Earlier this year Richard Ballantine, publisher of the Durango Herald, announced to his staff that he was stepping down after 30 years in charge of the organization. Ballantine indicated that new skills and ideas were needed to deal with changing times and technologies.
An August 24 Herald article, “Richard Ballantine has left the Building,” stated, “It was precisely the same reasoning his mother cited when she passed the publisher’s mantle to her oldest child.” (For those not familiar with the Herald, it is been in the Ballantine family since 1952.)
- Morley Ballantine, 1983: “In this swiftly-changing time when we’re in transition between the age of technocracy and the coming information age that prophets predict, it’s important to have vigorous leadership. … Richard’s bright and quick and, above all, he has common sense.”
- Richard Ballantine, 2013: “Digital distribution and digital interactivity is where communication is and is going. We felt we had to have a leader who knows how we can play a role in that.”
The change in newspaper publishing pointed out by the Ballantines shows a drastic decline in the number of jobs. In Colorado, employment in the sector dropped from 7,508 workers in 2001 to 3,642 jobs in 2012. This is an annualized 6.4% rate of decrease. During this period the number of Colorado newspaper publishers dropped from 176 to 150.
In 2001 the Colorado newspaper industry paid about $278.5 million in total wages. By 2012 that amount had plummeted to $161.4 million, an annualized decrease of 4.8%.
Despite the changes in technology and the downward trends in employment, firms, and wages, newspapers remain a unique and credible form of communication that will continue to fill a critical role in our democratic process. It will be interesting to see whether Balantine’s successor lasts 30 years and what the industry looks like at the time he steps down.
©Copyright 2011 by CBER.
