For Small Papers, Digital now Indispensable

One clear message emerged from the Local Media Association's fall conference in St. Louis: digital is the way forward for the nation's community papers. If ideas like digital agency services and metered paywalls were met with skepticism just a couple of years ago among this group, they have moved into the industry's mainstream thinking now. Legacy terminology itself has begun eroding. Even the word "circulation" is dropping out of circulation among its managers, replaced now with a more multiplatform "audience development" moniker. So if big city dailies such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post represent the digital catwalk among newspapers, the distance between them and the suburban mall of these smaller market papers has definitely shortened.