Forum shifting to weekly format

By SKYE POURNAZARI Staff reporter
Phil Cobb, publisher of the Maryville Daily Forum is shown in his office in the Cobb Publishing building at Jenkins and South Main streets. Due to falling advertising revenue in key sectors, Cobb has announced that the Forum will soon become a once-weekly newspaper, as opposed to a Monday-through-Friday publication.

The decades-long era in which Maryville has been served by a daily newspaper is nearing its end.

Maryville Daily Forum Publisher Phil Cobb has announced that a changing advertising environment, in which businesses with longstanding connections to print advertising are increasingly reaching out to customers through direct mail and the internet, specifically social media, have made the Forum untenable in its current Monday-through-Friday format.

While a number of decisions have yet to be made, Cobb, who also produces a free weekly shopper called The Post in Maryville and Chillicothe, said it is likely the Forum will become a once-weekly newspaper published on Thursdays starting as early as next week.

He said the number of pages in each edition will be significantly expanded over the current five-day product, and that each issue will contain multiple sections designed for easy navigation by its readers.

While Cobb has remained committed to a daily news product since purchasing the Forum from Gatehouse Media in 2013, he said economic realities have made change inevitable.

“This is absolutely necessary if we want to survive into the future,” he said, adding that 2017 is the first year overall revenues for his Maryville-based publications have declined.

Ironically, the most recent advertising shifts forcing Cobb’s hand primarily affect The Post and not the daily.

According to Cobb, revenue generated by the shopper has propped up the newspaper for several years.

Changes include new selling strategies adopted by auto dealerships, real estate agencies and retail food stores that have moved all three sectors away from print and toward direct and electronic marketing.

In the Daily Forum’s case, the tipping point was likely a recent corporate decision by Hy-Vee, the Des Moines-based supermarket chain, to replace printed weekly sale inserts in shoppers like The Post with direct mail.

However, Cobb said the loss of grocery store revenue, while significant, is just one element making up a sea of change with regard to how businesses are choosing to spend their advertising dollars.

“Real estate and classified advertising went away first,” Cobb said. “And while the auto industry has traditionally relied on print advertising and publications like The Post, we’re seeing less of that.”

None of this is new, and Cobb said he is well aware that other newspapers, especially in Missouri’s larger cities, faced — and adapted to — similar trends a number of years ago.

But the shift to online platforms, direct mail and social media is a fairly new phenomenon in rural northwest Missouri, especially for the kinds of volume and big-ticket retailers that have always formed the core of the print advertising market.

While speculating that part of the current advertising decline is cyclical, and that at least some of the lost revenue will eventually return, Cobb said he still has to make business decisions based on what is and not on what might be.

So, the switch to one-day publication of the Forum could happen as soon as Dec. 7 and will almost certainly occur by the first of the year.

What does that mean for readers? Well, for one thing, circulation rates will drop from $95 a year to just under $30.

What’s more, subscribers who have paid for a year’s worth of daily newspapers — a total of about 250 publications — will continue to receive the Forum until that obligation is met.

In other words, readers with a new daily subscription prior to the switch would receive the Forum once a week for more than three years. Older subscriptions will be extended on a pro-rated basis.

Cobb said savings tied to cutting back on the publication schedule mostly comprise printing and postage costs. He said there are no plans to reduce the number of full-time staff, which currently totals nine people, including himself.

“We’ve been putting out a daily newspaper with what amounts to a weekly newspaper staff for a long time,” said Cobb, who added that beyond declining revenue, a yearslong struggle to recruit and retain qualified editorial staff also played a part in his decision.

“This is going to allow us to put out a better product and to spend less time on production and more time on content,” Cobb said.

In addition, the Forum’s online presence, which Cobb said has proved very successful, means that breaking news and major local coverage will continue to be available on a daily, and even hourly, basis.

He said about 3,500 people currently read the print version of the Daily Forum, and that approximately 5,000 readers access the newspaper’s website each day, seven days a week.

On other fronts, Cobb said he plans on seeking to make up for lost advertising dollars through a growing lineup of specialty products, such as the “Experience Maryville” brochure, a dining, shopping and entertainment piece that proved a hit with advertisers earlier this year.

The Maryville Forum traces its beginnings to the Nodaway Democrat, first published in 1869 by future Missouri Gov. Albert P. Morehouse.

Then, in the early 1900s, William C. Van Cleve, publisher of the Moberly Monitor-Index, merged the Democrat with the Nodaway Forum, calling the resulting publication the Maryville Democrat-Forum.

The paper became the Maryville Daily Forum in 1929 and was published by Marion W. Stauffer until 1966. It was one of the first acquisitions in what became the Stauffer Communications chain, a corporation that eventually operated in 11 states.

Later, the paper was acquired by Morris Communications, which sold it to Gatehouse before Cobb purchased the operation after founding The Post 18 months earlier.

For many years, the paper’s office was located at 414 North Main St., a building that is now home to The Pub tavern. The Forum moved to its current location at the corner of Jenkins and South Main in 1971. That building underwent a major renovation by Cobb Publishing in 2016.