In a bid to preserve its paper-and-ink legacy, the Falls Church News-Press plans to introduce a few changes to its business model — chief among them a website paywall.
“If my deference to a print newspaper simply doesn’t afford us the ability to continue in that mode, we’ll try something else, at least on a temporary basis,” Nick Benton, founder and editor of the more than three-decade-old publication, told ARLnow. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep the paper going.”
Benton, a California native, moved to Falls Church in the late 1980s after landing a job as a White House correspondent with Executive Intelligence Review, a weekly magazine founded by American political activist Lyndon LaRouche that was known for its contentious articles and conspiracy theories.
A few years into his career, Benton saw an opportunity for a different career path. Driven by the noticeable lack of dedicated news coverage in his community, he approached the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce with a proposition: Would local businesses be interested in advertising in a nascent local newspaper?
That same year, Benton started the News-Press in March 1991.
“The first night… of the papers rolling off of that [printing] press for the first time — it was like a 16-page paper — the bell rang, things started chugging, and the paper started coming down the conveyor belt and I stood on a soapbox and shouted, ‘Let every tyrant tremble,'” he said. “That’s how we got started.”
Last month marked FCNP’s thirty-third anniversary, a milestone Benton marked by penning an editorial urging readers to pressure the city government to revive its old tradition of purchasing weekly ads.
Readers Asked to Help FCNP Efforts https://t.co/dbl9PvqfvC
— Falls Church News-Press (@fcnp) March 20, 2024
“We must confess that we, too, are skating on thin ice in these times of great trouble for local papers,” Benton wrote. “We are counting on our readers at all levels to pitch in and help. The most efficient way of doing this is through a dedication of a tiny fraction of City tax dollars going to provide a valuable public service that also helps to keep your local newspaper in business.”
A month earlier, he opined about the importance of the paper to the Little City’s ongoing development. Two months earlier, he announced a forthcoming $10month paywall for the website and a pilot program to deliver newspapers by mail, rather than dedicated delivery routes, to address these challenges.
Though he did not delve into the specifics of the financial issues, Benton emphasized they were significant.
“We have to figure out some way to raise revenue,” he told ARLnow. “We’re running mightily low.”
Despite Benton’s affirmation of the newspaper’s enduring readership, he said advertising is declining as a business model. Implementing a paywall isn’t Benton’s preferred option, but he says that without more community support, it’s one of the few remaining avenues he has left.
“I have to do it before we run out of money,” he said. “People aren’t responding to these appeals that I’ve been making about getting the city [to take out ads] — that’s the easiest way to do it because it’s coming out of their taxes, right.”
The city has since agreed to monthly ad placements, Benton says. However, the arrangement falls short of their financial needs, and in the long term, Benton hopes the paywall will allow FCNP to keep distributing a physical paper, which he argues is valuable to readers.
“I love the old phrase that says, ‘You’re never alone if you have a poet in your pocket,’ and I would apply that to newspapers,” he said. “[Newspapers] is a medium of communication. It’s almost like a physical web — a glue — that holds a community together.”
Moreover, Benton argues that a physical newspaper has a longer life span for the consumer than a strictly online publication, thus benefiting advertisers.
“You take a newspaper, you can fold it and stick it in your pocket. You can have it on your coffee table for a whole week. You can pick up the paper three or four times during the course of the weekend. That ad is going to be in there for people to read and see,” Benton said.
As much as he would like to see the paper continue, Benton acknowledges it may not be a viable business model long term and would rather scrap it to preserve the publication than let the whole thing die out.
Either way, Benton is determined to keep FCNP running.
“Unless they drag me out of there and padlock the door, and I can’t do anything, then maybe I’ll stop,” he said. “But I’m not there yet. And hopefully, some of these solutions will grab on.”
