“If Americans don’t realize the need for subscription fees, they will lose a lot of news. “Who has the model for the 21st Century so the news industry can survive?” asked Weybret, standing by the presses in the basement of the one-story building that’s a stone’s throw from City Hall and police headquarters in downtown Lodi “The truth is there isn’t a working business model. Until 2007, “the business model worked great, an old business model that Dad never questioned. The 32-page and 24-page papers of old are gone.

It was one of two family-owned dailies in California’s Central Valley, he said, along with the Bakersfield Californian. He’s simply not sure where this all ends.Īs recently as 1990 the paper had a circulation of 18,000, he said. Weybret is understated as he underscores the frustrations of recent years as change hit the newspaper and the community. Often lost in the discussion of revolutionary change, and Facebook deals with the likes of the New York Times and BBC, is the fate of little guys who have been integral to the civic life of smaller-town America. In this video interview with Weybret by the Central Valley Business Times provides a fascinating reality check for those immersed in big city media or a burgeoning online world where private equity kingpins funnel giant sums to new favorites like BuzzFeed, Gawker and Vox. But he said the publisher will be Canadian newspaper executive Steven Malkowich, who will run it through a newly-constituted entity called Central Valley News-Sentinel Inc. He won’t disclose the price or purchasers’ identities due to a non-disclosure agreement. In fact, Google it and you won’t find many mentions beyond a press release and short story in the paper itself. The deal didn’t make news like Verizon buying AOL for $4.4 billion or Charter Communications buying Time Warner Cable for nearly $56 billion. His own ambiguity about what’s ahead prompted him to just sell the 10,600-circulation daily (actually five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday) founded in 1881 and bought in 1959 by his father, Fred, he said. How will quality local news really survive, wonders a man whose family owned the paper since 1959, absent people doing something they are currently disinclined to do: pay for it? “Google, YouTube and Facebook have taken the heart out of all the advertising, and not just the national advertising,” says Marty Weybret, who exited Monday as longtime publisher of the family-owned Lodi News-Sentinel in California’s Central Valley. To fully grasp the tumult in American media, you need just look at the video of a proud man in front of a basement printing press that’s been his community’s lifeblood.

Circulation lodi news sentinel