Newspapers everywhere are considering different strategies for serving today’s media-savvy public. This issue of Fusion looks at what three newspapers are doing to remain the dominant medium in their markets.
The Hamilton Spectator in Ontario, Canada, has boldly remade itself to increase readership among women and baby boomers. It has created new sections, collapsed others and employed a form of storytelling not used by most newspapers in a century. Editor-in-Chief Dana Robbins describes the changes as a “revolution.”
Innovation is taking a different form at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane. The circulation department was eliminated and replaced with three separate divisions, including the sort of cross-departmental team one would expect to see at a high-tech company instead of a newspaper.
At the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times, a newly created innovation committee is considering ideas for new products and improving operational efficiencies. “This is grass-roots generated,” says President and Publisher Virgil Smith. The committee is already moving forward with one idea for extending the brand of a popular section.
While the projects differ, each paper is alike in its passion to change its culture and transform its business.
A Newspaper Starts a ‘Revolution’
When editors at The Hamilton Spectator in Ontario, Canada, sat down in 2003 to plan how to make their newspaper more relevant, attractive and useful to readers, they didn’t just tweak the design or content of the 159-year-old paper. They reinvented it.
“The Spectator Revolution, we called it,” says Dana Robbins, editor-in-chief of the Spectator, which in 2005 won the Excellence in Journalism Award, Canada’s most prestigious media honor. “We blew up our paper and created a completely different one.”
Owned by Torstar Corp., the newspaper decided in 2003 to target women, baby boomers and middle- to upper-middle-class households.
First, editors got rid of traditional news sections such as “National,” “Local,” “Business” and “Opinion,” compiling them instead in the “A” section. They refashioned the sports section as a tab and created “Go,” a daily broadsheet section targeted to women and baby boomers and devoted to arts and entertainment, celebrity news, food, health and fitness, and home and garden.
Aviva Boxer, editor of “Go,” and a colleague spent six weeks poring over dozens of news, fashion and women’s magazines. What struck them is that while newspapers often organize news on food, entertaining and other similar subjects into weekly sections, magazines compile them in one issue.
They decided on a similar approach. “We had an epiphany: Give [readers] a little of everything they want, every day,” Boxer says.
Besides blending content, “Go” is highly visual, taking its cues from magazine covers. “Go” has been so successful among readers and advertisers that the newspaper recently created a weekly called “Go @ Home,” a home décor, design and dining magazine that includes television listings and puzzles.
GOING LONG
News stories also look different. Reporters tend to write them shorter and tighter – as well as much, much longer. The newspaper has made a commitment to long-form narrative journalism, and much as Charles Dickens serialized his novel “Oliver Twist” in a London newspaper, the Spectator publishes two novelistic series a year by its reporters.
“Sniper: The True Story of James Kopp” was serialized in 42 chapters over the course of a year. “Post Mortem,” about an investigation into the slaying of a Guyanese-Canadian woman by her husband, ran in daily doses over three months. The newspaper also marketed that series on television, and the tale’s writer, Jon Wells, communicated with readers about it via a blog.
The newspaper’s first series, “Poison: A True Crime Story,” about the murder of another woman and also written by Wells, drew the Spectator’s largest single-copy sales increase, Robbins says.
In fact, interest was so high in “Poison” that Robbins held an open house in the newspaper’s auditorium so readers could see and hear from some of Wells’ sources, including a coroner and police investigators. Within an hour, seats sold out. Tickets for a second open house also went fast.
“This was the first time in my career,” Robbins says, chuckling, “that I saw a news reporter mobbed like a movie star.”
COOKING CLASSES
Two of the most radical concepts the Spectator has green-lighted involve building a demonstration kitchen and offering cooking classes for readers.Staff members identified food as a big interest among women and baby boomers and wanted to offer daily recipes for elaborate gourmet meals and quick dinners, plus calorie counters and nutrition tips. But there was a hitch.
“It’s very expensive to source food photography,” Robbins says. “We needed a place where we can have the best food photography possible. So we built our own demo kitchen.”
Advertisers underwrote most costs, supplying materials such as cookware and countertops. The kitchen also draws revenue from the paper’s 25 annual cooking classes with well-known local chefs. The classes are so popular that they have been sold out for the past 18 months, and are videotaped and streamed on the newspaper’s Web site. Up to 27 people can participate in each class, with fees discounted for subscribers.
“We’re really trying to put a lot of time and effort into the whole notion of cementing relationships,” Robbins says.
New Circulation Approach Has Paper Buzzing with Energy
Like many newspapers, The Spokesman-Review in Spokane wasn’t happy with its circulation results. “It's tough, and becoming an even tougher business,” observes Shaun O’L. Higgins, director of sales and marketing.
So the newspaper made the radical decision to eliminate the department.
“It struck me some time ago the very words ‘circulation department,’ when applied to newspapers, conjure up a lot of stuff that's no longer applicable,” he says. “The standard circulation duties have changed. For years, circulation meant getting the product that a consumer paid for. Increasingly, it means delivering free products, too.”
So the daily, owned by hometown Cowles Publishing Co., divided the department into three smaller ones: distribution; subscriber acquisition and retention; and administrative, audit and compliance. Higgins, who is in charge of all revenue-generating activities at The Spokesman-Review, says these sweeping changes make better use of employees’ time and skills, and more accurately reflect the specific jobs entailed in reaching out to the public via the Web and other ways.
LITTLE BUSINESSES
Distribution, for example, has become more complex. Delivery involves not just the daily product, but also free, specialized publications such as HOME, a weekly home and gardening magazine, and 7, a weekly entertainment tab.
Readers receive 7, which also has a substantial online presence, as an insert in the Friday paper or find it free in local cafes, coffeehouses, malls and movie theaters.
“Distribution needed a focus of its own,” Higgins says. “I don’t want those folks to become marketers. They have very different skill sets.”
Higgins also successfully “flattened” the advertising department, which has no director. Instead, responsibilities such as national accounts, real estate and automotive are divvied up among advertising employees.
That way, Higgins says, “each of those areas becomes their own little business. You can hold each manager accountable for [his or her] own area.”
Dan Johnson, manager for subscriber acquisition and retention, says the restructuring enables him to concentrate on serving customer needs.
“I can focus on figuring out innovative ways to market the paper,” he says. “I can really focus on, ‘How do we grow the product?’ ”
CROSS-POLLINATION
One of the biggest changes at The Spokesman-Review is “The Hive.”
Enter the second floor of the building, and you may feel you’re in a high-tech company in Silicon Valley rather than in a newspaper office in downtown Spokane.
While cubicles dot this wing, walls are few and no meeting rooms exist. Instead, employees gather in “conversation pits,” open areas with comfortable couches and beanbag chairs. An artist’s rendition of bees hangs nearby, and hive-like vases decorate the space.
It’s the setting for a new concept that links key employees from different departments so they can collaborate better and rein in readers and advertisers more effectively. Call it a cross-pollination of sorts.
Higgins says the new workplace was created to bring all of the newspaper’s disparate databases into one area. Instead of being siloed, employees and information can work together.
“We wanted to create synergies,” he explains. “We want to bring the top of the line to our efforts.”
Adds Bob Glaza, the direct marketing manager, “We want to figure out how to drive revenue with all of this data.”
Many of the groups’ efforts focus on using the Web to communicate with readers and advertisers. These projects don’t have to be complicated.
An example is the biannual “adopt-a-pet” feature, a four-page insert sponsored by a local feed store. Readers pay $20 to sponsor a photo of a dog or cat from a local animal shelter. The paper gathers e-mail and U.S. mail addresses of those readers and can contact them on behalf of advertisers, such as pet food companies or local veterinarians.
“It’s really simple and something everyone knew needed to be done, but [previously] it didn’t fall into anyone’s area,” says Kathleen Coleman, consumer marketing manager and assistant director of sales and marketing. “We don’t want to bombard people with information. But in this case, there’s a clear interest in animals and pets.”
Asheville Paper Takes a Team Approach to Innovation
Whether it’s bluegrass, acoustic folk, rock or avant-punk, the local music scene in Asheville, N.C., rivals that of better-known music locales such as New Orleans and Austin.
The Asheville Citizen-Times publishes a weekly entertainment tab, Take 5, to keep readers up-to-date on concerts and shows. The newspaper also recently introduced a weekly podcast of local music, and it’s one of the most frequently downloaded items on www.citizen-times.com.
The Gannett Co. newspaper then decided to go one better: Why not create a one-stop shop for local music online, with a digital radio station; band blogs, tour dates and profiles; calendars and club information; and even downloadable ringtones? It would extend the brand and reach of the Asheville Citizen-Times among younger people, a much-coveted newspaper demographic, as well as to music lovers beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains.
That wishful thinking will soon become reality.
Later this year, the Take 5 music Web site will debut, and listeners can thank a group of forward-thinking Asheville Citizen-Times employees. They’re part of the company’s innovations committee – folks from a variety of departments, each with different skills – but united in their goal to integrate new technologies, design and ideas to make the Asheville Citizen-Times more relevant to today’s readers.
The new committee stems from an earlier and still-functioning “new product development” program that’s borne considerable fruit in the way of new magazines, tabs and other free publications to attract families, older readers and affluent households.
“We have brought together people from multiple disciplines to demonstrate their knowledge and skills,” President and Publisher Virgil Smith says of the innovations committee. “It makes us more effective across departments and involves innovative people. Now, you’ve got circulation talking to the newsroom.”
OPERATION, OPPORTUNITY
The idea for the innovations committee came out of a company-wide brainstorming session. Staff members interested in serving could nominate themselves. On the application, they were asked to give their best ideas for innovation. Smith originally sought 10 participants; he ended up selecting 11.
Other than Smith, the innovations committee has no senior managers. He says he told the group to put aside rank – to look on him not as the publisher, but as just another committee member. He also set communications guidelines up front, asking for open and honest discussion, not polite exchanges.
The innovations committee is composed of two teams, Operation and Opportunity. They’re made up of people, as Smith says, “on the front lines.” Team Operation looks at procedures currently in place and finds ways to improve operational efficiency, while Team Opportunity works on creating new products that can be delivered across multiple platforms.
Jaime Binde, online editor of citizen-times.com, is a member of Team Opportunity. She and her 20- and 30-something colleagues brainstormed on the strategies underlying the Take 5 music site. These include forging partnerships with a local radio station and recording studio, and making the Web site interactive for readers by offering them opportunities to write music reviews, choose the songs streamed over Take 5 radio, and vote in a virtual battle of the bands.
“Entertainment is a big thing in northwestern North Carolina,” Binde says. “We came up with a business plan for Take 5 … and to see it on paper is really exciting.”