Like any business, the success of a weekly newspaper is dependent on how well it serves the needs - and expectations - of the community. And wowsers, how things have changed!
Back on August 13, 1881, when Uriah S. Stauffer printed Volume 1, Number 1 of The Free Press at 3:00 in the afternoon (the actual first paper is signed and on display in The Free Press office), weeklies were much different than they are today. Stauffer's publication, known then as the Quakertown Free Press, was "An Independent Home Journal Devoted to the Interest of the People of Upper Bucks".
So how did Stauffer see those interests on that summer day 125 years ago? One column of the front page was devoted to advertising, which was common in those days. Front-page advertisers paid more, and a new broadsheet in the area needed revenue. The publisher couldn't pay his bills on the newsstand price of a penny.
The ads were all for Quakertown businesses - two notary publics, two Justices of the Peace, Moyer & Smith Carriages, and Dr. W.T Bruce's homeopathic medicines. And aside from those local addresses, and the name at the top of the page, there isn't a single mention of Quakertown on page one. Nothing even vaguely pertinent to Upper Bucks. Stauffer gave his readers a compendium of short stories, foot care, drink recipes, and a brief explanation of cremation in Germany. And for those who thought QFP didn't have a prayer - well, there was one of those, too.
Apparently this is what the townsfolk wanted, because the paper was still going strong when Charles Montgomery Meredith, grandfather of Charles ("Dear Friends, Good Morning") Meredith III, purchased it from Stauffer in 1914. Charles Montgomery was succeeded in 1941 by Charles Jr., who made the leap to a five-day daily. After his passing in 1969, Charles III took over.
And that is where our story begins...
The civil and political changes in this country in the 1960's and 1970's had a major influence on the newspaper community, and the community newspaper. We saw a widening of the already-significant difference between daily papers and weeklies. For the first time, television technology was bringing us same-day coverage of a war, and the horrors of that disaster in Southeast Asia polarized the social views of this country. Even as our boys fought halfway across the globe, we fought amongst ourselves at home. And if you missed it all on the tube last night, the dailies brought both of those conflicts to us every morning. The news was rarely good.
But weekly newspapers, most of which served suburbs and rural towns, were an escape from the body counts and protests. All across America, publications like The Free Press were community love-fests. The stories were locally informative and feel-good, with a strong focus on things like family activities, school honor rolls and church suppers. Not monumental journalism, but vital to the psyche of fractured communities, which saw their sons arrive home in coffins, while the country's leaders were unable to justify the losses.
And in an ironic turn-about, television news started emulating the values of those weeklies! When the novelty of seeing a war first-hand wore off, people found that film of dismembered soldiers and napalmed villages were not what we wanted in our homes, particularly at the dinner hour. The economy was terrible, there was a civil rights struggle, even Elvis died. Americans needed to be entertained, not depressed. "Happy talk" television news was born.
Happy stories, featuring lots of happy local people, doing lots of happy local things. Weathermen with corny gimmicks. Jokes and banter between the anchor people. Life is good here on Channel Six. TV news morphed from a video version of a daily newspaper to that of a weekly. Channel 6, the first-and-best happy talker in this area, soon captured an incredible fifty percent of the news audience.
And what was their secret? Something that weekly local newspapers had known forever - what people want to see (or read about) most is - themselves! Pictures of their kids. Weddings and ham suppers and Little League. The same recipe that fueled the success of The Free Press for almost a century.
But though some things change slowly, everything does change eventually. In America, we tumbled unceremoniously from the Age of Trust to the Age of Cynicism when Richard Nixon uttered those immortal words "I am not a crook". For the first time, a president had to actually deny being a criminal. We finally saw our leaders as not only fallible, but incredibly culpable. And that we had been incredibly gullible.
And with the Watergate revelations by Woodward and Bernstein in The Washington Post, investigative journalism and hard truth became the requirements of any publication. Suddenly, all of our political leaders, and our big businesses, and our pseudo-evangelists, were the target of someone's microscope. And this wasn't confined to national stories, or the big cities, or even the daily papers. Small-town America had inquiring minds, too. What is our borough council, or board of supervisors, up to? Weeklies had to adjust, or suffer.
Unfortunately, The Free Press suffered. There was no way that Charlie Meredith, the third-generation publisher from a family that was the definition of a pillar of the community, was going to get involved with stories that might be negative toward his hometown and his friends. And who could blame him? He was who he was, and there was just no other option. TFP continued as a community bulletin board. Seldom was heard a discouraging word. Except in the advertising department.
Publication went to twice a week in 1986, and, finally, in 1996, the Meredith family sold their beloved paper to The Morning Call. And if anyone believes that running a weekly is like running a daily, here is Exhibit A that says it ain't so. After only five years, The MCall admitted defeat, and was ready to shut TFP down. Only the foresight of Jim Webb, publisher of Berks-Mont newspapers, saved the day - and the paper.
Webb, and Regional Manager Lanita Lum, knew what was missing. Local insight. Local opinion. Telling the whole local story. Calling a spade a spade. Stressing the two advantages that weeklies have - time to get the whole story, and space to tell it. An important local event could be examined and explained by a reporter, columnists, an editorial, and multiple letters to the editor. While the dailies have fine Quakertown-based reporters, they are headquartered in Allentown and Doylestown, serving large geographic areas and populations. Such in-depth focus on Quakertown, Richland, and the surrounds is not on their radars.
Today, The Free Press reaches over 18,000 people every week. Advertising revenue is at an all-time high. In an age when daily newspaper readership is in free-fall because of television, the Internet, and exotic forms of communication like podcasts, Volume 125 is alive and very well, thank you. The front page now is more likely to tell you about council than cremations, and the drink recipes and foot care have been replaced by local columnists, local editorials, and local sports stories. We don't always get to tell you first, but we always get to tell you best.
Uriah Stauffer, and Charles Montgomery Meredith, might not recognize their baby, but we believe that they would be proud.