Against the wind

Rebranding in Georgia's Golden Isles puts a unique emphasis on print

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New name. Check. New website URL. Check. App under construction. Check. New Sunday paper. What?

In Brunswick, Ga., the family owned newspaper is rebranding its operation and investing in print. It's unlikely that there's another newspaper in America that has started a Sunday paper and expanded its newsroom staff by 25 percent in the past six months.

"We see every day the dogged passion that our readers have for the printed product," said Tim O'Briant, general manager and executive editor of what is now called The News. "They feel like it's their newspaper. The commentary we've gotten on our changes proves that. There's ownership.

"And while the audience may be smaller, it's a committed audience. Instead of shrinking our newsroom and shrinking our newshole, we felt like we need to aggressively invest in the best things about newspapers."

The Brunswick News, circulation 15,000, was founded in 1902 and is owned by the Leavy family. Brunswick is a port city located halfway between Savannah, Ga., and Jacksonville, Fla. The region is known as the Golden Isles because of four barrier islands that have developed into a resort area: St. Simons Island, Little St. Simons Island, Jekyll Island and Sea Island. Most readers live outside the city of Brunswick in Glynn County or the surrounding area, so the name change made sense.

Change has been known to come slowly to the newspaper, as president and editor Buff Leavy admitted in a column published Sept. 1. For example, he noted that for more than 70 years the paper stuck to putting local news on the back page – until 1999. 

And then a lot of change took place at one time.

  • The publication schedule changed from Monday through Saturday to Tuesday through Sunday. The Saturday paper had been marketed as the weekend paper, but the fact was the area wasn't served by a printed Sunday paper except for 1,000 or so copies of The Georgia Times-Union out of Jacksonville and a few copies of the Savannah Morning News or The Florida Times-Union.
  • The nightly deadline was backed up from 10 p.m. to midnight, while the paper maintained its commitment to home delivery by 6 a.m.
  • Five people were hired into the newsroom and coverage converted to more of a beat system. O'Briant said there is an increased emphasis on coverage of local government, the environment, planning and development and courts.
  • Web width went down from 25 inches to the industry standard 22 inches. Single copy prices went up from 75 cents to $1 daily and $1.50 Sundays.
  • Sections went from two daily to three during the week and four on Sundays, with a classified section emphasizing real estate being the additional section on Sundays. Overall, O'Briant said, the page count is up by two to four pages daily.
  • The website has a greater emphasis on 24-7 news coverage.

There was one glitch, one familiar to all who publish newspapers on the Atlantic or Gulf Coasts. Tropical Storm Hermine blew through on Friday, Sept. 2, just as the Labor Day weekend was beginning and the mechanics of rebranding were being put in place.

"We did all of these changes. We rebranded all of our racks and changed our single copy price to $1 and a $1.50, changed all the mechanisms. The eye of the storm passed just to the west of Brunswick as we were doing all this. We were actually without power for 4 ½ hours operating off generator power," O'Briant said.

"We had a lot of debris and downed power lines. Our carriers had a pretty treacherous morning and actually a lot them – there were impassible areas – delivered those papers over a 24-hour period."

While subscribers may have had to wait for their Saturday papers, the new Sunday paper was warmly received, O'Briant said. There have been some complaints about dropping "Brunswick" from the name. "Universally, the Sunday paper has been greeted with a lot of fanfare."

O'Briant said he and the Leavys are well aware that The News is going against the industry trends, but they intend to cover the community in print "for a long time."

"It's true that lots of newspapers are making their numbers these days by trimming expenses, trimming their content, collapsing sections, dropping days. As a family owned newspaper we just think that making your product less valuable is not the path to set. We've got make sure we're serving our customers and serving them well."

For more information, contact Tim O'Briant at tobriant@goldenisles.news.


Jane Nicholes

Jane Nicholes, a regular contributor to the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association's eBulletin, is a freelance writer and editor based in coastal Alabama. She is an award-winning veteran of more than 30 years in the newspaper business. Reach her at jbnicholes@att.net. Suggestions for future stories and comments on this piece are welcomed.

Brunswick, O'Briant
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