Newspaper Wire

Newspapers Must Reinvent Themselves

The future of the newspaper is probably the most talked about topic in the newsroom today.

Some are predicting the end is near for print newspapers.

With more of the younger audience relying on the Internet and with newspapers facing declining advertising revenue every year, the future seems bleak.

A reporter must be able to write for print as well as online in an effort to keep up with the times.

However, the online edition will not replace the newspaper, so don't bury them yet.

When I look at a newspaper like the Downtown and Grunion Gazette on its news rack with nothing on the front page that makes me want to pick it up, the photo usually has no human element and is just plain boring.

However, I still pick it up. Why? Because it's portable and gives me something to read while I wait in a line or sit outside having coffee.

There is the physical feel of the paper and the freedom to have complete selective control on how I scan and in what order I choose the material that I want to read.

Furthermore, the ease and convenience of carrying a physical paper around is something the Internet cannot duplicate.

When a paper like the Long Beach Press-Telegram has several technical problems leading to missing pages and content and can't get the score in from the previous night's game in the morning edition, it doesn't help the condition or view of the industry as a whole.

Having a dynamic photo on the front is a sure way to sell more papers.

I can't tell you how many papers I have bought just because the top photo peeked my curiosity and I wanted to take a closer look.

The credibility of a newspaper is a hard-fought battle in which a paper must always win.

When errors occur, the paper goes to great lengths to correct them and do its best to not repeat them again.

The reputation of a paper takes decades to achieve. However, when reading online, there are no such guarantees.

Lately, there has been more focused coverage of the local scene.

Keeping stories from jumping to a backpage causing the reader to have to navigate through the paper, are areas that I have noticed increasing improvement on in the last few years.

Though I'm not sure what the answer is, firing and laying off journalists is not the answer. It's time to re-invent the newspaper.

(Source: Long Beach City College Viking)

Singly Copy's Perfect Storm

For NDM single copy at the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, GA, the month of March was one of those months that would make you think, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” if “Kansas” were a place where single copy sales continue to fall without explanation. “Instead, single copy experienced the combination of several factors into a “perfect storm” of success,” according to Single Copy Manager, Bill Huffhine.

Strong headlines, strong operational management, and a successful promotion all worked together to result in a month wherein daily sales beat budget by 9% and prior year by 4%. Sunday sales beat budget by nearly 3%. Returns finished the month on target. And rack theft hit an all-time low of 16%.  And non-payroll expenses finished the month 9% below budget.

“Though we recognize that much of our sales success came as the result of community tragedy, there are some great positives that point to the way we are managing our business,” reported Huffhine. “Our agent conversion and the conversion to a new returns procedure continues to produce increased rack sales and decreased rack theft. A strong sales promotion developed by Heather Williams contributed to the results. And the work done by Rick Wade in securing seventeen locations within the two new Wal-Mart Supercenters was a significant factor as well.

"Our March success continues a nearly year-long trend of year-over-year growth in our daily single copy sales in the NDM.  Operational changes, strong cooperation with our newsroom, and regularly running sales promotions are all to be heralded as contributors to that growth.

McClatchy To Boost Spanish Content

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Hoping to offset its losses in the U.S. newspaper market, McClatchy Co. will sharpen its focus on the rapidly growing Hispanic community by sharing articles and other content with a major publisher of Spanish-language publications.

The partnership, to be announced Tuesday, will allow McClatchy's Spanish-language papers and Web sites to feature information produced by ImpreMedia, a privately held publisher that operates in markets covering about two-thirds of the Hispanics living in the United States.

The seven ImpreMedia newspapers covered in the agreement are: El Diario La Prensa and Hoy Nueva York in New York; El Mensajero in the San Francisco Bay area; La Opinion in Los Angeles; La Raza in Chicago; La Prensa in Orlando, Fla.; and Rumbo in Houston, San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

McClatchy, the third largest U.S. newspaper publisher, runs three Spanish-language papers: El Nuevo Herald in Florida, Vida en el Valle in California's Central Valley and La Estrella in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. The Sacramento-based company owns 29 daily papers printed in English and 31 newspapers in all.

The partnership's financial terms aren't being disclosed.

Like the rest of the print news industry, McClatchy has been struggling as advertisers shift their spending from newspapers to the Internet in pursuit of the Web's expanding audience.

The trend has devastated McClatchy's stock, which has plunged by 82 percent since the end of 2005, triggering $2.8 billion in charges to account for the company's crumbling value. McClatchy shares fell 20 cents to $10.70 Monday.

ImpreMedia touts its Spanish-language newspapers as an advertising gold mine. The New York-based company estimates the 29.4 million Hispanics living in its target markets have a combined $478 billion in spending power.

"Sharing with other top Spanish-language publications is a chance to improve our service and also share our content with many thousands of new readers in new markets," said Howard Weaver, McClatchy's vice president of news. "It's a clear win all around."

Online Ad Spending Jumps 19%, Print Down 9%

Advertising expenditures for newspaper websites in 2007 increased 18.8 percent, to $3.2 billion - accounting for 7.5 percent of all newspaper ad spending last year (up from 5.7 percent in 2006), according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America, MarketingCharts writes.

Print ad expenditures were down 9.4 percent in the same period, however, and total (combined print and online) newspaper ad expenditures were down 7.9 percent for the year, according to the estimates.

(See table of online and print newspaper ad expenditures, by quarter, for 2007 and 2006.)

In the fourth quarter of 2007, advertising expenditures for newspaper websites increased to $847 million, up 13.6 percent compared with the same period a year earlier.

That was the thirteenth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for online newspaper advertising since NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004.

Advertising expenditures at newspapers and their websites, combined, totaled $12.6 billion for the fourth quarter; spending for print ads in newspapers totaled $11.7 billion.

(See table of newspaper print ad expenditures, broken down by segment and quarter, for 2007 and 2006.)

Those figures are down from the fourth quarter of 2006, when total advertising expenditures were $14 billion, and print ad spend was $13.2 billion.

About the data: The NAA website has quarterly and annual ad spending numbers in their entirety.

Who's To Blame For Industry Woes?

By Jim Chisholm

---

So some people in North America are beginning to think that newspapers are a bad business. They’re wrong. We work in one of the most exciting and important businesses on earth.

It’s a funny thing but ask the man in the street about television and he will tell you the TV industry is in great shape. Ask about newspapers and the impression is they’re outdated and failing.

Why the difference?

Us.

Who is spreading the bad news? Our own employees.

Every day, some media reporter or another is rejoicing in our decline, in the pages of the newspaper that pays his, or her, wages. Actually, most of them are male, because from my observation most of them are elderly failed senior journalists put out to pasture. Some have chips on their shoulders. Some are on diets to reduce their stress-related cholesterol count. Some of them may feel qualified to write about the role of modern journalism — not that this role doesn’t need to come under scrutiny — but few are qualified to write about the business of newspapers.

Imagine the scene. You’re watching the TV news, and after the commercial break (which is full of house advertising because they can’t sell enough airtime), the anchor comes back with a story about how his own TV company is in big trouble, audiences are plummeting, ad revenues are down, squillions of employees are being fired, blah, blah, blah. Think that will ever happen?  It’s inconceivable.

 
Why not?

Why doesn’t it happen? First, TV news editors are limited in what they can cover due to time constraints. Second, the one thing they know is that no sensible person outside the industry is the least bit interested in the travails of the television industry.  

It never ceases to astonish me how media journalists, and their editors, completely misplace their own obsession with their own importance, to the complete non-interest of their readers.

I can hear the squeals of indignation: You’re trying to censor the press!

That’s not my point.

Not only are all these negative newspaper industry stories bad for our industry, they are bad journalism. They are, in fact, the epitome of irrelevant self-indulgence. Why are we allowing stories to appear in our newspapers in which only a trivial percentage of our audience is interested?

At the recent Newspaper Association of America Marketing Conference, Brian Tierney, chief executive officer and publisher of Philadelphia Media Holdings, which prints the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, put it this way: “No other industry kicks itself in the rear end more than newspapers. Nobody else even comes close. TV and radio would never do that. Newspapers magnify their own problems to their audience. We don’t talk about the good things. The conversion from print to online at newspapers is the envy of radio and TV.”

Case in point: The Telegraph in London. The newspaper has undergone an enormous transformation from yesterday’s newspaper to tomorrow’s visionary newspaper group. It has been a brilliant project journalistically and commercially.

 
Covering the bad news

Inevitably, there have been cuts, new recruits, changing working practices and enormous investment, including new offices, with an extraordinary, world-class newsroom.

But what was the story published by the Telegraph’s competitors? That 90 journalists had been fired. No mention was made that the company, in fact, laid off 250 people, of whom a third were journalists.

To media reporters, all that matters is their own. While the role of journalism is surely to report on all aspects of a situation — and few do it better than The Telegraph — media journalists are only interested in journalists. They fail to understand what media is actually about, and until they do they are not qualified to be reporting it.

It would be easy for you to see this column as a rant against a few reporters whose views I disagree with. Well, there ain’t many perks in this job. Journalism is under pressure culturally, commercially and technologically, and no one is a stronger supporter of the need for investment in better journalism and journalists than me.  

But this issue of how we regard and report ourselves lies at the heart of our future and the barriers to future success. Our industry, from the USA to Australia, Denmark to South Africa, has witnessed enormous change.

As I’ve written before, a newsroom of 50 reporters is manageable. A news medium of 5,000 blogging participants requires a far higher level of journalistic skill and direction. And many newsrooms are rising to this challenge superbly.

Background key

The most talented media journalist I know is the media correspondent of The Economist — arguably the most successful business journal in the world with circulation having grown by 44 percent over the last four years.

The Economist famously has no bylines, so no one ever knows who writes those words. (Isn’t that an interesting counterpoint to my comments above?) But the Economist’s media reporter is worthy of my accolade not only because she is a journalist, but because she has also been a banker, and thus qualified to write about the business of newspapers. You can count her peers on the fingers of one hand. We need more of them, for the good of journalism and the good of our industry.

Yet our own people seem hell bent on bringing us down, as was the reporting about The Telegraph. Other media reporters either ignore the facts or aren’t qualified in the first place to write about the industry.

Perhaps this is why Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group, and one of our industry’s most compelling revolutionaries, commented this way at the NAA conference: “Giving ourselves a bad image is a problem. Readers don’t care what is going on in the newsroom. We over-report it. If we need to downsize newsrooms, we maybe should start with the media reporters.”

Jim Chisholm is joint principal of iMedia, Ifra’s joint venture advisory service. He can be reached at jim.chisholm@imediaadvisory.com.

Young Adults Disengaging From News

The Ledger-Enquirer
Bill Huffhine
March 28, 2007

The Associated Press released a story this week about the growing tendency of young adults to disengage from the news. The Pew Research Center conducted a survey in 2006 which indicated that 27 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 hadn't gotten news the day before from any source, including newspapers, television, radio, or the Internet.

In explaining their disconnect, some of the respondents spoke of weariness with the sheer volume of news that is available, lack of time, lack of interest, and disgust with the ways in which the news often focuses on the dark side of humanity.

It's true that we are the most news-saturated generation to ever live. We are surrounded by it 24 hours a day in formats and through media that our predecessors could never have imagined. And it is likewise true that there is much in the news, in both content and delivery, to elicit disgust and frustration

On the surface, it may seem self-serving for a newspaper to extol the virtue of being engaged with the news. And self-serving it would be if news were nothing more than a product packaged and sold for a profit.

However, news is much more than mere words on a page, voices in the air or pictures on a screen. What we find in today's news are the reverberations of yesterday's choices, decisions and actions. What we agonize over, debate and act upon today will bear offspring in tomorrow's headlines. And tomorrow's headlines will reveal to us if today's actions were right or wrong, and offer us another opportunity to act differently.

Amidst all of their reasonable explanations for disengaging from the news, these young adults can discover an alluring invitation to write the future chapters of our civilization, if they will look more deeply. To do this well, they must be men and women who understand the times and know what we, as a people, should do to prevent our story from becoming a tragedy.

This requires that they gain an understanding of the dynamics of life in today's world. And it necessitates that they be attentive to history, gleaning wisdom from the headlines of past generations and applying that wisdom to the unique context in which we find ourselves today.

In so doing, they can become more than mere consumers of news, but informed, intelligent makers of news with the power to guide the generations behind them.

-- Bill Huffhine, for the editorial board

Newspapers' New Owners Turn Grim

By DAVID CARR

Published: March 24, 2008

 

Critics of newspapers say that part of the problem is that the industry has lost its ability to surprise. Tell that to the guys who have just bought in.

“The news business is something worse than horrible. If that’s the future, we don’t have much of a future,”  Sam Zell, who bought the Tribune Company last year, said recently in The Baltimore Sun.

“I’m an optimist, but it is very hard to be positive about what’s going on,” said Brian P. Tierney, who bought The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News in 2006.

“The near term and medium term at the paper is more negative than what we expected,” said OhSang Kwon of Avista Capital Partners, which bought The Minneapolis Star-Tribune in late 2006.

These are all smart businesspeople, with significant success in other endeavors, who took a hard look at the wave-tossed publishing sector and appointed themselves as life savers. And very soon after jumping in, they too began foundering in the tall waves.

On Thursday, it was reported in Crain’s New York Business that Mr. Zell has put Newsday, one of Tribune’s more lucrative assets, on the auction block. In January, Mr. Tierney told unions at his papers that the company was confronting a “dire situation” and needed to cut expenses by 10 percent to meet debt payments.

And in Minneapolis last week, the paper’s publisher, Chris Harte, met with union leaders to discuss a “precipitous” drop in revenue that will make it difficult for the company to meet its obligations, according to MinnPost, a daily news site.

The industry may not be touching bottom any time soon. Last year, overall newspaper revenues dropped by about 7 percent, pushed along primarily by the secular change of readers and advertisers fleeing to the Web. And publishing, along with many other kinds of businesses, is now staring at a full-bore recession, led by the credit crisis that is fanning out across the economy.

Staple the secular and cyclical changes together and most newspapers will be staring at double-digit drops in revenue: one analyst I talked to put the figure at 15 percent. It’s clear from their rhetoric and recent moves that highly leveraged players like Mr. Tierney, the partners in Avista and Mr. Zell will have a tough time meeting their obligations.

Rick Edmonds, a business analyst at the Poynter Institute and one of the authors of a new report, “State of the News Media 2008,” from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, thinks this year will be a doozy.

“You already were looking at more of the same, which has not been good, and now with the potential of a recession, you are looking at the possibility of double-digit declines in earnings and revenues,” he said. “This is a year when some of the newer players may be hard-pressed to pay the bankers.”

Even if he is in a bit of a spot, why would Mr. Zell consider letting go of Newsday, once considered a prized asset? It might be because it is one of the few newspapers that will bring a decent number in the current market.

Newsday, with its relative monopoly on Long Island, and proximity to the New York market, has a rare kind of strategic value. It could benefit from the contentious tabloid battle between Rupert Murdoch of the News Corporation (you knew we’d get around to him, didn’t you?), the publisher of The New York Post, and Mortimer B. Zuckerman, who owns The Daily News. Cablevision has also expressed interest in Newsday, and Gannett, which owns a ring of papers north of New York City, may yet get involved.

Mr. Murdoch, still in the midst of getting his arms around his $5 billion purchase of The Wall Street Journal, apparently retains an appetite for both newspapers and the competition that has historically been part of the industry. Newspapers, for all of their new media rhetoric, remain primarily a manufacturing industry, and a joint operating agreement with Newsday would allow huge savings in terms of printing and distribution, helping to stem the chronic red ink at The New York Post.

Mr. Zuckerman has a low tolerance for losing money, indeed, a low tolerance for losing at anything (I’ve had the misfortune of confronting him at Ping-Pong). He will not stand by while Mr. Murdoch tries to bear-hug The Daily News out of existence.

There will be enormous regulatory hurdles, but the gunfight will be fun to watch, in part because it may be one of the last big fights for a newspaper. Absent a strategic or ego-driven impulse, few people or businesses will be lining up to get involved in print publishing.

“The transactions by financial buyers have been disasters, so there has to be a strategic aspect for any newspaper deal to make sense,” said Peter Appert, a media analyst at Goldman Sachs. “The painful realities of newspaper economics, which are tough to discern from the outside, become very obvious to the buyers after the fact.”

Publishing has been through some deep recessions before and has cut costs to maneuver through, but this time staffs have already been cut to the bone. The San Jose Mercury News has cut its staff by more than half since 2000. At many papers, foreign bureaus are gone, movie critics have dropped away and statehouse reporters are a thing of a past.

Newspapers continue to gain on the Web in part because they have the best talent, the biggest news hole and the most comprehensive coverage. But that value, which gave many papers their near-monopoly, could be wiped out by a sustained downturn.

According to the “State of the News Media” report, the extensive cuts across the industry will cripple any potential rebound as newspapers lose authority and franchises in their markets.

Mr. Appert remains confident that quality newspapers with a good grip on their audiences will find a way to remain in business through a combination of online and off-line revenues, even if the historically high margins will appear only in the rearview mirror.

John Morton, a longtime newspaper analyst, is more pessimistic. “The industry is meeting these challenges by cutting, by reducing the news hole and the people who fill it,” he said.

“Newspapers have lived through recessions before and come back strong,” he added. “My worry is that when things do turn around, they will be coming back in an environment that is more competitive than ever because of the Internet, and that after all these cuts, they will have less stature, less product quality and less talent — all of the things that they need to compete.”

While I was on the line with Mr. Morton, I mentioned that we had been talking about newspapers on and off for over a decade. That makes us almost friends, I said. But we are fast becoming the kind of friends who see each other only at funerals and wakes.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com

Seattle Times to Explore Sale of It's Maine Newspapers

By JERRY HARKAVY

Associated Press Writer

The Seattle Times Co. is exploring the sale of the Maine newspaper group it purchased a decade ago, the company announced Monday.

Citing challenges within the industry, CEO and Publisher Frank Blethen said the family-owned company needs to focus on the future of its newspapers in Washington state. The Maine newspapers include the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and MaineToday.com.

"The decision to explore a sale was painful. But a sale may be the best opportunity for the long-term survival of our newspapers in Washington and those in Maine," Blethen said in a statement posted on the Press Herald online site.

Blethen and Chuck Cochrane, CEO and publisher of Blethen Maine Newspapers, informed Press Herald employees during a 20-minute afternoon meeting. Workers were told that counseling would be made available to those needing it.

"We have been proud to be the stewards of these newspapers for the last 10 years. They provide their community with high-quality, independent journalism that is in keeping with the best traditions of the Seattle Times Company," Blethen said. "We wish our stewardship could continue indefinitely, but the difficult business environment and continuing uncertainties require we consider other options."

Tom Bell, vice president of Local 128 of the Newspaper Guild, characterized the meeting as somber.

"Workers here are stunned by the news. We can understand why the Blethen family is selling its Maine properties, but the news was still unexpected. A lot of employees are apprehensive right now," he said.

Bob Steele, a journalism values scholar at The Poynter Institute, said the Blethens greatly valued the purchase of the Maine newspapers in light of the family's historic roots in the state.

In addition to pressures confronting other independent newspaper owners, the family had been embroiled in a dispute over its joint operating agreement with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a strike at its flagship newspaper several years ago, Steele said.

"They've been hit hard financially and have had to take some strategic and tactical measures in recent years to keep the ships afloat," he said. "Now, they've made the decision apparently to cut back on the number of ships they have in the water."

Blethen Maine Newspapers have about 500 employees and combined circulation of about 101,000 daily and 136,900 Sunday.

Cochrane said he does not anticipate that the decision will require changes in policies or operations of the newspapers while a sale is being explored, the Press Herald Web site said.

The Seattle Times' purchase of the three newspapers from Guy Gannett Publishing Co. linked two companies that were launched by Mainers within years of each other in the late 19th century.

Guy Gannett, which is not affiliated with the larger Gannett Co., traced its origins to William Howard Gannett of Augusta and his Comfort magazine in 1888. Col. Alden Blethen, a former teacher and lawyer from Maine, bought the Seattle Press-Times eight years later.

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram announced last week that it was eliminating 27 jobs, resulting in 15 layoffs, because of the weakening national economy and a continuing downturn in advertising. Cochrane said advertising this year is "considerably below budget" and the outlook for the remainder of 2008 is not much brighter.

The newspaper also said it was cutting the space devoted to news and photographs and scaling back on supplemental news services.

Newspapers nationwide have been cutting staff and trimming costs in response to a slowing economy and the loss of readers and advertising dollars to the Internet.

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

Steiger Downplays Media Fears

The Harvard Crimson
Published On Wednesday, March 19, 2008  3:53 AM                   
By GRACE  KIM                                      

Contributing Writer

                   

Former Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal Paul E. Steiger spoke last night at the John F. Kennedy Forum at the Institute of Politics about the current recession in the newspaper business, contending that “we have not reached the bottom yet.”

Steiger began his talk with a promise not to deliver the “fashionable” speech that would reassure the audience that “the current crisis will pass” and that “all will be over soon.”

In an article published in a December issue of The Wall Street Journal, Steiger described the Web industry as a force that “shredded newspaper business models that had held sway for decades,” causing American newspapers to tighten their budgets. Even with economic pressure building on the newspaper industry’s shoulders, however, Steiger pointed out in his speech last night that the situation is not as bad as it could be.

Steiger suggested multiple “pathways” through which investigative journalism could be revived, including “specialization, subsidy, and creativity.”

Although Steiger acknowledged that some of his suggestions may be “simply wrong,” he emphasized that those in the newspaper business “need to experiment.”

Shorenstein Center Director Alex S. Jones, who introduced Steiger last night, said that the former managing editor is attempting to “keep the golden age [of newspaper journalism] alive” through his work as editor in chief and president of ProPublica, an independent non-profit that Jones described as resisting the current trend of newspapers to allow “investigative journalism to disappear.”

ProPublica offers free investigative material to newspapers and other media outlets across the country in addition to publishing its material online.

Steiger said that ProPublica’s goal is to “reach the people who can actually make a difference.”

By attempting to persuade newspapers to publish outsiders’ investigative reporting, Jones said that Steiger is taking steps toward breaking “the mold.”

The Shorenstein Center presented its annual Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism to Steiger last night too.

In an interview, acting Director of the Shorenstein Center Thomas E. Patterson called Steiger an “extraordinary editor” and praised ProPublica’s attempts to “address the struggles newsrooms are having.”

Steiger will be leading a panel discussion at the Kennedy School tonight with the winners and seven finalists of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting entitled “The Present and Future of Investigative Reporting.”

Newspaper Circulation Changes Approved

AP
Newspaper Circulation Changes Approved
Tuesday March 18, 11:32 am ET

Audit Bureau Gives Initial Approval to Changes in Newspaper Circulation Rules

NEW YORK (AP) -- A broad set of changes to newspaper circulation rules received initial approval from the board of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the agency said Tuesday.

The changes are designed to allow publishers greater flexibility in marketing newspapers, reduce audit costs and simplify circulation rules.

The Audit Bureau announced the proposals last November, and on Tuesday said its board had made further refinements and gave initial approval to the changes.

The agency also provided specific dates for when certain rule changes will go into effect: April 1, 2009 for one set of revisions, with the balance becoming effective Oct. 1, 2010.

Under the new rules, newspapers will be able to count circulation as "paid" regardless of the price at which the paper is sold, bringing newspaper rules in line with those for magazine publishers.

Newspapers currently have to report individually paid circulation figures for copies sold for at least half of the basic price, as well as copies bought for between 25 and 50 percent of the basic price.

Also, the circulation threshold for smaller newspapers required to have annual audits will be raised from 25,000 to 50,000, affecting about 170 dailies. Those papers will now only have to undergo audits every other year.

Final approval for the changes is expected to come at the July meeting of the Audit Bureau's board.

The Audit Bureau is comprised of publishing executives from newspapers and magazines as well as major advertisers.