Grants Pass Daily Courier expands to fill void left by closing of two other Southern Oregon newspapers

One of Southern Oregon’s longtime newspapers has folded. The Medford Mail Tribune’s last online issue was Friday, Jan.13. The paper’s publisher, Steven Saslow, wrote in an announcement that “industry-wide reductions, and in some cases complete elimination of national advertising spends for newspapers (digital or printed editions), coupled with rising costs of content and the difficulty of hiring staff and managers have made continuing the Mail Tribune unsustainable.”

This decision comes just a few months after the paper stopped its print edition and went entirely online. It also follows the 2021 demise of the Ashland Daily Tidings, owned by the same company. The Daily Courier in Grants Pass saw an uptick in subscribers when the Mail Tribune went entirely online last fall. And now its publisher says it plans to go all-in to cover the news vacancy. Travis Moore says the historic, family-owned local newspaper is committed to covering local news and is ready to hire as many former Tribune reporters as it can and expand its footprint. Moore joins us to tell us more about the decision and what happens next.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Medford Mail Tribune started in 1909, but it is no more. After a series of cuts and reductions in recent years, the Mail Tribune, the largest newspaper in the Rogue Valley, finally ceased all operations last week. Meanwhile, the Daily Courier in Grants Pass, 30 miles up I-5, has announced plans to expand. Travis Moore is the publisher of the Daily Courier, and he joins us now. Welcome to the show.

Travis Moore: Thank you for having me.

Miller: I mentioned that the announcement last week followed years of reductions and cuts. Can you just remind us what happened to the Mail Tribune and the Ashland Daily Tidings over the last few years?

Moore: I don’t remember the exact dates, but the Daily Tidings was turned into a weekly and then it ceased altogether, I believe, a couple of years ago. The Mail Tribune stopped printing their print edition, I think it was, maybe September 30 of last fall, and they tried to go online-only. Last Wednesday they announced that they were going under and that Friday was going to be their last edition.

Miller: When they stopped printing the paper, in the fall of 2022, and then when they went all online, at that point how much of a future did you see for them?

Moore: Well, one thing we knew was that there was a demand for a print newspaper down there. So we kind of took all of October to do some planning. Then in November, we hired a circulation manager for the Medford area to start planning how we were going to build our carrier routes down there and basically distribute the paper. He started about mid-month in November. I think through about eight weeks, we had already gotten something like 450 new subscribers down there that were print subscribers…

Miller: Is that enough, 450, to justify delivery and print there?

Moore: Not quite. But when they announced that they were going to cease operations, we kind of put all the plans that we had into overdrive. We’ve been flooded with people requesting print subscriptions down there. We’ve also added at least 300 online subscribers that pay $15 a month. So now we’re in the mix of where we can actually afford to send a lot of newspapers down there every day.

Miller: It seems like you weren’t necessarily surprised by the announcement last Wednesday. It seems like you are already in a sense planning for this.

Moore: Yeah, it’s just a really tough environment to be online-only. When you’re competing against the kind of tech giants like Google, who are only charging a few pennies to advertisers for every 1,000 people that they reach, it’s really tough to get enough advertising dollars. You pretty much have to be, I would say, 90% funded by subscribers.

Miller: We recently talked to a researcher at the University of Oregon who explained that the loss of local journalism in an area can mean more corruption, more political polarization and less civic engagement in a whole variety of ways. Have you seen that already in the Rogue Valley as the Mail Tribune has been shrinking?

Moore: It’s hard to say. Not living down there in Medford, I’m not quite sure what they’ve seen. I just know about the positive side of that in our community. We did a story about something that was coming up in a Board of Commissioners’ meeting, and people showed up the next day in droves and sounded off to the commissioners about that. So, that obviously shows the important role that a newspaper can play in a community. I’m not that familiar with what they had seen already down there with the loss of their print newspaper, and it’s only been about a week since they lost the Mail Tribune altogether.

Miller: What have you historically seen as the mandate or mission of your paper geographically?

Moore: Traditionally, we’ve been mostly a Josephine County newspaper. We’re in the seat of Josephine County here in Grants Pass. But we go up a little bit into Douglas County, up I-5, a little town called Glendale. We’d already had subscribers for decades in Jackson County: we deliver to Rogue River, the small town of Rogue River, and Gold Hill every day. As far as areas south, we had already been distributing in Jackson County. Then out to the west, we have a lot of subscribers out in Cave Junction. Then to the east, just a little bit of Grants Pass. So all of Josephine County and little bits of other counties, until last week.

Miller: When you started expanding further to the south and further into the major metropolitan areas of Jackson County. So how is this going to be possible? You mentioned an increase in both print and online subscribers – some of them when the Mail Tribune went all online and then another big bunch of them last week, when they ceased all operations. What are your overall plans for expansion right now?

Moore: We just announced in today’s newspaper that we’ve hired our second former Mail Tribune reporter, Nick Morgan. He’s a great story. He is actually from Grants Pass and graduated from Grants Pass High School. He had been with the Mail Tribune for about 11 years, I believe. And the first one, that we announced earlier this week, was the Mail Tribune Senior Reporter Vickie Aldous, who had been there at the Daily Tidings and the Mail Tribune for about 24 years. We’re planning on announcing another hire – another addition to our news staff – next week. We’re going to see what level of service we can provide with those three.

The plan is to basically, when we hit certain circulation and advertising benchmarks, continue to hire more staff. My hope is that we’ll be able to do at least three more in addition to the three that we have already hired.

Miller: How are you able to do this? How are you in the position to be able to expand when the largest paper in the Rogue Valley has just folded, and it seems like every other week we get more news? I mean, this week we heard about the Lebanon Express, which also had been a longstanding paper. I don’t need to remind you of, nationwide, just how dire it has been for decades now. How is it that you’re even in a position where you can expand?

Moore: Well, we’ve been owned by the same local family for the last 125 years – the Voorhies family. Luckily, throughout the years, they’ve had good financial management. I think a good chunk is that we just don’t have any debt and have never had any debt. It’s really difficult to pay off debt as you’re also trying to pay reporters, and that’s a big deal. Honestly, I feel like we really respect our print subscribers, and I don’t think that always happens these days. You hear a lot of people say, ‘Oh, it’s the 21st century.’ But we focus our resources on community journalism, and I think our subscribers really appreciate that. There’s other segments that might get the newspaper only because of the puzzles and the weekly TV guide. We understand that and we give them what they want. I don’t think it’s any magic formula, but I would say that we’re a lot more financially stable than a lot of the newspapers I talked to. That put us in a position to be able to do this expansion.

Miller: Is it your assumption right now that the increase in subscribers from various parts of Jackson County - I assume centered in Medford - that that will fully pay for the expansion of coverage that you’re describing? In other words, will the new subscribers be able to pay for the old Mail Tribune reporters?

Moore: Yeah, we’re confident that it will, but we’re also being pretty prudent about it. We’re starting with these first three, but then we’re gonna have to hit certain benchmarks for circulation and advertising that will allow for the hiring of others. I think that there’s plenty of room to grow down there and that we’re hopefully gonna be able to hire at least three more, in addition to the three we’ve started with. Jackson County, in the Medford area, has about 150,000 people – 70,000 households or so. To put that in comparison, Josephine County has a population of about 88,000 and about 36,000 households. So there really is a pretty big opportunity down there, and we believe that it’s going to pan out and pay for these new reporters that we’re bringing on.

Miller: The losses of the Mail Tribune and the Lebanon Express have reminded some people of a bill that has already been introduced in the Legislature for this long session, which would essentially give tax credits to Oregonians who subscribe to local news outlets. This is from Representative Pham from the Portland area. What’s your thinking about this bill and the idea behind it?

Moore: Well, obviously, I’m completely biased here, but I think it would be a great thing. I think the proposal is that it will start next year, in 2024, and it makes me wonder what newspapers it could be helping right now. But, realizing that there is that time frame of 2024, I think it would really help out. With the slim margins that a lot of these papers are operating on, I think that would help many of them throughout the state.

Miller: What’s your argument for how this is a good use of taxpayer money? I mean, a tax credit is its own version of an expenditure, and in this case this would be largely for for-profit businesses. People give money to these for-profit businesses, and in so doing the state says, ‘You don’t need to give us as much tax money.’ How is that appropriate?

Moore: Well, I would say that community journalism really is one of the pillars of democracy that we can’t live without. Democracy really needs an informed public. The old business models that we have clearly haven’t been working, but we still need that informed electorate. I would say that is, to me, the biggest argument for these kind of credits.

Miller: What about the argument that you outlined earlier, which is that you, as a publisher and the owners of the paper, do seem to have worked out a model that is working right now? If you can do it, why can’t others?

Moore: Well, I want to be careful. It’s still really difficult. We have all kinds of challenges – I’m sure, same as all local businesses here in the Rogue Valley. Our housing market is really tight, and the cost of living is pretty high, and the wages in the region are fairly low. So there are plenty of challenges out there. Probably some that people don’t even think of, like it’s fairly difficult to get enough newsprint to even print the newspaper and to find enough carriers to deliver the newspaper.

I definitely don’t want to paint a picture that we somehow have found the magic plan here. But it has helped to have the stable ownership of the Voorhies family for the last 125 years and to have them be patient when there were years that didn’t go that well. Usually there’s only a small profit around here. So, that has really been a key with us is being lucky to be owned by a family that understands and has all this experience and background in the industry.

Miller: You’ve been in the newspaper business yourself in one form or another, if I’m not mistaken, since 1989. What keeps you going?

Moore: You hear every once in a while from that subscriber who really, really appreciates what you do. We’re hearing more of that these days, especially with the Mail Tribune going away. We hear from those people and they say, ‘Wow, we really understand the role that you play here in the community.’ And you just get incredibly boosted by that. I would say also, just working around the people that we already have here at the Daily Courier that are so talented and so dedicated to what they do. They’ve really helped get us through some difficult times because they just are willing to do so much and go the extra mile. That’s the part that keeps me going. I look around at the people we have here and see how hard they’re working to make this happen. How can you not be energized by that?

Miller: Travis Moore, thanks for your time today.

Moore: Thank you.

Miller: Travis Moore is the publisher of The Daily Courier, which is based in Grants Pass but is expanding now. It’s doing so because the Mail Tribune in Medford announced last week that it is fully ceasing all activities.

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