Newspapers writing the story of their own future

By Larry Persily

Newspapers used to stand tall in their communities across the country, Alaska included. But now they stand like stricken spruce trees, falling victim to declining revenue and readership, much like trees decimated by spruce beetles that feed on the vital, inner layer of wood.

And though the beetle infestations and spruce die-offs come and go with the weather — hard or mild winters and droughts — the decline in newspapers is not ebbing and flowing. The number of newspapers, readers and newspaper jobs is on a one-way fall.

Nationwide, the number of papers crashed from more than 7,300 in 2005 to just under 4,500 in 2025. Daily newspaper circulation plummeted from more than 50 million readers in 2000 to about 15 million in 2025. Jobs at newspapers shrunk and shriveled from 365,000 in 2005 to 91,500 in 2025, as reported by The Associated Press, a nonprofit cooperative of news organizations worldwide.

It’s nothing personal, it’s just that people’s habits have changed. They now get most of their news from the screen on their phone, reading or watching in short bites and bytes. Turning the pages of a newspaper is about as antiquated as popping a cassette or CD into a tabletop player in your home.

It’s also political, as more people look for “news” that matches their opinions, with an expanding number of influencers, TikTok’ers, Facebook posters and podcasters making a good living from feeding people what they want to see and hear.

It’s all been bad for the newspaper business, which lost classified ad revenue to Craigslist years ago and then Facebook, and then lost retail advertising revenues as department stores closed and more businesses and government agencies moved their ads to social media.

Like I said, most of it isn’t personal, it’s just people making choices about where to get whatever news they want to see, and advertisers choosing to spend their money differently than they had for decades.

For the newspapers that don’t shut down, a number are converting from for-profit businesses to nonprofits, though they hadn’t made a profit in years. In Alaska, half a dozen newspapers are money-losing ventures, including the Wrangell Sentinel.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of new online newspapers are starting up, trying to make a go of it without the heavy cost of printing, with smaller staff and with donations. There are more than 500 nonprofit news operations around the country, according to the Institute for Nonprofit News.

In Alaska, nonprofit online newspapers now exist in Juneau, Homer, Seward and the Mat-Su region, with nonprofits taking over print newspapers in Fairbanks and Kodiak and others considering a similar move.

The trend toward nonprofits is growing, whether print or online, as a final effort to make the finances work to keep newspapers alive. Particularly in small towns, that would mean newspapers competing with senior centers, high school sports teams, food pantries, churches, public radio stations, community work projects and every other nonprofit for a limited pool of donor money.

A lot of nonprofit newspapers are looking to national funders for bigger checks to get started, but those big-money donors favor startup expenses and specific reporting projects, not ongoing subsidies.

Which leaves it on the communities to fund their newspapers, if the paper can deliver what readers are looking for. I hope every Alaska newspaper and its community can figure it out, whether nonprofit or for-profit. The forest looks empty when the spruce die off; it would be the same for newspapers.

• Larry Persily is the publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel, which first published this column.