In this episode, Eliza Gaines, publisher of WEHCO Media, offers a compelling narrative of resilience and innovation in local journalism. Carrying forward her family's legacy – which dates back to 1909 – Gaines has led the digital transformation of WEHCO’s local news titles in recent years by prioritizing quality journalism and strategic digital adaptation.
Among the company's most notable innovations was their iPad program, which replaced print delivery while maintaining the newspaper's familiar reading experience. This bold move preserved 79% of their subscriber base and significantly reduced distribution costs. Complementing this, WEHCO introduced subscriber-exclusive content, gaining nearly 19,000 new subscribers across their markets.
Gaines emphasizes the importance of putting readers first, a philosophy inherited from her grandfather. She recognizes the challenges of engaging younger audiences by focusing on personalization, digestible content and positive storytelling. Their approach includes feature stories highlighting community achievements, short-form content and local podcasts.
By staying true to their values while embracing innovation, WEHCO Media demonstrates a sustainable path for local news in the digital age.
Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Transcript
Ruairi Doyle
[00:00] Hi everyone and welcome to a new episode of the Perspectives podcast. I am your host Ruairi Doyle and I am here to dive into the latest trends and ideas in technology and publishing together with incredible guests. So whether you are an industry pro, a curious learner or just looking for some inspiration, you are in the right place.
Today's guest is Eliza Gaines, the publisher of WEHCO Media and a fourth-generation leader in her family's storied newspaper business.
Based out of Arkansas and serving five surrounding states in the southern US, WEHCO Media operates a number of daily and weekly newspapers and magazines alongside holdings in cable TV and internet. First founded in 1909 by her great-grandfather, Clyde Palmer, the story of WEHCO is one of resilience, reinvention and regional prominence. The name WEHCO is an acronym for Walter E. Hussman Company, named after Clyde's son-in-law, Eliza's grandfather, who joined the business in the 1930s. The company's legacy includes a well-known battle in local news history when one of its papers, The Arkansas Democrat, took on and ultimately took over Gannett's Arkansas Gazette, a rare David Beats Goliath moment in local journalism.
Throughout her career, Eliza has held a wide range of roles at WEHCO from executive editor of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette to vice president of audience development. Now as Publisher overseeing daily and weekly titles, Eliza is focused on securing the future of local journalism while upholding its role as a trusted watchdog for the communities it serves.
Today, we'll talk about the challenges and opportunities facing local news, what it takes to retain new audiences, and how publishers can rethink their business models not only for immediate survival, but for long-term success.
Eliza, you are very welcome to Perspectives. It's great to have you here. Where are you joining us from?
Eliza Gaines
[1:55] Thank you for having me. I'm in my office at the Arkansas Democratic Gazette in downtown Little Rock.
Ruairi Doyle
[2:03] The engine room of the business.
Eliza Gaines
[2:06] That's right. Our flagship.
Ruairi Doyle
[2:09] So you grew up surrounded by newspapers. Your family has been in the business for four generations. Do you remember a moment when you realized you wanted to be part of the business as well or was it something you resisted at first?
Eliza Gaines
[2:23] I've always been really proud of our family's history in the business and I've always loved to read and write. I was an English major. So, I was very enthusiastic about working in the newsroom, but I did have some reservations about working on the business side just because I was worried that I wouldn't be able to use my creativity as much.
And when I mentioned that concern to my dad, he kind of laughed and said, you have no idea how creative you're going to have to be working on the business side of things. And he was totally right, of course, because our industry has changed and continues to change so quickly. So, you're forced to be creative and come up with new ideas and think outside the box. So, a different kind of creativity on the business side, but I still really enjoy it.
Ruairi Doyle
[3:09] And from where you sit today, what's one thing you now know about running a local news organization that you wish you had understood earlier on?
Eliza Gaines
[3:20] There's a quote from Penny Abernathy, who is an expert on sustainability and local media. And she was also my mentor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, when I was in graduate school there. And she said, good journalism alone won't save local news if the business model is broken. So, we have a lot of pride in our reputation for great journalism, but that's not enough, unfortunately, to ensure our sustainability.
So, what I have learned and what I wish I had known earlier is that we can't be everything to everybody. We really have to identify what we can do better than anyone else in the community and then align our resources and our costs around those value drivers. And so that's how we ensure that we are sustainable, and we have loyal readers for a long time. So, I think ultimately, we just have to identify what makes us essential in people's everyday lives.
Ruairi Doyle
[4:25] And today we see local newspapers across the US and internationally at a crossroads. Many are shrinking or shutting down, but WEHCO has taken a different approach, investing heavily in digital transformation while maintaining strong community ties. How would you describe the mindset and the strategy that has given WEHCO's titles such longevity?
Eliza Gaines
[4:51] So, I'd say that the bottom line is that we just refuse to compromise the quality of our journalism for the sake of savings. So, while other newspapers were cutting their staff, we did the opposite. We have invested heavily in our newsrooms so that we can maintain the quality and the quantity of journalism that people are used to.
Ruairi Doyle
[5:13] Your grandfather, Walter E. Husman, was known for his approach to serving a newspaper's constituencies. Readers first, then advertisers, employees, creditors, and stockholders. How do you view or continue that philosophy in today's media landscape?
Eliza Gaines
[5:29] Yes, so my grandfather said that if a newspaper and its publisher put readers first, it will do well journalistically and financially. And this absolutely still holds true. And I think this shows with our investment in our newsrooms and how we serve readers. So, the business is always changing, constantly changing, but the one thing that should be a constant is putting readers first. And of course, this is our goal as journalists, but it's also financially necessary since we are a subscription driven business.
Ruairi Doyle
[5:59] I love this mindset of refusing to compromise on quality. Let's dive into audience development. You mentioned that younger audiences often associate newspapers with something outdated, but yet still care deeply about their communities. How do you bridge that gap and how do you make paying for local journalism feel as essential as supporting local business or voting in a state or a federal election?
Eliza Gaines
[6:27] So, I think that younger audiences, they see right through news sources that are leading one way or the other. And so just being in the middle and being very trustworthy, I think that's a great way to bridge a gap because they pick up on that right away if you're, you know, biased one way or the other. They don't want to be in an echo chamber. They want, you know, to just have all the facts and then decide the truth themselves. So, I think if they see it as a watchdog, someone who holds government leaders accountable and just gives the straight facts that that will help bridge the gap. But they need to know that we exist. And so, for a long time, we just relied on our legacy and our reputation and just assumed people knew who we are, and they don't anymore.
You know, it used to be that you'd walk around town and you'd see people reading the newspaper. It was like free advertising, free promotion. And we don't have that anymore. People don't see, you know, what you're reading on your phone. So, I think just exposing them to more of our content and what we're doing and how it impacts, you know, everything across our state, in our cities, our communities, through the things that we cover and their effects.
Ruairi Doyle
[7:38] As we think about newspapers as pillars of civic life, some national and local publishers have also experimented with non-profit models allowing readers to give donations or charitable contributions in lieu of paying for a subscription. This is something I think you've applied at WEHCO as well. Can you tell us a bit about the strategy and has it been successful?
Eliza Gaines
[8:02] So, all of our readers do have to pay for a subscription. I know that some newspapers have a different model where you don't have to pay your subscription if you're a donor, but for us, donations are in addition to being a subscriber, or you don't have to be a subscriber to donate. So, what we have done is partner with the Arkansas Community Foundation, which is a nonprofit, so that donations to our fund are tax deductible. And so, the Community Foundation administers the funds, and we thought this was great for transparency's sake as well. So, we submit requests, and then the money is given to us from the Community Foundation. And it has to be all local news related and they have to approve it. So, I think that that helps with the transparency as well.
So we've had great response from our community in terms of fundraising. People see what has happened in other states to newspapers, know, communities that don't have newspapers anymore. And when they travel, they pick up a local newspaper and it's just nothing compared to ours. And they don't want that to happen here.
So, over the years, readers have asked us how they could support us and support our mission beyond a subscription. And so this is a way to do that and they can make a larger investment. again, it's just donations are only used to support newsroom operations. So, travel, send reports around the state to cover important issues, training for the newsroom staff, fund new positions for really specialized coverage, that kind of thing.
Ruairi Doyle
[9:36] Building audiences today also means rethinking how news is delivered. Younger audiences are used to consuming news in quicker bytes or sound bites. Everything from push notifications to reels to TikTok videos to newsletters. What have you and the team at WEHCO learned about what younger readers value in news products today? And how are the products and brands that you're overseeing adapting storytelling to match these insights and habits?
Eliza Gaines
[10:07] I think what we've seen is that news fatigue is a real thing. And I think a lot of younger people were very overwhelmed during COVID with all of the bad news and just constant bad news. And so I think that they want to be able to get their news to be easily digestible on social newsletters, podcasts. What I say is something that parents can read in the carpool line or listen to in the carpool line. It has to be quick and really engaging. We know they want more local content, more unique content and personalized is a biggie. And positive news, which is something that I think a lot of people appreciate during these times.
So, in terms of bridging that gap with the younger audience, personalization is huge and people just don't want to have to sort through things that they're not interested in. They want to be able to quickly get to what they want and not have to go through an entire newspaper. It's just changed so much.
In terms of social, we had to come into terms with the fact that it's not necessarily always going to lead to a subscription, but it's really good for building our brand awareness and a good way for people to connect with our reporters and video is obviously a great way to engage people. We have been really working on connecting with younger audiences, especially in Arkansas. And we did a survey recently. And something that came up a lot was they would love a short localized daily podcast. And several of them mentioned NPR's Up First podcast, which I've never listened to, but just a short daily podcast localized.
Ruairi Doyle
[11:53] You mentioned some of the feedback from younger audiences has been about positive news and positive content. How has the newsroom been adapting to that and how are you bringing it through in any of your brands and channels?
Eliza Gaines
[12:05] One way that we bring positive coverage into our product is with our featured content. So, Arkansans who are doing really interesting things or positive things in the community and highlighting those people. We do that every Sunday with a high profile cover. So, it's one person every Sunday who is in Arkansas and is doing something really inspiring or it's, you know, is very well known in Arkansas and just learning about their life. I think that's a good way to do it. And also just exciting things going on in our state, what makes it unique music, arts, culture, food – food is a big one. And, I think just bringing more features, content, servicing it more, maybe in social or on our website and not just having all that heavy news at the top.
Ruairi Doyle
[12:56] I think that's one of the challenges of the digital news product is above the fold and you have limited real estate in what you can promote and what you can feature and you also need to get key messages, key stories across and when it's the printed product you can have much more space to kind of drive people to some of these other parts of the publication that might not be as serious or time sensitive in terms of what's going on in the community or in the world.
Let's talk a bit about WEHCO’s iPad program, the initiative where you distributed iPads to drive digital subscriptions. It was a bold idea and investment for the business, both financially and I'm sure logistically. I'd love to go back to what was the original strategy behind it and what has made it so successful and how is it doing today?
Eliza Gaines
[13:49] So, I feel like this could be an entire podcast. Just this topic could be an entire podcast episode, but in 2018, we were kind of at a crossroads. We had been profitable for over 20 consecutive years. And that year we were looking at a loss. So, we were in a tricky position. We knew we didn't want to cut our news hole or reduce our newsroom staff as many other newspapers had done. And we just realized there was no way that print could compete with the economics of delivering content digitally.
The problem was we know that people really enjoyed the newspaper format. And we thought if we just moved them to a website or an app that was completely different from that format, we would lose a lot of subscribers. So, my dad, who was the publisher at the time, he came up with the idea to stop home delivery of the printed newspaper and instead offer subscribers iPad to read an exact replica of the print edition. So, we still do single copy sales daily and then home delivery on Sunday. But people are now reading the replica edition on their iPad, on their tablet, or on their phone. So, they have the experience of reading the newspaper, but we don't have the cost of the print delivery. So, it was incredibly successful, and all credit goes to my dad and the team that was working on this at the time. When he told me this idea, I was on maternity leave, and I thought it was nuts. But I have so much trust in him. He's just, he's always been a visionary. So, we went for it.
So, 79% of subscribers kept their subscription and we gave thousands of iPads away and some people already had tablets so they didn't want an iPad, but they kept their subscription. So, I think there were two really important things that led to the success of this. And the first was the same format. People didn't want that big of a change. It was too big of a leap to ask them to go to just an app or just that was not the same format. And they're able to make the font bigger. They can look at more photos and videos and extra content. And we could add pages easily to the replica edition because there's no, we don't deal with the cost of the newsprint. You can share stories really easily. So, I think that was the first part of it was just the same format. And then there were some additional things we could do.
And then the second, was the customer service that we were able to provide people. Some of our subscribers are older and having to deal with setting up the iPad was hard for some of them. So, we had great customer service, one-on-one trainings with readers and good communication about the process and how everything was going to happen. And we were very transparent about the economics of why we had to do this. And I think people really appreciated that.
Ruairi Doyle
[16:46] And as you mentioned, you've now transitioned from what was originally a seven-day print delivery to one day print and six days digital. Did the iPad initiative and its success play a role in that change?
Eliza Gaines
[17:01] Absolutely. Again, we are a statewide newspaper. So, thinking about the carriers, we would have to pay the expense of going all over the state to deliver these newspapers. It was just a no brainer.
Ruairi Doyle
[17:12] And how has retention been since you made the change to digital?
Eliza Gaines
[17:16] Retention has been great. The Medill School of Journalism in Chicago, they actually did a study of digital subscriptions throughout the country and found that we had the highest retention of any newspaper. And I think part of that is just because people love the format. But also, if they cancel their subscription, they have to give their iPad back.
Ruairi Doyle
[17:35] So, we know that the business model for local news has fundamentally evolved. The high margin revenue streams from print advertising have changed. Every dollar is different and, in some cases, harder to earn in a digital environment.
You've said that your goal is to make the newsroom fully funded by digital revenue. I'm just curious and interested to know what sort of other revenue experiments have you been trying and what has been the most promising? And is there anything that surprised you with success and failure on that side?
Eliza Gaines
[18:10] So, our most successful recent initiative is our subscriber exclusive effort. And that is just tagging certain stories on our website as subscriber exclusive and reserving them for people who pay for our product. And this was just such a no brainer. I don't know why we didn't do it sooner. And I hope other newspapers start doing it more often as well. So, it's basically just the stories that readers can't find anywhere else and we offer a trial of $1 for eight weeks. And we've had better attention than any other offer made to potential customers with this effort. I think mainly because the stories are stories that they're not finding anywhere else and they really just want to read that story. And so $1 for eight weeks sounds, you know, very reasonable to them. And then we've kept them after those eight weeks. So, it was not terribly hard to implement. And it's just it's up to the editors to decide what content that they want to tag. But most of our content is tagged subscriber exclusive. So, we launched that in 2023 and it's gone through all of our markets and we have gained almost 19,000 new subscribers across our markets.
Ruairi Doyle
[19:26] And just for clarity, the subscriber exclusive is included in the subscription.
Eliza Gaines
[19:32] Yes, yes.
Ruairi Doyle
[19:34] Many small to mid-sized newspapers are continuing to struggle with the economies of paywalls. Anything else that you've approached with your titles than what we've discussed today that's been successful?
Eliza Gaines
[19:46] We never really struggled with this because we've always had a tight paywall. When a lot of newspapers started putting their stuff online, you know, in the early 2000s, my dad said, no, we're not doing that for free. Why would we give away our journalism for free? Because what people are paying for is the journalism, not the platform necessarily. So, we're very certain paywalls always happen. So, it's not really a surprise to people that they have to pay for our content.
Ruairi Doyle
[20:12] And looking forward into the future, many publishers are focused on immediate survival rather than long-term innovation. Given the success of everything that's been happening at WEHCO, I'd love to know: what do you think local newspapers should be thinking about five to 10 years from now to ensure they remain firmly relevant and financially viable?
Eliza Gaines
[20:39] Well, as you know, things change really quickly in our industry and with AI, they're going to change even more rapidly. So, I think instead of worrying or guessing what it will look like in five years, you have to clearly identify what your core values are and just commit to sticking to those as you adapt to meet the reader's needs. So, all we can do right now is use the information we have at this moment in our hands to try and create a path to sustainability. So, what are the things that we know now that will be true in five, 10, 15 years? We know that people will always want reliable news. They will want to access it easily in a format that works for them. And they want a new source that they can trust. And that goes the extra mile to dig deeper into the issues that really matter to them.
Ruairi Doyle
[21:32] And you mentioned there AI, which is in some cases a little bit of an elephant in the room for many industries, not just publishing. How are you and the team at WEHCO currently thinking about it and anything that you've been incorporating into the newsroom or into the digital side of the business in any capacity?
Eliza Gaines
[21:55] We've mainly used AI to streamline our workflows just in terms of page design and production, and then also to improve reader acquisition and retention. So how can we use AI to summarize our coverage to be formatted for different audiences and platforms? How can we use AI to give the readers more context with charts or tables, lists? And that kind of thing.
We do not use it ever for story creation. We're very strict on that. Our AI policy is part of our ethics policy. And we publish that on all of our websites so that readers can see exactly where our policy is and can hold us accountable to that. We'd also like to eventually use it for newsletter automation instead of having a person have to manually put those together.
Ruairi Doyle
[22:48] Eliza, it's been fantastic to connect and learn about WEHCO and the values-based approach in the business and sticking to the fundamentals of quality journalism and providing your readers with a quality service and quality product.
I just want to end on one question that we like to ask all of our guests. And I'm particularly interested in your answer, given that you grew up more than anybody we've talked to yet in this industry. In a parallel universe where you did not grow up in a family in the newspaper business, what career might you have pursued if you weren't publisher of WEHCO?
Eliza Gaines
[23:26] If I were not in this job, I think I would probably be an author. I still love to write and do it any chance I get.
Ruairi Doyle
[23:35] Nice. Okay, well, that's a wrap on our latest episode of the PressPectives podcast. Thank you very much, Eliza, for joining us and thank you all so much for tuning in.
We bring you new episodes every month, each one featuring a different leader in the world of publishing. So be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube to catch the latest. Thank you, Eliza.
Eliza Gaines
[23:57] All right, thanks so much.
So be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube to catch the latest. Bye for now.
