In the current news industry environment, legacy newspapers face two future scenarios. First, they continue to operate with their decades-old business models and experience declining revenue and fewer print days, eventually closing and creating news deserts. Second, they are acquired by new owners with a 21st-century entrepreneurial spirit to build a stronger bond with their communities.
The citizens of Pinehurst, Southern Pines and surrounding communities in North Carolina are pleased. The Pilot, which began publishing in November 1920, is following the second path.
Frank Daniels Jr., Frank Daniels III, David Woronoff, Jack Andrews and Lee Dirks created an ownership group to purchase The Pilot in July 1996. With news industry backgrounds at The News & Observer in Raleigh and a forward-leaning mindset, they began to innovate and diversify The Pilot’s news products. Stability and sustainability have been The Pilot’s goals for 104 years. In fact, Woronoff is just the third publisher since 1944.
Twenty-eight years later, their efforts have led to multiple email newsletters and print magazines, many special editions, podcasts, The Country Bookshop, First Flight Agency (a full-service marketing agency), two streaming radio stations and a daily 64-page special edition when the men’s and women’s U.S. Open Golf Championships are played at Pinehurst and Pine Needles resorts. Those efforts didn’t go unnoticed. The National Newspaper Association named The Pilot Best Community Newspaper for 2015, 2016 and 2017. The North Carolina Press Association recognized The Pilot with the top General Excellence award for three consecutive years (2019–2021).
"If your core purpose is to serve your community, you can't do that very well if the only product you have is a newspaper. According to the old expression, 'If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.' When your only tool is a newspaper, the answer to all your community’s information and marketing needs will just be a newspaper,” Woronoff said.
Pilot's diversification strategy is much broader than news and print products. Marketing and printing a traditional phone book would seem like a bad business move in the internet age, but Woronoff made it work.
"We created a phone book with very big print for older eyes. We sold the ads for half the price the utility company charged. Within two years, we became the dominant telephone directory and held that position for 20 years. Last year, we sold $300,000 in advertising. We recently published the last one,” Woronoff said.
John Nagy has been the editor of The Pilot since 2012 after almost 20 years with the Greensboro News & Record. He leads a staff of 11 that works exclusively for The Pilot, including four reporters, a full-time photographer, a scene editor and a copy editor.
"On the news front, we've grown the website and social media and launched several newsletters. We capture most of the revenue in this marketplace with our various products. If we were just a newspaper, I would not have a staff of 11 people,” Nagy said.
ThePilot.com is the top news site in Moore County, with 150,000 monthly unique visitors and 800,000 monthly page views.
Although The Pilot utilizes social media sites, Nagy says they are not a monetization strategy. In his view, The Pilot’s various email newsletters and other news products are more successful at building the brand and driving revenue. Content may be king, but Nagy is convinced readers are attracted to the advertising as much as the content.
"Our faith in advertising revenue has also made this operation so strong. The industry now looks at reader revenue instead of advertising revenue as the Holy Grail. We still have a very strong core of advertising representatives. We are successful at aggregating audiences and then selling those audiences to advertisers," Nagy said.
The Pilot’s geographic advantage
The Pinehurst/Southern Pines area is uniquely located — 70 miles from Raleigh to the northeast, 45 miles from Fayetteville to the east, 75 miles from Greensboro to the north and 100 miles from Charlotte to the west. According to Advertising Director Ginny Trigg, the distance from these markets gives The Pilot several advantages.
"Those larger media operations don't cover our school board, county commissioners and Pinehurst and Southern Pines council meetings. We are the primary news source covering the area, so we have a very engaged audience because of our strong content. Small businesses know that, so we have no problem selling advertising," Trigg said.
The diversity of the local population is another advantage for The Pilot. Affluent households want the country club lifestyle, golf enthusiasts are eager to play two of the top courses in the United States, tourists like to explore the area, and nearby Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, is the largest military installation in the country.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan increased the number of special forces personnel at Fort Bragg. Being older and better educated than the typical infantry soldier, special forces families didn’t want to live in a military town, so many moved to Pinehurst and Southern Pines.
"Many of these families are in their thirties, and we recognized they weren't reading The Pilot. We had to create a new product for them because they wanted the information but in a different form. In November 2016, we launched The Sway. It's written in the sassy voice of a 30-year-old woman. It's all about the nightlife, live music in town and new shopping experiences. It’s very popular. We now have 20,000 subscribers; two-thirds are women. [The newsletter] has approximately a 60% open rate," Woronoff said.
When the golf world comes to town
Despite its size and isolation, Pinehurst is one of the centers of the golf world. Collectively, Pinehurst Resort and Pine Needles Resort have hosted four men’s and five women’s U.S. Open Championships. The men’s and women’s championships will return to Pinehurst’s No. 2 course in 2029.
"When the history of our community is written, every one of the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens will be a chapter, but we couldn’t cover those eight-day events in two editions of The Pilot, so we launched Open Daily in 1999. We’re a community of 50,000 residents, but 300,000 spectators come for the U.S. Open. Everything revolves around The Open that week. To cover it, we had to do something special,” Woronoff said.
Although this special supplement competes with newspapers in North Carolina’s larger markets and national golf and sports publications, Open Daily has grown to 64 pages. The 2024 edition was published five times.
Woronoff added that The Pilot achieved its goal of generating one month's revenue that week. It hired national golf writers and photographers as freelancers to give Open Daily credibility with readers and advertisers.
"We can publish a supplement superior to all the major metropolitan papers and golf magazines. We also wanted all local businesses to have an opportunity to market to tournament visitors and selfishly reach advertisers outside our area to obtain advertising revenue from them,” Woronoff said.
Attracting more diverse audiences and advertisers with newsletters
While The Sway engages with a younger and primarily female audience, The Pilot has a roster of other newsletters to attract niche audiences and generate more ad dollars. Prominent among these is The Pilot's Daily Briefing, a Monday through Friday evening email newsletter with the top headlines. It delivers a 55% to 75% open rate for advertisers.
"The Daily Briefing is combined with The Pilot newspaper and our website into a total audience reach package. We put an advertiser’s ad in The Pilot and convert it into an ad for our website and a banner ad for The Daily Briefing. People are seeing that ad message in all three content vehicles,” Trigg said.
Other newsletters include:
Magazines: To grow reach and revenues
“Our goal is to be the number one media company in North Carolina.”
Woronoff knew that to accomplish this goal, The Pilot had to be more than just a newspaper in Pinehurst. Launching a series of magazine titles was a major move in its diversification strategy, starting with the acquisition of PineStraw Magazine, which Woronoff jokes he bought for a set of golf clubs. Andie Rose launched it in 2005 in Southern Pines and became the creative director in 2007 when The Pilot purchased it. The readership of PineStraw is 61% women; 69% have household incomes of more than $75,000, and half have incomes of more than $100,000.
"Initially, PineStraw was a newsprint publication listing arts events in the community. It's now a four-color magazine featuring writers from across North Carolina. It’s a free publication, with 15,000 copies distributed to hotel rooms, restaurants and shopping districts, and other high-traffic areas throughout Moore County,” Rose said.
The new iteration of PineStraw has been so successful that The Pilot launched O.Henry Magazine in Greensboro in 2011 (Greensboro is the birthplace of American author William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry). It also purchased SouthPark Magazine in Charlotte in 2019 and Walter, Raleigh’s arts and culture magazine, in 2020.
The Pilot also owns North Carolina’s only statewide business publication, Business North Carolina, which it purchased in 2015. It has a circulation of 27,500, won over 100 national awards and was named the country's best regional business magazine in 2012.
The total audience reach of PineStraw, O.Henry, Southpark and Walter magazine is 280,000 readers, 60,000 social media reach and 30,000 email subscribers.
Although tourism drives much of the Pinehurst/Southern Pines economy all year, some advertisers will reduce spending during July, August, January and February. Trigg said The Pilot is strategically prepared to combat those slumps in revenue.
"In the summer, we host our Best of the Pines contest — our annual people's choice awards in 100 categories — honoring local businesses and organizations. We have our largest audience and ad revenue of the year. In January, we publish our Lifestyles magazine, a relocation guide in partnership with our Chamber of Commerce and PineStraw Bride & Groom, which is very popular," said Trigg.
Although every community is different, Woronoff firmly believes that legacy and startup news outlets will be successful if they are entrepreneurial and focused on improving the community.
"You'll do well by doing good. You'll be rewarded if you publish a suite of products distinguished by their editorial excellence. The path forward is to be entrepreneurial and create new ways to serve your community," Woronoff said.
Bob Sillick has held many senior positions and served a myriad of clients during his 47 years in marketing and advertising. He has been a freelance/contract content researcher, writer, editor and manager since 2010. He can be reached at bobsillick@gmail.com.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here