In my mind, trend of newspapers have financial difficulties has been tied to purchases of the newspaper: People aren’t purchasing the papers to read any more, circulation is down and so advertisers aren’t buying space so revenues are down. It hadn’t really occurred to me that this would be as much of a problem for the alternative weeklies. Since they are free and usually have a high circulation, I figured they wouldn’t have ad sales problem to the same extent.

The recent issue of our alternative weekly made me realize this may not be the case. In truth, it may not be a readership problem but rather that people don’t have the money to buy ads. I gave up investing a lot of hope in the dailies a few years back when the entertainment editor told me their focus would be more on pop culture. We would still get some okay coverage, but the arts reviewers would complain about the way they were being asked to frame their stories. Then the entertainment editor took the contract buy-out and I became sort of nostalgic for the good old days.

The alternative weekly usually had my back. We would get decent mention of 85% of our stuff and calendar listings for the rest. There would often be some quirky spin on our shows. Sometimes it was too quirky and people rolled their eyes, but at least people read it in the first place and called wondering what the show was really about.

Last week’s issue for the weekly was the Fall Arts issue. Generally there is a multiple page spread of all the events up to the new year either listed by genre or venue. This time there was a note from the editor saying the listings wouldn’t appear this year because 1) Few arts organizations had the money to do anything and 2) The paper didn’t have the resources to write anything. Instead, they were doing profiles on four up and coming artists to watch. None of our events were listed.

The paper usually sells specially priced ad space so arts organizations can promote their seasons. Generally there are quite a few of these ads. This year it was just us and the local symphony.

This actually made up for the lack of coverage because we were conspicuous by the absence of pretty much anyone else. Our drama director called me and congratulated me for getting an ad in the issue. I pointed out it was no coup when you were paying for the privilege but it illustrates just how barren the issue was. I guess I could be congratulated on having the money to buy the ad space.

This development caught me a little off guard. I was ready for the decline of coverage in the dallies and have been watching for opportunities to capture names and identify opinion leaders. The has been a key tool in reaching a more hip segment of the population who aren’t necessarily deeply involved in social media networking. Since I suspect they buy their tickets at the last minute, I may not have captured their contact information in my database.

My next move is to try to figure out if the crisis at the weekly is with a reduction in readership or with advertisers. If it is advertisers, then my visibility can go up when I insert an ad. Of course, if the weekly can’t afford to distribute as widely or go out of business altogether, the benefits of standing out in a smaller crowd is likely to be short lived.