December 16, 2009 What is in store for the future of newspapers. A look at 2010

Kubas Consultants has completed Newspaper Industry Preview 2010. The study is based on 532 completed surveys with newspaper executives and managers in the US and Canada, and it concerns their outlook on advertising revenues and what strategic initiatives they plan to undertake next year.
 
The Newspaper Industry Preview 2010 report is now ready for download. Please click here: http://kubas.com/info/Kubas_Newspaper_Preview_2010.pdf

December 8, 2009as holidays near, it should be easy to find a Know it. all!

It's time to get this promotion going! Sit down as a staff... or by yourself... but identify a Know It. All. for the last few months of the Year! And don't stop there! Promoting your business should be a year-round endeavor.

As part of its ongoing mission to increase newspaper readership, the Missouri Press Association has launched a new series of ads, available for use without charge by member newspapers throughout the state. The theme of the campaign, “Read A Newspaper. Know It. All.” focuses on the value local newspapers bring to their readers and presents a compelling case for readership in a straightforward and sometimes humorous manner.

Tell your audience how important your newspaper is!  Nobody else will!

Remember, the ads can be run in any paper with only minor modification. Layouts, artwork and copy are presented in template form, with each element accessible to local editors or designers to allow for personalization or localization of each ad. This approach allows for the implementation of a true campaign on a statewide basis, but allows each local paper to customize the content of the ads to make the message really ring true.

The first flight of this campaign consists of eight ads, each designed with a different target, season or approach in mind. Many of the ads focus on the news and information aspects of newspapers while others focus more on the advertising and value aspects of local newspaper operations.
Although it is recommended that three specific ads be used to launch this campaign, many papers will find it useful to mix and match the pattern of usage. All of the ads are presented in two distinct sizes in both color and black and white.

The ads are posted on the MPA website along with an overview of the campaign. All materials may be downloaded free of charge by member newspapers from http://mopress.com/know_it_all.php.
Specialty artwork used in the creation of these ad templates will also be provided in separate files for use in campaign extensions such as T-shirts, book bags, buttons and posters. Future plans include the creation of radio ads that can be used by local newspapers for use in multi-media promotions.

The eight-part ad series was produced by Missouri Press Association members in conjunction with Strategists, LLC, a communications firm based in Columbia.
For further information, contact MPA at (573) 449-4167 or contact Strategists, LLC Managing Partner Mark Farnen at mfarnen@mchsi.com or 573-424-1782.

December 3, 2009News getting better

By Gary Sosniecki

Tim Waltner was an enthusiastic tour guide as we drove the streets of Freeman, S.D., population 1,317, on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon in late October.

Waltner, longtime publisher of the Freeman Courier, one of the best weekly newspapers in his state if not the nation, proudly showed off the new public library next to his office and the new pharmacy across the street. We paused in front of an abandoned garment factory that has gained new life as professional offices. We drove partway around the Wildcat Manufacturing plant as Tim pointed out examples of the screening machinery the company makes. And we saw the beautiful Freeman Public Schools complex, where 375 students, kindergarten through high school, are taught in modern buildings that would make many larger communities jealous.

Tim was typical of the small-town publishers I met with during a week visiting more than a dozen community newspapers in “east river" South Dakota, plus one each in Iowa and Nebraska. The largest was the 12,329-circulation Watertown Public Opinion, the only daily on my itinerary. The smallest were weeklies in the 1,000-circulation range. The Timber Lake Topic, published by former schoolteachers Jim and Kathy Nelson, serves an isolated town of only 183 households but boasts a far-flung circulation of 1,332.

Most publishers were proud of their communities and anxious to talk about the good things happening in them. Several showed off recent improvements to their buildings and equipment. Everyone talked about improving their web sites or buying new ones, which, as a salesman of web sites, was the purpose of my trip.

Nobody bemoaned the supposed “death” of the newspaper industry, because in small-town America, most newspapers are doing just fine, thank you.

Everywhere I traveled, I asked, “How’s business?”

“Not bad,” one publisher said. “OK,” said another. “Status quo,” said a third.

It isn’t that small-town newspapers are recession-proof. Those that relied heavily on real-estate and automotive advertising before the recession are getting by on less of it now. In the smaller towns, those car ads often came from dealers in bigger cities, dealers who cut fringe-market newspapers from their ad budgets as the economy tightened.

In one town near the Minnesota border, the publisher of a 1,500-circulation weekly worried about the fate of a family-owned GM dealer on the edge of the town. Yet, even this town of 1,300 still has a Ford dealer downtown.

The newspapers in America’s smallest towns – especially those towns too distant to be sucked into the economic woes of larger cities – don’t suffer as much from the lows of a bad economy and don’t benefit as much from the highs of a good economy. Business generally is steady in good times and bad.

In Onida, a 740-population county seat northeast of the state capital of Pierre, The Watchman launched a new web site the day before my visit. Publisher Curt Olson and sales rep Amanda Fanger told me how all but one online ad position was sold before the launch, an incredible success story.

The publishers I met with aren’t immune to thinking about the future of their industry, but it isn’t the first thing on their minds. In South Dakota, the big worry in late October was whether the farmers could get in the wet fields in time to save the soybean crop. (They did.)

Other worries are more mundane, like how to cover two football games at the same time, or whether anyone is donating blood when the photographer shows up to take a picture.

Yes, newspapers die in small towns when economies shrivel to nothing, but newspapers still start in small towns, too. The weekly Cooper County Voice debuted Nov. 10 in Boonville, Mo., population 8,200, in competition with the 90-year-old Boonville Daily News.

Small-town newspapers have a couple of big advantages over their big-city brethren, the papers that are crying the blues the most.

The first is that more small papers are family-owned, and even the small papers that are group-owned tend to operate as if their ownership is local. The best publishers at group-owned newspapers in small markets are considered “owners” of their papers in the eyes of their readers.

But the best advantage small newspapers have is their stature in the community. Through a century or more of positive service, both in the pages of their product and in personal volunteer work, most of them have earned the rare status of “community institution.”

These small papers are so well-respected in their communities that citizens can’t imagine life without them. They are their papers. Just like a member of the family, these papers are cussed or loved depending on the week, but they can’t be ignored, and they won’t be allowed to die. They will continue to serve their communities for years to come regardless what the future holds for big-city dailies.

Back in South Dakota, Tim Waltner showed me the new photo studio son Jeremy uses at the back of the Courier office. Publisher Larry Atkinson gave me a tour of the Mobridge Tribune’s beautiful new office, including its state-of-the-art commercial-printing equipment. Watertown publisher Mark Roby showed how the Public Opinion’s plant neatly utilizes a former Coca-Cola bottling plant. Kathy Nelson talked about her work with the Timber Lake Museum next door and, in particular, a 672-page town centennial book that will be released this month. Publisher Doug Card of The Britton Journal explained how his town, population 1,328, built a new swimming pool. Tribune & Register publisher Becky Tycz told me that most of the storefronts in Tyndall, population 1,239, are full.

Life goes on in a world where newspapers have no intention of dying.

November 24, 2009Multi-State Digital Task Force Organized

            A new multi-state publisher grassroots effort has been launched to help newspapers monetize the Internet by collecting, digitizing and marketing newspaper content. On November 20, thirty-five publishers and representatives of state, regional and national newspaper organizations met at The Kansas City Star to discuss steps to address this problem.

       Those attending from Missouri included Mark Maassen, The Kansas City Star; Brad Gentry, Houston Herald; Andy Waters, Columbia Daily Tribune; Jack Whitaker, Hannibal Courier-Post, representing GateHouse Media; Richard Gard, St. Louis Daily Record, representing American Court and Commercial Newspapers; Brad Buchanan, Scott Buchanan and Ian Buchanan, GeoTel, Columbia; Brian Steffens, National Newspaper Association, Columbia; and Doug Crews, Missouri Press Association, Columbia.  Maassen, Gentry and Waters are Task Force members, representing MPA.

            For several months, a Multi-State Digital Task Force made up of publishers from Missouri, Kansas and Iowa have been discussing this idea. The Nov. 20 Task Force meeting was a facilitated discussion where other newspaper organizations were invited to attend, observe and weigh in with their thoughts.

            The Task Force concluded that it is imperative that publishers begin to discuss the possibilities of forming a new, for-profit company “that collects, stores, digitizes, protects and markets newspaper content”. The mission of this corporation would be to provide news organizations with a means to digitize and archive their content for research, historical and commercial purposes.

            In addition, the company could also provide participating newspapers and newspaper associations with

            ---The ability to upload public notices to statewide public notice websites within days rather than weeks to protect the future of these notices in newspapers;

            ---The ability of press association ad services to obtain electronic tear sheets within a few days of publication to make ad services more viable and speed payment to newspapers;

            ---The ability of newspapers to create low-cost, word-searchable morgues and archives;

            ---The ability of newspapers to electronically mine the news stories of other newspapers on any given topic.

            ---The ability of newspapers to inexpensively create websites.

            ---The creation of a central collection point for the receipt of royalties derived from reused content.

            The Task Force believes that newspapers can leverage their collective power to create a substantial competitive advantage in the information marketplace.

            People are increasingly moving their lives on-line, and the newspaper industry is still searching for a viable model to monetize the distribution of content in an electronic world.  Demand is not the problem – people want news.  The problem is capturing sufficient value from that demand.

            By collectivizing content through state press associations, controlled by the news organizations they serve, the Task Force believes publishers can regain control of the distribution, resale and reuse of newspaper information, while deriving additional value from offsetting the costs associated with producing a physical newspaper.  The industry as a whole will have market leverage beyond what would be possible for a single newspaper, press association or newspaper group.  The Task Force thinks the state press associations are the logical organizations to move this effort forward since almost all newspapers in America belong to their state association. Integration of content through state press associations could lead to substantial benefits for all involved parties.

            The corporation would consist of stock owned by news organizations, associations and individuals who have an interest in helping our industry to solve the problem of content control.  While the Internet has created huge business opportunities it also has destroyed a portion of the traditional monetary underpinnings newspapers have depended upon to fund the gathering of information. Digital files created and owned by a newspaper can be placed so rapidly into the public domain that the ability to derive full value from the product is directly diminished. Products and services are created daily which seek to take that content for their own commercial purposes, paying the source newspaper pennies, if anything.

            The critical criteria and drivers of this corporation would include:

            ---Respect for copyright laws and aggressive pursuit of violators

            ---Mutually beneficial royalties and profit sharing

            ---Historic preservation

            ---Efficient and effective newspaper participation

            ---Easy user access

            ---Scalability

            The market for the information would consist of:

1.     Newspapers-In a day of smaller news staffs and a push to localize all information, an archive of both weekly and daily newspapers would be valuable. The archive should also contain past issues, giving any reporter the ability to quickly research any subject.
2.     Clipping services
3.     Advertising tear sheets
4.     Individual stories by subject
5.     Genealogist and research historians
6.     On-line news aggregators
            The Task Force has hired Bill Monroe, who retires from the Iowa Newspaper Association at the end of the year, to facilitate development of a business plan for presentation to the Task Force in early 2010.

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