Part 3 - Ghostbusters: The Coshocton Beacon

The buzzy term is “ghost newspaper.” Whether the legacy paper in any given market fits that definition is a matter of debate, but it’s clear that many local papers were shadows of their former selves, even before the devastating hit of the Coronavirus. This series is dedicated to the entrepreneurs determined to reinvent the local media in their communities. 

About 65 miles east from its challenger in Mansfield, Ohio, Gannett faces a more traditional competitor to its daily paper, The Coshocton Tribune, in a lovely city of around 11,000 residents that hugs rolling hills and streams near Ohio’s Amish country. 

The Coshocton Beacon, a weekly, was founded in 2008 by industry veteran Mark Fortune, and acquired in January 2020, by a marketing company, AloNovus, based in nearby Millersburg, Ohio. They’ve positioned the paper to take advantage of community disappointment with cutbacks by the publicly traded Gannett-owned Tribune. 

The article on the acquisition mentioned that AloNovus’s three recent acquisitions continue “to evaluate growth opportunities afforded by the rapid decline in daily newspaper subscribership against the demand by advertisers and residents for locally-owned, community publications.”

Fortune, who remains as publisher, also wrote a column after the sale, touting the benefits of a growing regionally-based chain, with roots in the digital marketing industry.

“...the year of 2019 represented the busiest year ever for newspaper transactions… that we can now offer neighboring markets is a huge plus to many businesses and – coupled with the digital services brought on by the Bluefoot division of AloNovus is obviously an advantage in today’s world.”

The Beacon, a free-circulation reader-request community weekly, seems well-positioned to compete with the 2,000 circulation Gannett daily. 

The Beacon has a paywall-free website that Fortune said is growing in traffic. Unlike the Source, it has placed its bet on print, even with the associated fixed costs of production and delivery.

“My research led me to believe that while many of the larger media companies were focused on doing digital, none had yet figured out a viable means to make any money,” he wrote in an email response. “Further, our physical location in this part of the state led me to believe that a print medium would still be well received.”

It’s a small operation. The Beacon’s staff directory lists five employees with three of the five, including Fortune, involved in news. They appear to have more resources than Gannett is placing in Coshocton. The Tribune’s website lists only a single contact, a reporter. The website mainly includes state and regional news while the Beacon’s is relentlessly local.

Fortune said the community response has been “overwhelmingly positive… We focus on what we do well, and we try to do it better each week.” 

Success comes with increasing commitment: He said the Beacon’s local team didn’t anticipate the volume of news that the community would contribute on a weekly basis, the expectations that these contributions would be published and that - at least before the corona virus struck - the Beacon would show up at local events. But those expectations needed to be met. 

“People in the community tell us that ‘They love the Beacon’,” he wrote. “Note the word. They do not use the word ‘like.’ They use the word ‘love’.”