SYNDICATION: FLAILINGS AND FAILINGS

The July issue of Editor & Publisher was the journal’s annual directory of syndicates and syndicated features, and it is accompanied by an article purporting to survey the fate of syndication in the present newspaper climate of financial desperation. From the syndicate perspective, the situation is conflicted: financial cutbacks at newspapers have resulted in loss of staff, leaving newspapers eager for such content as syndicates can provide; but “the same budget woes that left editors short-staffed and in need of material also left them with less money for new syndicated products.”

Judging from the article, syndicates are reacting by devising ways to help newspapers ramp up their websites, which seems to me counter-productive. The websites are still offering mostly free services, so how can they pay for syndicated material?

Reporter Debra Gersh Hernandez interviewed a couple of Internet-oriented syndicates that I hadn’t yet heard of — Family Features and Content That Works — and United Media and Creators but not Universal or King, two of the industry’s biggest. Both of them, however, are also exploring digital futures allied with newspapers’ doing the same. No one, alas, seems interested in developing the greatest undeveloped newspaper market in the country—namely, the small town (100,000 population or less) daily and weekly newspaper, all of which are financially healthier than their big city brethren.