Randy Hammer

By JOHN NORTH

The new publisher of the Asheville Citizen-Times, Randy Hammer, offered a gloomy prediction on the future of print newspapers during Leadership Asheville Forum’s monthly Critical Issues Luncheon last Wednesday.

More than 100 persons showed up to hear Hammer address “The Newspaper of Today Versus the Newspaper of Tomorrow, and What It Means to Our Community.”

The luncheon was held at the offices of the Buncombe County Board of Education. Hammer spoke for about 30 minutes and then fielded questions for another 30 minutes. (For the question-and-answer session, see related story on Page 3.)

Hammer was introduced by Kim McQueen, who is president of LAF’s board. She noted that the publisher “is relatively new to Asheville,” having been promoted from the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal. Hammer was named the AC-T’s publisher last October, following the resignation of Jeffrey P. Green after one year at the helm.

He “worked his way up from copy editor to editor,” McQueen said of Hammer. “He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, which is really huge.”

Under Hammer’s leadership, the Pensacola paper was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2002 for its coverage of governmental corruption and in 2004 for its coverage of Hurricane Ivan. Hammer also was twice named Gannett’s editor of the year at the News Journal, the AC-T Web site noted.

Most recently, he worked as a vice president at The Courier-Journal newspaper in Louisville, Ky., according to the AC-T Web site.

Hammer “loves it here,” McQueen said, and has moved his wife and family to the Asheville area, including a daughter who is enrolled at Enka Middle School.

After greeting the audience, Hammer told a story illustrating how he was charmed by Asheville from the start.

One evening after he first moved to the city, he was alone and decided to dine at a North Lexington Avenue restaurant. As he was walking there, a young woman approached him and said she was giving out free hugs. After recovering his composure, Hammer said, he opened his arms and accepted her warm hug — while keeping one hand on his wallet.

Upon reaching the restaurant, he was informed by the maitre d’ that there was a 45-minute wait for tables. As he nonchalantly resigned himself to this news, two older women in front of the line invited him to join them — and he accepted.

 Hammer kept a straight face as he quipped, “We messed up” in announcing in the AC-T that the new publisher “was going out in the community to talk to people” about the newspaper. It turned out, he said, that the publisher did not need to talk, but just to listen — and the message was clear.

“People were nice, but basically, they said they didn’t like what we were doing with the newspaper” in its switch to hyper-local news content, with international, national and state news given short shrift.

Upon his arrival in the city, “It was very clear” that the readership was unhappy with the revamped AC-T.

“First, I wanted to connect the paper with the community,” Hammer said. Second, he  decided to return the paper’s format to the way it was before the change.

He then read several letters from readers who expressed deep gratitude for Hammer’s move to revert to traditional daily newspaper style — with the most important international, national, state and local news placed on the front page — as opposed to the nearly all-local format.

“It’s because of letters like these that I feel good about the future of the newspaper business,” Hammer said of the aforementioned etters from readers.

In the aftermath of his changes in the AC-T’s format and content, there have been the following “two big developments:”

• “The most surprising thing about this is our home deliver grew 1 percent in January,” he said. While that amount may not sound like much, the newspaper business in general has suffered steady circulation losses for years and, even in the golden era of newspapers, it would have been highly unusual to experience circulation growth in January, when most consumers traditionally cut back on expenses.

• “We went from 5.1 million to 6.5 million page-views in one month (from December to January) — that’s significant growth,” Hammer said.

He credited the aforementioned growth to listening to the community, which, Hammer said, told him, “We don’t want Britney Spears on the front page!”

He added, “We were trying to get younger readers,” so the AC-T’s owner, Gannett Company Inc., allowed its marketing department to push many of the chain’s papers to convert to a hyper-local news format favored by today’s youths.

As a result of the format change, older readers were alienated and the AC-T failed to gain younger readers in the hoped-for numbers.

“(Baby) Boomer love newsprint,” Hammer said. “They love the tangible feel of newspaper. The majority of Boomers want newsprint.”

In contrast, “Younger readers don’t read newspapers. They’re users of media.”

After a pause, Hammer added, “As long as Boomers are around, we’re going to have a future. But when the last Boomer passes away, it’ll be a sad day for newspapers.”

However, Hammer noted, there is a problem with younger people who only get news from a Website — “Ask them who their city councilmen are or who their congressman is. They don’t know.”

To that end, he said, “We can’t survive as a community until we get the young people involved in the community.”

Hammer then listed the following five “key issues” concerning the Asheville community, based on comments that he has heard repeatedly from the public:

•  “Affordable housing is at the top of the list,” he said.

• Development. Hammer said he did not feel he needed to elaborate on this point

• “Preserving what we have.” To accomplish this, he said the city needs to retain its young people and others who perform service functions.

• The absence of young professionals. Young professionals desiring to move to Asheville cannot make the move because they cannot find the equivalent jobs (in pay). Asheville has “great culture, great commmunity, but the lack of executive jobs for 30-year-old young professionals” is undercutting its progress.

• Education. “When I came here, I was told I’d have to send my child to private schools,” Hammer noted. “That just wasn’t an option for us. When you say that, it’s (tantamount to) surrender.”

He added, “We’ve got to do more to improve the quality of the (public) schools and the quality of the teachers ... We’ve got to do more to support the school system and the teachers.”

In closing, Hammer reiterated that “I was very surprised to move into the community and hear the message that ‘You’ve got to put your kids in private schools.’”