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As the middle classes have fled to the suburbs, they have left the cities largely to the poor. "New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles have had a tremendous Negro migration from the rural South," says Kenneth Byerly, journalism professor at the University of North Carolina. "And a lot of these Negroes do not read newspapers. This isn't the only reason for the suburban dailies' growth, but it is a key factor." Once they are in the suburbs, former city dwellers develop a new set of interests in local schools, sewers, zoning and taxes. "What it all boils down to," says R. A. Bean, business manager of the Richmond Independent in suburban San Francisco, "is that if you don't take the local paper, you can't be informed about your community."
Suburbanites who once read two metropolitan dailies—morning and afternoon—now tend to drop the afternoon in favor of the suburban daily. In fast-growing Cobb County, 15 miles northwest of Atlanta, people often bypass the afternoon Atlanta Journal for the local Marietta Journal, which generally runs as much national and international news as the Atlanta paper does, and much more Cobb County news. "We try to assume there are no Detroit papers," says Mark McKee, vice president of the suburban Macomb Daily, which enjoyed a circulation jump from 15,000 to 40,000 during the 134-day Detroit newspaper strike in 1964, and has hung on to its new readers. The suburban dailies ringing New York often carry more news than the city's three afternoon papers combined.
Costly Competition. Metropolitan dailies are fighting the spreading suburbanite press by running zoned editions —special news and advertising supplements for the various suburbs. The powerful Los Angeles Times, with a circulation that is rising within the city limits, has virtually given up trying to compete for local news with 18 suburban dailies in a city of sprawling suburbs. "They serve one purpose," says Los Angeles Times Vice President and General Manager Robert Nelson. "We serve another."
Perhaps the only sure way for a metropolitan paper to compete with the suburban press is to start a suburban paper of its own, as Field Enterprises has done. "The growth of the suburban dailies is getting into full swing," says Professor Byerly. "Their momentum is not going to be slowed down."
* Founded in 1940 by Alicia Patterson, the daughter of New York Daily News Founder Joe Patterson. Captain Joe gave his daughter no help; she started Newsday with a gift of $70,000 from her husband Harry Guggenheim, who thought that "everybody ought to have a job"—even his wife.