I usually try to keep The Portager positive, but sometimes we simply have to report bad news.
Today I have some bad news to share, though by the end of this column you’ll have much more context and, I hope, some optimism about the future of our newspaper.
Unfortunately, we need to stop doing home delivery of the print edition for most subscribers. There are two reasons for this.
The primary reason is that subscription revenue has fallen by over 15% year over year, and advertising revenue is also down (I think by as much as 20%, but we’re still working on the books). We can’t absorb these losses, and it’s necessary for us to cut expenses. It’s possible we may have to trim in other places as well. I’ve already reduced my salary or stopped paying myself some months, but I can’t afford to do this for an extended period.
The second reason is that the U.S. Postal Service increased periodical mailing rates by about 7%. Combined, it’s a one-two punch that led to my inevitable decision.
We will not stop printing The Portager, however. It’s an important community resource, and I’m committed to keeping physical papers in circulation as long as I can.
As I said, we’ll stop home delivery for “most subscribers” because I want to ensure that people who don’t have any other way to get local news will still be taken care of. We have some readers who don’t use the internet and have mobility issues, and these are the last people I want to cut off from the Portage County community.
If you or someone you know falls into this group, send me an email to ben@theportager.com and let me know that you need to continue receiving The Portager by mail. We’ll find a way to manually mail your copies to you.
We plan to identify new benefits for Premium subscribers to replace home delivery. I want it to be something of equal or greater value, and I haven't arrived at a good idea yet. Please help me with your ideas if you have any. (If home delivery was the only reason you signed up for a Premium plan and you no longer wish to support us at that level, send me an email or you can log in to update your plan.)
Let me provide some background
Since I started The Portager in March 2020, we have increased revenue almost every quarter. It’s been a gradual upward trajectory.
And as we’ve grown, we’ve added more coverage, more original reporting, more documenters coverage, and more freelancers and interns from Kent State, whom we pay. (It’s often their first paid journalism gig and kickstarts their careers.)
But starting around the end of 2024 that growth started turning the other direction. People reached out to me apologizing and saying they were cutting back expenses and needed to cancel their subscription. Every week now, I get new cancellations.
Some advertisers have also cut back their commitments. The economic mood seems to be one of caution and uncertainty. When finances are uncertain, news subscriptions and advertising are understandably a place to reduce expenses.
I’m sure economic forces are not the only reason. I always worry we’re not doing enough: not adding enough new features or covering enough news. I’m certain I’ve fallen short. And one of my goals closing out the year is to understand what we can do better and create an action plan to start building back stronger in 2027 — back on a financial growth trajectory.
You’ll have to bear with me a bit, though, because my situation is unique among local news publishers. My family and career path have taken me far afield.
My personal story
Some of you have asked over the years something along the lines of, “Who are you? Who is this Ben guy?”
I’ve always meant to share more about myself, but it hasn’t seemed very important. What’s important are the news stories, the community, the readers. But at the same time, I’ve always presented the news in a very personal way, sometimes sharing my opinions. And the company’s success is also tied to my personal interests and commitments. So I think it’s fair to let you in on my world.
To start with, my parents are from Suffield and Atwater, and I was brought up in Hartville and then Randolph, where my siblings and I graduated from Waterloo High School. I played three sports and edited the school newspaper, Voice of the Vikings.
After graduation, I enrolled at Kent State and started working on the Kent Stater right away. Eventually I became editor in chief the fall semester of my senior year, and in the spring semester I was hired full time at the Record-Courier as the City of Kent reporter. During college, I interned at The Dominion Post in West Virginia, The Columbus Dispatch and The Boston Globe.
I also studied abroad in England, visited El Salvador twice with the Newman Center Parish in Kent, and traveled to China as part of Kent State’s International Storytelling course. These travels set off my desire to be a foreign correspondent.
But first, I worked for newspapers in Florida, where I fell in love with my wife, who is from Miami. We had met on a train in Italy when we were both studying abroad. She sat across from me and told me about how she was studying to be a human rights lawyer, which is exactly what she did.
After a stint in New York City, she and I moved to Thailand, where I worked at the Bangkok Post and freelanced for major publications, and she at Asylum Access, an organization helping refugees. About a year later, she was hired by the UN Refugee Agency and we spent the next eight years living in different countries, including Jordan and Brazil. I continued to freelance but I felt I wasn’t living up to my duty to give back to my hometown and enrich the community that formed who I am.
It was when we were living in the Dominican Republic, after Gannett bought the Record-Courier, that I got the idea to start a local newspaper called The Portager. When Covid hit, we moved home to Ohio and I launched the paper that spring.
Along the way, I’ve made ends meet working various gigs, including outside of journalism. In 2018, I got a job as the second marketing employee at a tech company called Proton. They make private versions of online tools like email, calendar, drive, and video calls. Unlike the Google or Zoom versions of these tools, Proton encrypts your data, meaning we can’t read your messages, share them with governments or target you with ads.
I believe deeply in Proton’s mission because I think individual people should have privacy and control over their personal information — not big tech, and not the government. As you can imagine, Proton is particularly important in countries with repressive governments or sophisticated surveillance regimes, which unfortunately includes the US.
When I started there, we had about five million users. Now we have well over 100 million. The company is based in Geneva, Switzerland.
After my wife decided to step down from the UN, we lived in Arizona where she worked for another nonprofit for three years. Last year, we made the decision to move closer to my Proton job and settle our family in the French countryside, outside of Geneva, where we have close friends from our time with the UN.
Of course, this makes running a local newspaper complicated. Although I’ve run The Portager remotely for over five years — with incredible support and ownership from Wendy, Rachel, Natalie, Tom, Jeremy and many others — it does make it difficult to attend events and promote ourselves the way I would like.
Working for both The Portager and Proton is challenging, especially with two little kids, but I derive a huge sense of purpose from focusing on two related goals: empowering people around the world with technology while empowering my hometown community with information. Global issues are inherently local, as the data center backlash clearly shows.
What will happen next
In the future, I plan to share more of my thoughts about these topics, given my unique position at the intersection of local and global efforts to restore power and agency to individual people.
That will likely be part of the 2027 plan, along with possibly new products and publications. I’m very much in the exploration phase, and I’ll be asking for your ideas.
I’m sure there will be more challenging decisions to make to try to control expenses. If we run out of cash, it’s game over. So I need to make sure we can pay our bills as revenue shrinks. I’m open to your feedback on this as well.
In the meantime, I really need your support. If you can manage to keep your subscription active, it will mean the world to me. If you need help doing that, just reach out.
We may also launch a fundraising campaign before the end of the year with the goal of covering any shortfalls. I hate to ask the community for money beyond the price of a subscription. But at the same time, we’ve never raised our subscription prices, even as our local competitors have done so.
If you have any thoughts about any of this, please share your ideas with me at ben@theportager.com. I remain forever accessible and grateful to you, my Portager community. You took an idea and brought it to life. Let’s keep the flame going.