two roles for newspapers: “reactive — react to news… and proactive — ahead of the curve, telling what readers can do to be involved.”

Ostendorf  said, “We are coming back to that proactive role.”

However, the man replied, “Much of what’s coming out in advertising is useless and distortions… and that’s why” he likes newspapers’ news departments to actually serve the readers.

“We’ve just completed a very large reorganization at the Citizen-Times,” Ostendorf asserted. “We’ve thinned our management ranks and are hiring more reporters.”