A mission to make sure local news survives
A large majority of U.S. adults (86%) say they at least sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, including 57% who say they do so often.….
Americans turn to radio and print publications for news far less frequently. In 2024, just 26% of U.S. adults say they often or sometimes get news in print, the lowest number our surveys have recorded.
— Pew Research Center
I recently attended a dinner party with several of my closest friends, and as per usual over the last couple of years, the idea of retirement kept rolling through my mind. All of those in the room that night were not working anymore, having reached the age and attained the financial stability to call it quits. Not a single person regretted that decision, something they’ve all told me in private conversations.
Here I sit at 65 pondering the time I have left above ground, still in good health, with a wife ready to grab a suitcase and go adventuring right now.
But I have this business, this newspaper and media company that is — for better or worse — part of my identity, part of who I am, something I’ve put a good portion of my life into. For me, reading those stats from the Pew Research about the news industry and reading habits doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm for what we do here at The Smoky Mountain News. Instead, it energizes me to be part of this industry as it adapts to this seismic change.
Yes, more people are reading online. Well, that’s no surprise. Here are a few numbers regarding SMN. In 2024, we printed about 16,000 per week for a total of around 800,000 newspapers. Most weeks all but about 10% of those are picked up, so in our mountain region we put 720,000 newspapers into the hands of potential readers.
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In our industry there’s what we call the “pass-along rate.” That’s the number of people who actually read a single copy, and the usual estimates are 2.3 to 2.8 readers per paper. Do that math — let’s use 2.5 as the multiplier — and that means our weekly print readership is around 40,000.
Online, the figures are larger, as one would expect. In 2024, we had 1,031,022 unique users visit our website. That means — as the Pew Center’s research confirms — that getting news online is the preferred method for most people these days. Those numbers are from Google’s analytics. That comes out to 20,000 unique visitors every week. I’m pretty proud of those numbers, and I think it speaks to the work produced by our staff.
Local news providers like SMN have, for the most part, transitioned over the last decade to a digital-first mentality. We print a paper every week with original stories, but we update our website and push stories on social platforms daily.
The challenge with the digital transformation, though, is the business model. Despite the fact that a large majority of people think local news is valuable for their communities, there’s another poll number from the Pew Research Center that is more worrisome for local news providers like SMN: In 2024, “just 15% of Americans say they have paid or given money to any local news source in the past year — a number that has not changed much since 2018.”
Look, I’m proud and not afraid to say that local companies like ours are all about the community. Yes, we try to sell advertising and solicit donations, but our relationship with our community is built on shared values, a mutual sense of obligation to make this the best possible place anyone would want to live. The fact that so many people are moving here and want to visit here speaks to a certain degree of success in that mission for all of us who call this place home.
Retirement is out there, but so is the mission of keeping this company alive so it can serve this community for many years to come. I’m still yoked to that mission, so I’ll borrow from the over-used Dylan Thomas poem that I have loved for decades — though it resonates a little louder as the years go by: “Do not go gentle into that good night/Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
(Scott McLeod can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
