From the Roundtable: Missourian in transition as 100th anniversary approaches

Times are tough in the newspaper business these days and Columbia’s rare status as a city with two competing daily newspapers is clearly under siege. The Columbia Missourian, which turns 100 in September, is in trouble financially. For me, this is one of those difficult-to-write “glass house” stories about a media competitor. I believe the Missourian in future years will become all-electronic and distributed via the Internet.

As an investor in various media ventures over the years – including the CBT – I’m well aware of the market’s competitive situation. This commentary should not be read as a paean for the Columbia Missourian title to disappear. Something has to change, however, especially when it comes to allocating precious tax dollars to an enterprise that’s clearly “upside down” financially and probably slated to remain that way forever given the ongoing bouleversement of the media.

The rough, incomplete history of journalism in Columbia includes two newspapers founded during the 19th century – the Herald and the Statesman – later merged to become the Herald-Statesman. When two titles merge, it means one or perhaps both, were on shaky ground financially.

The Columbia Daily Tribune appeared in 1901 and with the establishment of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism in 1908 came the University Missourian, later renamed the Columbia Missourian. The world’s first journalism school had a unique cachet from the start: a daily general circulation newspaper as the laboratory of instruction and practical experience.

The journalism school’s “Missouri Plan” that includes the Missourian has been hailed for training tens of thousands of journalists over the past century. Now the business of publishing a “laboratory” daily newspaper is sputtering. Galloping operating costs are only modestly offset by advertising revenue and the current subsidy from MU – a $250,000 “laboratory fee.” University officials say the cost has grown hard to justify.

If the Missourian wasn’t subsidized, Columbia’s morning newspaper would have gone out of business long ago. A recent article in the Columbia Daily Tribune described the Missourian’s increasing operating losses accompanied by a breakdown of 2007 fiscal year operating expenses.

Perhaps it isn’t known, but the Tribune’s one-dimensional story doesn’t tell us anything about the Missourian’s revenue – that is, how much advertising the newspaper sells measured in dollars. We can’t compare the Missourian with the Tribune itself in terms of revenue, operating expense and profitability because those numbers by the owner’s right as a private, closely-held family enterprise are absolutely confidential.

The past century has seen the development of both university-related and directly owned and operated media enterprises that compete with private business. This includes KOMU-TV and two FM radio stations. Since 1953, Channel Eight has been an innovative extension of the “Missouri Plan” into television and broadcast journalism. It was carefully crafted to minimize opposition both in the state General Assembly and in the milieu of private commercial broadcasting.

When the FCC allocated TV channels to Columbia in 1952, both the Missouri Farmers Association (MFA) and a joint Tribune-KFRU consortium announced their intention to file applications. Then the university trumped them both by proposing a hybrid video operation that included educational instruction during the daytime followed by local and network commercial programming in the late afternoon and evening.

The television station has enjoyed a long run of profitability while the larger of the two FM stations, KBIA, is largely amortized by advertising revenue bolstered by swells of listener contributions and the university’s Concert Series.

This leaves us with the conundrum of sustaining the Columbia Missourian as a printed daily morning newspaper in this, its 100th anniversary year.

Short of winding up its affairs and going out of business, options for the Missourian range from remaining independent but modifying its formula and perhaps frequency of operation to entering into a type of joint operating agreement with the Columbia Daily Tribune. The afternoon daily would take over the non-editorial functions of the Missourian including printing with the proviso – according to one story – that distribution of the morning newspaper would be restricted to the University of Missouri campus and its immediate environs.

Persons of a higher calling familiar with the anti-trust laws and the 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act could end up calling me on this, but something looks very fishy here. For the Missourian to enter into a JOA that would restrict its circulation to a specific area doesn’t look very cricket to me.

The discussion and debate on what’s ahead for the newspapers we have come to know and love is just beginning, but the ability to think out of the box has to be foremost. Since 1968 when the Missourian stopped competing with the Tribune in the afternoon, Columbia is almost by itself in this country with separately owned morning and afternoon daily newspapers.

The need to innovate and adapt is in the air. Here’s a precedent as reported in Variety, February 18, 1948:

“KXOK-KFRU to Transmit Facsimile Newspaper to Mo. Journalism School… Through a deal cooked up by …the St. Louis Star-Times, a p.m. rag and execs of the University of Missouri at Columbia, equipment will be supplied to transmit a daily facsimile newspaper to students at the university’s school of journalism….The scanner transmitter will be set up in Walter Williams Hall and five receivers will be placed in strategic locations on the campus and in the town… Frank L. Mott, dean of the school of journalism said that facsimile will be made a course of study at the school…”

It will be difficult for many of us to accept this, but maybe the Missourian is at the crossroads where its proprietors should consider abandoning the traditional printed product and step ahead of the crowd to offer a continuous all-electronic product. The foundation is the Missourian’s already active Web site. Where the newspaper goes from there could be one of the most exciting rides for the next hundred years at the Missourian and the world’s first school of journalism.