Speaker 1: On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele do follow Speaker 2: San Antonio is a fast growing fast moving community with something new happening every day.

And that's why each week we go on the record with the Newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters round table to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on.

Speaker 1: Hi everybody.

And thank you for joining us for this week's edition of on the record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

And this week we are going to be talking at least in part about news in San Antonio and the news business, how it's going and in part who is leading it, we're going to be talking with the fairly new, uh, publisher of the San Antonio express news.

That's your official title, right?

Mark Medpace.

You've had a few titles in the newspaper industry over the years.

You came three weeks before the pandemic hit in San Antonio.

What has that been like?

Trying to get the news out at the same time all of this has been going on around us?

Speaker 2: Yeah, actually I, in hindsight, I actually think it was the best thing that ever happened to me because it thrusts me directly into problem solving.

Uh, and it kind of just ripped the bandaid right off.

So we went from a very brief honeymoon period to really prioritizing our employee safety while still having to cover this generational story, uh, from a local perspective in San Antonio.

So I actually think in hindsight it was the best thing that happened.

It didn't feel like that at the moment.

Um, but, um, I'm glad it I'm glad that it unfolded the way it did Speaker 1: At the newspaper industry overall, which has been declining for decades as I'm, I'm here to brighten your day.

But, you know, it was in terms of billions and ad revenue.

It was like 50 billion back in 2005.

And last year it was down to 8.8 billion dropping from 12 the year before.

I mean, this is just, how do you deal with that as a publisher and try to at least keep the business that you have if not grow it?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Some of my friends tease me.

Um, I graduated high school in 1991 and 1991 was actually in last year in the United States where Sunday print circulation grew.

So print circulation at the news in the newspaper from an industry perspective has been declining since 91.

I think that part of why I do what I do, one I'm super passionate about journalism.

I'm super passionate about the first amendment and, uh, and the protections of the press and freedom of speech.

But I'm also very tied to just wanting to be a part of a part of the generation that, that sees these newspapers all the way through their digital transformation print is still a really important piece of our, of our product set at the express news.

We don't have any plans at this time to, uh, take any print days out of circulation.

And as a matter of fact, the pandemic actually helped us, um, excuse me.

Yeah, it helped us.

It was able to do one of the challenges inside of the industry was, uh, so many things continued to, uh, hit us, uh, really from, uh, the inception of really the, the, the wild internet phase of 98 99 and two thousands where Craigslist came in and took away private party classified literally kind of overnight where that was a big part of it was paper money.

It was actually a huge piece of it.

And I would actually point to that as the first kind of warning signal to newspapers that we weren't prepared for the digital transformation because of how quickly that business pivoted from us, both in terms of private party classified, uh, recruitment advertising.

It literally over an 18 month period of time went completely digital national actually held on for a longer period of time.

But then we went through the recession in 2008, and really once again, uh, gave another blow to the, to the paper as national advertisers, uh, really pulled back, not just from newspapers, but just in the way that they spent across traditional mediums in, in general.

So, you know, I think that from the period of time from 98 to 2008, it just was a, it was a very chaotic time with inside the newspapers.

I'm glad that we're owned by Hearst Hearst during that same time became even more diversified.

Uh, we're one of 360 companies owned by Hearst.

So I think the express news has a, a competitive advantage against versus the industry because some television or why, what is it that they own a ton of stuff they own, uh, several, uh, big Lords market television.

Uh, there, there have many B2B holdings, uh, they're a B2B business to business holdings.

Uh, uh, they, they own a company, uh, a bond rating company called Fitch.

Uh, they're, they're, they're a large minority owner of ESPN.

So I think Frank Bennett who wants here, uh, Frank Bennett and the CEO of, of, of her Steve Swartz, they, the work that they did to diversify Hurst, which has allowed the San Antonio express news to go through this transition and not be as, uh, affected by this transition as maybe other newspapers.

But, uh, that's a, that's a benefit to us Speaker 1: Since the pandemic everybody's been affected and TV stations.

And you are, you're also facing online competition that you have the San Antonio report used to be Revard report, uh, San Antonio Heron, there, there are others.

Um, and are you moving away from print?

I mean, how much of your money now is coming from print as compared to digital?

I saw last year overall, it changed for the industry.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Great question.

So I, I look at it maybe a little bit differently, uh, than that, uh, this next year in 2022 will be the first year that we actually drive more consumer revenue than we do advertising revenue.

So 54% of our meaning Speaker 1: That's digital online, like through my essay.com Speaker 2: That would be subscription revenue.

So people that are subscribing to the printed product or people that are subscribing to our digital product on express news.com will drive more, uh, volume and subscriptions and more revenue next year in 2022, then we do, um, advertising revenue.

But the interesting thing about the equation express news.com, not my essay that's right.

My essay.com is our, is our free journalism site.

It's more of a culture site for San Antonio lifestyle site, um, and express news.com is going to be more where you're going to find the street-based local reporting on what's happening in, uh, Alamo Heights or the business section, uh, is that, Speaker 1: Uh, behind the Speaker 2: Paywall 40% this year 41% is now Speaker 1: For all.

Is it growing in terms of the numbers of people reading your product in San Antonio?

Where is it compared to Speaker 2: Years ago?

Yeah, it's actually, uh, we're all in a three-year growth trend.

So as I look@ourtotalaudiencesonmyessaydotcomexpressnews.com, and then the seven day and Sunday day printed product, we're reaching more San Antonians on a day in and day out basis today than we were pre pandemic, even in 2019.

And the other interesting metric on that is that this year we drove more local advertising in a pandemic year, 2021 than we did in all of 2019.

One of the challenges I think with papers is that as we were going through these transitions, we were really still very tied to national advertising.

That pandemic has completely almost taken that that revenue away still overall is just our ability to focus on our subscribers.

And our local advertisers is, is very, is very much now a hundred percent of our focus.

And it, I think it allows us to run a more predictable business.

Well now, Speaker 1: In terms of what you're going to be providing, are you going to be putting on, to compete with everybody else more digital?

You see, you talked about a studio that you're developing in the building.

Yeah.

Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting.

I, I, I think that it's not as much about competition for me as it is about staying on trend and not falling back into prior behaviors where we were blindsided by, by industry a winds of change that we weren't ready for.

I think that we all understand, I think legacy media, business executives understand that we've lost a lot of control over where audiences are from a platform perspective.

So we have to be on those platforms.

So whether it's audio streaming, whatever, all of those, all of those elements are in play for us.

And so I think as we, our core mission is to create great journalism and then we have to give it to our executive teams at Hearst.

And we have our teams here in San Antonio to make sure that we're distributing the great journalism that we do across Twitter, Instagram, maybe Tech-Talk, uh, all of those Speaker 1: At a time.

But one of the things that you just did is San lights in 15 seconds.

What is San Antonio lights?

Speaker 2: Antonio likes is, is our way of saying thank you to so many hardworking people in San Antonio that don't necessarily get the credit for Speaker 1: The great work that they do.

And that is you can see it on your website and now express news.com or my usa.com.

Speaker 2: The essay light specifically is unexpressed news.com/essay lights, Speaker 1: But I get it myself as well as the paper.

And as a paper, boy, I wanted to hold up this prop.

This is how you through a newspaper mark Metta, chief publisher of the San Antonio express news.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks, Randy.

Appreciate it.

Turning to politics.

Now this week was the deadline on Monday for candidates to file and the Republican and democratic primaries coming up interesting here in bear county at the very last minute, almost literally Trish to Berry, who is now a county commissioner, threw her hat in the ring for county judge, which means she will have to leave her post for now for basically the rest of the year as she is campaigning.

Joining us is the democratic consultant out of Austin political pundit, who knows everything about politics in this area and across the state Collins Struthers.

Thank you for joining us.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

First of All, what do you make of this?

It seems to me as if this is a sign that Republicans think a lot more things are going to be competitive in these 2022 races than there were in 2020, because there were no state or a county wide, uh, Republicans elected in bear county in 2020.

She's hoping this is going to change.

Is it possible?

Uh, it's very much possible.

Um, w now that, uh, the Republicans at the state level have taken away the straight ticket option, which Democrats in bear county have relied on for many years, um, to, to build our majorities there, um, with the absence of the straight ticket option and anticipation, this is going to be a Republican wave year based on some of the things the white house is doing and not doing quite frankly.

Um, it's probably representing the Republican's best shot at a big county wide office, um, in the last 10 or 15 years As a democratic consultant.

And you're working on a number of other campaigns.

Are you very concerned right now about that wave and, uh, you know, from being the off year, but also as you said, at the national, uh, level right now, the publicity has not been, has not been good for Democrats, at least in part.

Sure.

Um, I would say that I am just short of full-blown panic mode.

Uh, for the past several months, I've been trying to blow the whistle, um, that we're in big trouble and we're headed towards an absolute bloodbath on the democratic side.

Um, just last week, a new poll came out national poll showing president's Biden approval rating among Hispanics at 34%.

Uh, he performed historically awful, um, uh, below ITIN and the 2020 election.

He only received 53% of the vote in Starr county, Texas, where every other Democrat receives 70 Sepata county, Texas, where on the border again, where he had previously won it by Hillary had won it by 20 points.

Um, it flipped to Trump.

It was one of only two counties in the country to do.

And do you think that will be reflected in the congressional races here?

The 23rd along the border and the 30, not the 35th, the 28 that runs to the border.

And certainly that's the Republicans hope, um, the, the Democrat firewall in Texas, uh, any hope we have of winning statewide finally again, um, would be the first time in over 25 years, uh, is if south of holds blue and the Republicans have made some inroads down there, they recently switched state representative Ryan GN, uh, whose district runs from Wilson county to Starr county.

Uh, they switched Ryan from the democratic party to the Republican party, um, and, uh, they are fielding candidates in every district, south of iTech.

And now as a, uh, as a soothsayer here, looking ahead at what's going to happen, what are we going to see Democrats, uh, emphasize and advertise?

What are you telling your democratic, uh, clients as to how to run a race against Republicans in this, in this climate?

It's going to be very important that Democrats in Texas, particularly San Antonio, south, Texas in the valley, separate themselves from the white house and make very clear that I'm a Democrat, but these are my values and beliefs.

Um, and this region of Texas, it's really not a question of, do you own a gun?

It's how many guns do you own?

Um, everybody's got a shotgun, their granddaddy gave him, uh, and, and we'd duck hunting, squirrel hunt, and quail hunt and deer hunt.

And when you have national Democrats coming in and saying, we're going to take away all your guns, it doesn't fly in our area.

Okay.

I'm sure we'll hear more from, from you and from, uh, everybody on the Republican side as well in the coming months.

Thank you very much.

Colin Strother, a political consultant up in Austin.

Appreciate you coming in.

Thank you.

Great to see you.

A new project from the city of San Antonio is supposed to help the city cool down at least a little bit.

Very important for a lot of different reasons.

Joining us to explain is Doug Melnick, who is the chief sustainability officer of the city of San Antonio.

Thanks for coming in.

Thanks for having me now, this cool pavement program deals with what we have called for decades, the heat island effect in a city.

This is, it goes way before any talk of climate change, all the meteorologists.

I remember talking about how the weather can change, just because there's so much concrete there, not a lot of trees.

How, how big a problem is that?

Yeah.

And, and, and you're absolutely right.

Um, it's not a climate change issue.

Speaker 2: It's just being exasperated by climate change, but basically you can go and look at EPS website and they define it.

And basically urban heat island is when urban cores are, could be upwards of 20 degrees hotter than the surrounding area.

And, um, as you said, that's because, you know, concrete's other, um, materials absorb that heat, and then they radiated at night.

And so, um, it's a public health issue.

Uh, it's an energy consumption issue.

Um, it's a, uh, ecological issue.

Um, it's, it's, it's a big deal, but that's why we're looking for tools.

What can we do to try to mitigate that impact?

Speaker 1: And so what are you doing here now understand there's a cool, clear, it's like an asphalt sealant, which would be put on roads anyway, but it's different in that it reflects heat instead of absorbing, Speaker 2: Correct.

Yeah.

And one of the things that, that you have to address heat island, um, it's gonna take multiple things.

It's not just one solution.

And what we've been doing is really sort of looking at what some of the leading cities are doing and, and the, the leading cities around cool pavement of an LA and Phoenix, and you're right.

It's a, it's a, a water-based asphalt treatment.

Um, it's, uh, gets laid over, uh, existing asphalt and it has a higher reflectivity.

Um, it still, it, it extends the life of, of the roadways.

Um, but it, it cools down the surface temperatures, uh, what we're seeing from Phoenix anywhere from 10 to 12 degrees, Speaker 1: And that's the surface of the road, but it also affects the air at night, how cool it is.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

And, and, and that's part of what we're trying to research, and we're trying to, to, uh, to take a look at it, because while it does cool down the surface people aren't, um, experiencing those temperatures, it's, what's happening up at five feet Speaker 1: And it doesn't make it hotter up in the air.

It makes it cooler up in the air, at least.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.

There's diff there's differing, um, data.

That's what we need to understand.

Um, you know, the, the goal and the benefit really is if it's installed in mass and what we've seen in, in LA, for example, it's trying to really do an entire section of the neighborhood.

They've actually looked at say satellite data that have showed that it actually is significantly cooler than areas around it, that hadn't been treated.

Speaker 1: Some of those thermal images where you see red for heat or rain, where you have the trees.

And now you're starting to where on the east side right now.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

We just have it's one small area just on the east side of the hay street bridge.

Um, uh, we had the material donated from, uh, a company, um, just to test it, you know, let's, let's see how it goes.

We'll, we'll be out, um, during the, the, uh, higher temperature season next year.

Um, taking measurements, looking at satellite data, uh, the other big thing is seeing how does it perform?

Uh, we've looked at other cities.

We want to make sure that, um, it doesn't cause skidding.

We want to make sure that there aren't other unintended consequences.

We, we, we don't think it will based upon other cities, but we want to test it ourselves.

And, and the other really exciting thing about this is what we're learning from other cities is it really does extend the life of the pavement because it reduces the sub-surface temperature, which would reduce the ability for the pavement to crack.

So there's multiple reasons that we really want to address Speaker 1: All are underneath, correct.

And UTS researchers are going to be part of this.

Speaker 2: We've been working with UTS probably for the past year.

They helped us develop a tool.

We call the HVAC, it's a heat vulnerability assessments will, and it uses satellite data, um, to get down to a pretty granular level, to look at surface temperatures.

And we can really start seeing where their hotspots are.

And based upon that data based upon, um, overlaying equity data that the city has, we could figure out where do we need to focus?

Where do we need to test cool pavement?

Where do we need more street trees?

Where do we need more canopies?

So the key is to come up with what's the plan?

How do we start, um, uh, mitigating, not just the heat we're experiencing now, but what's coming down the pike in the future.

Speaker 1: And that's part of what you're doing with the climate change plan for the city of where are you in that we're talking about, uh, the number of electric vehicles, city has one right now where you're going to get more, Speaker 2: Um, th the climate plan, um, uh, you know, is, is a, is a long-term plan, uh, out to 2050.

It calls for us as a, as a community, getting to net carbon neutral by 2050, um, as well as adapting to climate change.

And, um, you know, when we look at the climate science, when you look at what's coming out of cop 26, we've got to get going faster.

Um, so, uh, we've got a lot of coals, uh, no pun intended in the fire.

Um, looking at how do we make our internal operations more efficient.

We have, uh, now, um, about 15 electric vehicles, passenger vehicles that we've brought on a, onto our city fleet.

Um, hope to escalate that as we bring more on and more charging stations or charging infrastructures, we have a program that we've been installing publicly accessible charging infrastructure, and city owned, lots, um, libraries, parks.

Um, the key is getting ahead of that curve.

When you look at what's coming, um, whether you believe in climate change or not, when you see, uh, GM and onion, other manufacturers saying we are not going to be building internal combustion engine vehicles, um, in the next 10 years, are we prepared?

Um, are we building homes that have the infrastructure ready for that?

Um, when you look at, Speaker 1: So you can encourage businesses as well here to put charging stations out, correct?

Speaker 2: Correct.

So I think it's, it's basically, um, you know, the challenge that we have with climate is it touches every part of our life, every part of our infrastructure.

And, um, you know, it's, it's developing a comprehensive plan to start to address.

Speaker 1: Well, I wish we had more time, but I know you can find out more information on the city's website.

You have more information about that to correct.

Speaker 2: Yep.

If you go to, uh, uh, um, essay, sustainability.com, that is our, uh, sustainability dashboard.

There's lots of information and metrics there.

Or if you go to the city website and get on the office, assist the sustainability, um, uh, page, there's lots of information about our initiatives, including cool pavement.

All right.

Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much.

Doug Melnick, who the chief sustainability officer with the city of San Antonio.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me a few minutes ago, we talked about news with the publisher of the express news, mark.

And now we're going to talk about something you may see in your mailboxes.

This is the community impact newspaper, a couple of them here in San Antonio.

Just start it up and what this is, Trisha Swenson, who is the publisher and editor.

I don't know.

There are so many different titles.

Uh, tell us about the community impact newspapers.

Now these, uh, this'll be only print for the most part.

Uh, no we're print and online.

And, uh, we're moving into the podcast space too, but we are a monthly hyper-local, uh, newspaper, and we have two newspapers in San Antonio.

Uh, one that covers north San Antonio out towards donut Timberwood park, and then one that's the Northeast Metricon area, which is a universal city, civil Selma shirt.

And now there have been different community newspapers and are in San Antonio like this, uh, how is this one different?

This actually goes into a space that I guess, local news, a company called local news had been in.

Yeah, I think it's a similar space.

Um, we, there are three things that kind of set us apart.

We are hyper-local and I mean, your neighborhood, your school board meetings, your city council, where's your bond money going?

Um, so we're, hyper-local number one.

We are full color all the time, and we are very graphics, um, driven.

So, um, And now you worked at newspapers long time, some of them here express news from your days at SAC, you, you and MacArthur high school, you know, but you've seen the industry change.

How, how much is this a sign of that?

I think the industry has changed so much.

And I think that readers still want to know what's going on in their local neighborhoods.

They want to know about the schools that their kids go to.

They want to know about the businesses that they can frequent that are locally owned in their area.

You know, they want to know, oh, I'm driving down the highway and I'm being detoured.

Like, what's that detour what's that traffic Are these the kinds of stories that may have been in the paper, the express news decades ago, but they don't have the time or space to put them in.

Um, I think they do still cover some of that.

I just think it's hard to drill down to the neighborhood level.

We're such a large city.

So, um, this is really a good way to kind of dig in and, you know, be close to our neighbors and learn about How important is it that it comes to your mailbox free.

However, Well, I think that's like pivotal, right?

Like, uh, we reached 2.7 million mailboxes every month.

Wow.

And now, but it's not cheap to print, print anything these days.

And, uh, what kind of advertisers are you either getting or aiming for that kind of?

So, um, we're looking for the locally owned small businesses.

Um, for instance, we recently featured a universal city bicycle shop.

You know, we're looking for those kinds of businesses that really want to reach the community.

That's traveling the main streets, um, in those neighborhoods, you know, every day.

And this is a family owned company out of Pflugerville, but owns a number of these, a whole chain of Yes, we're owned by, uh, John and Jennifer Garrett.

Um, a couple who has a long history in journalism and launched their own publication, uh, in Pflugerville in 2005, we have 36 newspapers across Texas.

We're in Phoenix and we're in Nashville and we're growing, uh, every month.

How important is it that it's graphics driven right on the front page?

Uh, you have chart graphs, you have other graphs in here.

It was like when USA today came out and people went, oh yeah, it's just for people.

It's a quick, I don't want to say a quick read, but it's more visual than It's very visual.

And I think that people really want to understand complicated issues, like asking the question, where does your bond money go is a, there that's a complicated answer if you're trying to write it out, but if you can pull it out and display it in graphics, it's a lot easier to digest and understand like where your money's going.

Um, I think the other interesting thing, I just want to go back to something you said earlier, it is expensive to print, um, newspaper, but we actually have our own printing presses in Pflugerville.

So we print all of our publications.

Well, it's fascinating.

This one has everything from the Medina river, Hollywood park Shavano park.

Um, you tell me, and then the other is on the north.

The other is on the Northeast side.

So we have a garden Ridge, Selma shirts, universal city.

Um, you know, we do have a publication in San Marcus and new Braunfels.

So we're kind of traveling up the 35 corridor.

Well, thank you very much and good luck.

The community impact newspaper group.

This is Trisha Swenson, uh, editor.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Appreciate it.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of on the record.

You can see the show again, or previous shows as well at our podcast.

KLR n.org as an old time newspaper.

Boy, we hope to see you again.

Next time on the next, the Bishop thinks on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele do follow.