A History of Mount Dora’s News (Part 4)
A newspaper fades and then disappears, leaving Mount Dorans to wonder at what cost.
July 30, 2015
In 1982 the Mount Dora Topic was purchased by William Matthews, adding to a stable of local newspapers that included the Triangle Shopping Guide, Tavares Citizen and Eustis News. These were all produced in the same building on Route 19A. While each paper featured some local coverage, a lot of material was shared between all the publications.
Jody Harris worked for the Mount Dora Topic in the late 1980s, serving as editor, writing a column and providing photography. The paper also depended heavily upon stringers and outside contributors.
Gone were the days of a fully-staffed newspaper. Still, Harris says that working at the Topic provided unique opportunities. “As a weekly, we weren’t challenged by the dailies,” he says. “We could spend more time on a story.”
Given the smaller staffing, there were surely local issues that local media couldn’t adequately. In 1986, tensions arose between the city’s police department and black residents over mistreatment and racial slurs. The situation was not addressed until media outside the area began making enquiries.
At the same time, competition from the dailies increased. The Lake Sentinel began printing a daily county edition, and its editorial staff burgeoned to more than a dozen reporters, three sports writers, three photographers and three editors.
Besides the dailies, the Topic competed for advertising with the Triangle Shopping Guide, print magazines (FOCUS Lake County, Lake Healthy Living) and coupon books.
With small editorial resources and heavy competition for advertising, the Topic as a subscription product had a hard time competing against free community papers like the Triangle Shopping Guide.
There were moments still for the Topic, as when the Storm of the Century hit Mount Dora in 1993, uprooting some 500 trees and splitting another 1,500 and knocking out power throughout the city for days. The Topic brimmed with photos, resources and updates as the rebuilding process slowly begin.
When Matthews died in 2003, the family sold all publications to Independent Publications out of Bryn Mawr, PA.
According Ann Yager, who has worked for Triangle publications for the past 35 years, the three city papers didn’t continue for long. “We did not have the advertising to support three weekly publications in addition to our Triangle Shopping Guide,” she says. “Our sales staff was responsible for all four publications and advertisers preferred the Triangle Shopping Guide because of its larger circulation (then more than 30,000).”
Eventually, the Eustis News, Tavares Citizen and Mount Dora Topic were merged in 2006 into one entity called Triangle News.
Cheryl Crisp was publisher when the decision was handed down to shutter the Mount Dora Topic. “Back then it was ‘cut costs, cut costs, cut costs,’ and none of the newspapers were making any money,” she says. She now works in sales for Waterman Village, a popular retirement community here in town. “I was lucky to find a second career to transition into.”
Triangle News only lasted for a short time, eventually becoming Triangle News Leader a hybrid shopper/newspaper. “Our direction and content changed from being 100% advertising to including Lake County community news and happenings, Yager says. “We no longer considered ourselves a shopper, but instead a community paper. We do not staff a reporter for the Triangle News Leader; instead we are fed good news by our community — churches, schools, organizations along with our readers. We also work very closely with the chambers and city leaders to promote events.”
In 2013 the Triangle News Leader was sold again to Lakeway Publishing Group of Morristown, TN, in a deal that included the Pasco Shopper, Sumter Shopper, Clermont News Leader and Osceola News Gazette. A creative team in Clermont now handles layout for four of the regional papers, and digital access has been expanded through an updated website and classified services like Central Florida Rides and Job Network.
“In our Mount Dora office, there are only five employees,” Yager says, “where at one time more than 20 people were employed out of this location. We all wear many hats!” Office manager Marion Witt has been there 33 years but is retiring soon.
“Sadly, so many of the people that were very involved in local papers have passed away,” Yager says.
* * *
It’s estimated there are still about 7,000 community newspapers publishing weekly in the United States. While local newspapers may be faring better than the beleaguered dailies (less competition in their market and a more traditional readership), the financial challenges they face are real and deepening.
Real numbers are hard to gather on trends in weekly newspapers because only a percentage of them report circulation numbers to agencies like CVC, AAM, VAC or BAP. Jim Bingamen of the Circulation Verification Council (CVC) said that of the 2,307 weeklies tracked in their audit system, 48 have ceased publication since 2010. (He added, too, that many more have started in weekly and monthly cycles.)
However, closings have been increasing this year. Digital First Media was built out of two bankrupt newspaper chains, Journal Register and Media News Group, with 75 daily papers and an equal number of weeklies with a combined readership of about 66 million. Vowing to transform the newspaper business, CEO John Paton launched an aggressive “digital first” strategy, redesigned the entire news operation to feed information out fast to the platform of the new customer’s choice — including web, mobile, SMS, social media (and, yes, even newspapers.) But the venture capitalist who was writing their checks lost patience with DFM after two years, and now the company is seeking to woo a buyer by eliminating editorial positions and closing weekly newspapers — ten weeklies in Michigan alone this past June. Industry-wide, some 12,000 journalist positions eliminated in just the past year, a 10% decrease.
But what has been lost?
Penelope Muse Abernathy in her book Saving Community Journalism (2014) says that newspapers provide three essential things for their communities.
First, they set the agenda for public policy debate. This is the news that no one really cares to read but editors make sure it’s on their pages — to attract the notice of citizens and suggest a course of action. In his book Losing the News That Feeds Democracy (2009), Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Alex Jones estimated that 85 percent of the journalism that affects major public-policy change has originated with newspaper reporters — at both large and small newspapers.
Second, community newspapers encourage regional economic growth and commerce by providing a marketplace where readers and advertisers can connect. Beyond that, however, journalists in small-town newspapers play an important role in encouraging long-term economic growth and the prosperity of the entire community.
And third, they encourage a sense of geographical community. Local community is all about what impacts life at home — school, sports, parenting, events. “A good newspaper is an anchor in a community,” says Ron Heifetz, professor in Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “A newspaper reminds a community every day of its collective identity, the stake we have in one another, and the lessons of history.”
Played back here into Mount Dora, the lack of a local newspaper’s voice is made worse as the daily papers which successfully competed against the Topic now provide less coverage of the town.
Last year New Media Investment bought Halifax Media, owner of the Leesburg Daily Commercial, as part of a billion-dollar acquisition binge. It’s hard to see New Media Investment interested in more than short-term profit. The Orlando Sentinel still prints a Lake County edition seven days a week — as long as the ad dollars are here, newspapers will be printed — but where in the ’90s the Sentinel’s Lake editorial bureau had more than a dozen reporters, three sports writers, three photographers and three editors, now there’s just Lake County columnist Lauren Ritchie and two reporters. Ritchie is an accomplished journalist, but she has to cast a wide net.
Cost of delivery into outlying areas is costly. The Leesburg Daily Commerical has a delivery agreement now for The Orlando Sentinel. How long will we continue to see those papers in our midst?
The burden of local news reporting falls increasingly upon local Mount Dora shoulders. Fortunately, there are an increasing number of local voices in the fray. Because none have the resources and staffing to effectively cover Mount Dora as the Mount Dora Topic did in its glory days (O for a paper with the editorial fire of Mabel Norris Reese and business acumen of Al Liveright!), it will take a lot of smaller voices to collectively set the agenda for public policy debate, foster economic growth and encourage a sense of community.
As Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel write in The Elements of Journalism, “Out of a diversity of voices the people are more likely to know the truth and thus be able to self-govern.”
Let’s hope that Mount Dora’s next hundred years of news will be help the city live and grow and prosper for the benefit of all.
The series:
Part 1 here: Mount Dora’s news began at the counter of the general store.
Part 2 here: The Topic gets an editor willing to stand up for the truth.
Part 3 here: The Topic gets big as Mount Dora grows up.
Part 4 here: The Topic fades and then disappears, leaving Mount Dorans to wonder at what cost.
— David Cohea (djcohea@gmail.com)— David Cohea (djcohea@gmail.com)
Originally published at www.mountdoracitizen.com on July 30, 2015.
