San Diego Uptown News celebrates second anniversary, attributes success to ‘hyperlocal’ journalism

By Celene Adams | Editor SDUN

When publisher David Mannis launched San Diego Uptown News two years ago, during the height of the “Great Recession,” he knew that the months ahead would bring some long hours at the office.

“The first six months were the most challenging,” Mannis said. “I had 30 years of experience creating and building community newspapers, but not in this economic climate. I knew what a special community Uptown is, but would it welcome and support a community newspaper?”

But Mannis didn’t have as much to worry about as he’d thought. Although by 2009 (the year Mannis debuted SDUN), the newspaper industry had lost thousands of jobs and up to half of its advertising revenue, the losses (also due to the insurgence of the Internet) were mostly among big city dailies. Local newspapers, by contrast, had suffered far fewer staff layoffs and minimal advertising revenue losses. Some had even raised advertising revenues and, according to data from Suburban Newspapers of America, 26 percent of them had started new growth products.

The resilience of local newspapers is attributed to their “hyperlocal” approach to journalism—what might be termed the “prize cabbage” method of covering news because it focuses on everything from local gardeners’ vegetables to city council meetings.

Local newspapers have a “rosier future and more optimistic prospects,” a 2011 online survey of 527 journalists conducted by the Communication Research Center at Cleveland State University found, citing community papers’ ability to cover neighborhoods at the micro level as the niche’s strength.

“No small is too small,” Mannis concurs. “SDUN is nearly 100 percent local news covering the Uptown communities. We like to boast: ‘More news about Uptown than any other newspaper in the world!’ Male or female, young or old, gay or straight—there is something for everyone who lives or works in Uptown in our paper.”

Along with the focus on local news, another reason local newspapers fare well despite the distress in the overall industry and economy is that most are free, which means more people receive them. The Association of Free Community Papers, a national association of more than 300 free community newspapers from across the United States and Canada (AFCP), reports that “free papers reach over 97 percent of the homes in their defined marketing areas.”

Free local papers also have high readership rates. More than 76 percent of people who receive them, either by picking them up or by having them delivered, read them, the AFCP said. Further, 74 percent of those readers say they make buying decisions based on the information they publish—statistics confirmed through independent audits by Circulation Verification Council. “In many cases, the local free paper is directly influencing more readers to purchase advertisers’ products than the entire circulation of the local paid paper,” the AFCP finds, noting also that 61 percent of consumers who read free local papers don’t subscribe to their paid city daily.

But statistics aside, local newspapers win readers because they’re relevant to the communities they live in.

“We like to run stories about what individuals in the Uptown community are doing in their personal and professional lives and how their lives intersect with and are affected by the area’s civic and cultural developments,” said SDUN’s editor, Celene Adams. “For example, we run stories about local artists’ debuts, how City Council decisions affect local community gardens’ ability to produce, and how development of a mini park will further pedestrian connection between residential and commercial areas. Our stories reflect how residents’ values manifest in Uptown in terms of their quality of life.”

In the two years since its inception, SDUN has covered a variety of such news and human interest stories, winning Independent Free Papers of America’s (IFPA) top award, first place for General Excellence, at last year’s IFPA national conference in Nashville, Tenn. The awards are selected by the association’s member publishers. SDUN also received 13 awards at the San Diego Press Club’s 37th annual Excellence in Journalism Awards dinner last October, including six first-place finishes in the non-daily newspaper category.

Mannis said it was gratifying to win the awards in SDUN’s mere second year of publishing and that he’s putting in fewer hours at the office now that the paper’s out of the starting gate.Yet the challenge isn’t over.  Because while community newspapers are indeed thriving, they also face unique challenges.

The Cleveland Communication Center’s online survey, for example, found that common problems among community newspapers include:  lack of staff to cover routine public business; staff attrition due to low pay scales; making sufficient profits for owners; and economic decline of communities in general.

However, Mannis is less concerned about such challenges than he is optimistic about the strengths of local newspapers. “If any community can sustain a local newspaper, it’s Uptown,” he said. “Since launching SDUN two years ago, we’ve had nothing but positive feedback from readers, advertisers and our peers in the industry. We were even able, a year ago, to start a second publication, Gay San Diego. I’m grateful to all our supporters and to our wonderful staff, and I look forward to being here for a long time to come.”