The San Diego Daily Transcript, once the business community’s go-to publication for industry news and listings, is going out of print after 130 years.
A statement posted to the business newspaper’s website by Publisher Robert Loomis on Wednesday said the Transcript is victim of a changing media landscape that makes operating in San Diego no longer possible.
While not many San Diegans may know of the publication, it is the city’s official newspaper of record. The paper is known for its straightforward business news, analytical graphs on the front page, and for its government contract ads. Those who wish to contract with various public agencies relied for years on the paper’s “bid board,” where they could try to get head starts on securing work for the government. The paper, like many others, struggled with a decline in newspaper ad revenue, as most information is now readily available online.
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The newspaper, which employs about a dozen reporters and editors, will cease publication on Sept. 1, although its website will stay online for an undetermined period. The entire company will close on Sept. 21.
“While many cost savings measures have been initiated in the past, including the enthusiastic embrace of rapidly changing technology, producing the daily news, data and information for which the company is known requires a relatively large number of employees with related support systems,” Loomis said in a statement. “Increasing overhead, health care costs and the uncertain future of the news industry dictate that the company is no longer a viable business.”
The news company has an old-time feel, operating out of a converted hospital on Third Avenue, with a printing press on site.
In his statement, Loomis said he hopes the Transcripts’ efforts are preserved. He said he hopes a library or local university would maintain past Daily Transcript editions as a resource for San Diego’s researchers and business people.
While the publication will cease to exist, its influence will persist. The paper has helped launch the careers of a number of journalists who continue to cover government, politics and business in San Diego today.
Scott Lewis, editor in chief of Voice of San Diego, covered real-estate, water, and politics for the Transcript from 2003 to 2005, a tumultuous time at City Hall. Lewis said he learned about real estate leading up to the housing bubble, the politics of water when a regionwide deal was being formed, and covered local politics during an era of federal investigations.
“The Transcript kind of had a way of finding and giving young people a chance to start,” he said. “You could write with freedom if it was good stuff and so it allowed a lot of us to make a name even if we didn’t deserve it.”
Rachel Laing, a public affairs professional, said there was so much turnover in the newsroom that she went from a position as a copy editor to managing editor within a year of being hired at the paper in 1998.
“People who were able to actually get good stories would really shine, and they would get plush jobs and go away,” she said. “You got to know a lot of people who were incredibly talented, and meet them early in their careers.”
Despite its historic feel, the Transcript launched its website in 1994, early in the news industry’s transition to the digital world. But the unveiling of sddt.com, which now charges subscriptions, still couldn’t escape the plague of declining print revenue that is hitting the rest of the newspaper industry. The site still gets 3.3 million unique visitors per year.
Last year, print newspaper ad revenue across the nation fell to $16.3 billion, a $30 billion drop over the last decade, the Pew Research Center reports. Online newspaper ad sales grew to $3.5 billion, about $2 billion up over the last 10 years.
Dean Nelson, a professor of journalism at Point Loma Nazarene University, said the Transcript was able to survive for such a long time because of its bid board, where government agencies would post ads looking for contractors to do projects. Those bids are now easily accessible online.
“If you subscribed to the Daily Transcript then you had sometimes first shot at some bids for either county building projects or city building projects or things that were going out to bid for contractors,” said Nelson, who also worked at the Transcript in the 1990s. “I don’t know how many of them read the first couple of pages, which is what the reporters were putting out, but everybody was reading those deeper pages that had the bid board.”
Matt Hall, who worked at the Transcript in 2001 and 2002 and now serves as the president of San Diego’s Society of Professional Journalists, said those in the news field need to take the paper’s impending closure as another sign that more change must come.
“Its closure merits a reunion, a wake. But it also serves as a wakeup call for journalists everywhere. The industry isn’t going to survive on print and paywalls for long,” said Hall, the Union-Tribune’s public engagement director.
The Daily Transcript began publishing under its current name in 1886, when it rebranded from the National City Record, which began in 1882. William Burgess, his son, and a succession of owners managed the paper for its first 13 years.
In 1909, the Superior Court declared it a general circulation newspaper, and it became the city of San Diego’s official newspaper in 1920. The paper has been owned by the Revelle-Scripps family since 1986. Ellen Revelle, publisher under her death in May 2009, was the grandaughter of James E. Scripps, who founded the Detroit News. Her late husband, Roger Revelle, was director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and a co-founder of University of California, San Diego. Their son, William, continues to serve as the paper’s chairman.
The Daily Transcript has a small but influential following. It had a daily print circulation of 6,506 during the six-month period ended Dec. 31, 2013, and its website had 88,545 unique visitors in January 2014, The Associated Press reported. ((The Union-Tribune has about 3 million monthly visitors.) Readers have an average annual household income of $342,700 and 80 percent are college graduates, according to the newspaper. Their average age is 49 years old.
Loomis did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
