Caught a ride from Grasonville across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge with old friend Larry Effingham. Hopped out east of Annapolis, ready for a beautiful day! Sunny and cool. Perfect!
I am walking the
American Discovery Trail, and the genius of the ADT is that it really reveals this country to the people who take the journey. I am told that the Appalachian Trail goes through the woods... the Georgia woods, the Carolina woods, the Virginia woods, etc., but consistently in wooded country. Hikers see trees, but not much else. The ADT sends us through farmland, beautiful villages, big cities, mountains... you name it. Today I left the little shore town of Grasonville, walked across the Severn River Bridge and saw the magnificent Naval Academy at Annapolis, and headed through fancy suburban neighborhoods, horse farms, wetlands, and forests toward Washington, DC. It's a great way to get to know and appreciate this beautiful country of ours.
Just as I've formed a theory about distance and time, today I learned about elevation. Once I got past the Eastern Shore I started to encounter hills, and walking up hills is more work than walking on flat terrain. Burns up energy and slows me down. On the golf course, we learn that a wind in our face hurts us more than a wind behind us helps us. Same with walking hills. Walking down a hill is never as easy as walking up a hill is difficult. Gotta get in practice for West Virginia, where the hills are serious!
My wife told me last night to stop grousing about my sore feet. She said, "The Poynter site is for journalists, and they want you to write about newspapers. If you want to write about your feet, post to a chiropodists' Web site." Good advice, which I will take after I tell this one final, generally happy, story.
I was getting ready to head out this morning and squeezed my sore feet into my shoes. That's when the penny dropped. I'm not supposed to squeeze my feet into shoes. The damned shoes were too tight! It appears that shoes that fit just fine in the store are too small once I walk on hot pavement carrying 50 pounds. Duh! When I got to Annapolis I hired a cab to take me to Eastern Mountain Sports, where a nice kid fitted me with shoes that give my toes room to wiggle, and sent me off with goo to apply to my barking dogs. This should solve the problem, and I won't mention it again.
So, let me talk about newspapers.
Chuck Lyons is the CEO of
The Gazette community newspaper group, which publishes a number of suburban weeklies outside Washintgon, D.C., and
The (Everett, Wa.) Herald., both of which are owned by The Washington Post Company. His community newspapers around Washington are thriving. Readership is growing, ad revenues, particularly classified revenues, are booming. I've known Chuck for a long time, and know him to be a good operator and a smart guy. His market is growing and prosperous. But his corporate cousins over at
The Washington Post are steadily losing circulation and advertising revenues in the same good market in which Chuck's papers are booming. Is Chuck just a better guy than his
Post counterparts?
He's good, but not that good! I know some of the
Post people, and they are smart and professional and hard-working, and the
Post is one of a handful of the best newspapers on the planet. So why are Chuck's papers thriving in the same market where the
Post is sinking? The answer lies in the competitors each faces. The
Post's market share is nibbled away by scores of print and Internet competitors. The changing media consumption habits of young people and the proliferation of media options made possible by evolving technology nurture competitors -- print and broadcast and online -- and erode the Post's once-dominant market share.
Chuck's suburban papers don't face much competition. For example, his "help wanted" advertising is booming on the strength of ads for service sector jobs. Ads for janitors, drivers, and shoe salesmen may not be sexy, but they are also not leaking off to Monster.com the way professional "help wanted" is. And his real estate ads are used by local agents to troll for new listings among his homeowning readers. Copious coverage of schools and high school sports, impossible for a metro like the
Post, continues to attract the young readers who don't read metro dailies anymore.
The business model of the
Post, and other big city dailies, is vulnerable to a death of a thousand cuts from competitors each carving off a piece of the
Post's market share. Chuck's papers still have the field to themselves.
A week of trudging along highways provides a bleak perspective on roadside America. When you're whizzing past at 70 mph you don't notice the weeds, empty beer cans, rusty car parts and discarded Pampers that lie along the side of the road. But once in a while I'll find a ditch full of disgusting water. Nasty, red, oily and lethal-looking. And yet there will be a bunch of frogs, croaking and hopping and enjoying life in what looks like a cesspool. Just demonstrates the power of a good attitude!
Headed for Greenbelt tomorrow.
