Advertising customers call out of state some give up after weeks of no returned calls and seek other media to place their business.Īnd with fewer local stories from fewer local reporters being printed in smaller newspapers on smaller pages for a smaller audience, some local journalism experts (and former State Journal staffers) are skeptical over whether the company can keep churning out its newspapers at the same pace for much longer and voicing concern about the future of local news - both in Lansing and beyond.
Now the Journal staff shares a floor in the Knapp’s Centre, all the space necessary, given that the paper is put together at a Gannett design hub in another state. As of this week, only nine people still carried the title of news “reporter” at the State Journal, a substantial staffing shift from the dozens of journalists who once worked in its downtown newsroom - housed in the Journal’s own building - about two decades ago. Last Friday’s print edition only had two original photos. The rest of the news and feature content - aside from a couple of sports stories - was written from Detroit, Washington and elsewhere.įrom a building to part of a floor: The LSJ signed a 10-year lease to move its offices to the third floor of the Knapp’s Centre.įull daily pages that were once reserved for local opinions, arts and culture, public schools and other neighboring communities have disappeared altogether.
Last Friday’s paper was only 20 pages and featured just two local news stories from two local news reporters on its front page. Recent reports showed the State Journal’s print circulation has declined almost annually for the last two decades, dropping to an all-time readership low in September to an average of about 17,500 newspapers published on Sundays and only about 11,000 copies printed on weekdays - marking an 84% drop since 2001 and the first time that the State Journal’s Sunday press run has ever dipped below 20,000 copies, according to the latest print circulation reports from the Alliance for Audited Media, an independent nonprofit widely used by mainstream newspapers. Today, the Lansing State Journal is much smaller in virtually every way, from the size of the page to the size of the staff - all driven or traceable to its plummeting circulation numbers. Dwindling circulation has kept some downtown Lansing LSJ distribution boxes empty for years.
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