Cover Story: The Incredibles

By Mary Lynn F. Jones | Illustration by Brad Hamann

First Published: April 2008

A decade ago, publishers concentrated on producing a good daily newspaper, and everything else usually fell into place. Today, it’s a different story.

Audience isn’t just one group of readers; it’s multiple demographic groups. Competition isn’t just other printed products; it’s all forms of media. And the core product isn’t a publisher’s only concern because he or she also oversees niche publications and digital operations.

Add to that the need to develop new products to reach increasingly fragmented audiences, grow market share and revenue, trim costs as budgets shrink and fulfill traditional duties, such as sitting on the paper’s editorial board and attending community events. It’s enough to make any publisher seem like a modern-day Superman or Wonder Woman.

Publishers today must “have their hands on all the levers,” says Jack Sweeney, president and publisher of the Houston Chronicle. “The business is not on cruise control.”

Despite these challenges, many publishers say they are more determined and invigorated than at any point in their careers, particularly as they determine how to match revenue with audience and deal with threats to the industry posed by other businesses.

“Newspapers for a long time were nice cash machines, but they didn’t deal with the real issues that a lot of industries do,” says John Rung, publisher of The Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, Ill., and chief operating officer of Shaw Suburban Media in Crystal Lake, which includes three dailies and 19 weeklies.

“It’s not about how to grow the margin from 30 percent to 31 percent anymore,” he adds. Instead, the job is about keeping a quality audience that advertisers want to reach, cutting costs smartly, transitioning to a platform-neutral product and slowing the decline of the print business, he says. “It’s very challenging and exciting.”

Faster Than a Speeding Bullet

Challenges facing the industry today require publishers to think strategically in a rapidly evolving environment.

“We have to figure out how to not just be comfortable with where we are now but to look ahead to what’s next,” says Tom Griscom, publisher and executive editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Paying attention to what audiences want is an important part of being able to transform the business successfully.
“We have to look at our audiences and what they are interested in and make sure we are providing them the news and information they desire,” says Patrick Dorsey, president and publisher of the Tallahassee Democrat. “If not, we will not have the audience we need to generate additional ad revenues and be successful over the long term.”

Dorsey directed resources so that the Democrat’s staff could launch several Web sites last year aimed at boosting  audience. These include www.nolesports.com and www.rattlernews.com, both geared to sports fans at Florida State and Florida A&M universities in Tallahassee, and www.floridacapitalnews.com for political junkies in the state’s capital. Their creation came after market studies and online traffic numbers confirmed that these were “areas of intense interest for our readership,” Dorsey says.

Dorsey also sought opportunities beyond the traditional daily newspaper market. In August 2006, the Democrat purchased FSView & Florida Flambeau, an independent campus newspaper that serves the Florida State University community. Although the Democrat and its Web site had a “solid reach” into the market’s younger demographic, the purchase has helped to strengthen that, Dorsey says. The relationship with the student-run paper also provides opportunities to introduce both newspapers’ advertisers to each other’s suite of products and audience reach, he says.

Dorsey’s broad-based background, especially on the business side, may help to explain his success in guiding the Democrat through such changes. Before joining the paper three years ago, he worked as an auditor and group controller for several newspaper properties.

As an auditor, Dorsey had exposure to a newspaper’s overall financial information and to how the advertising, circulation, production and support departments operate, he notes. As a group controller, he learned about content issues in relation to improving and launching products as well as bringing various departments together to execute business plans.

“Along the way, you have to learn various roles, or you’re going to be learning it on the job” as publisher, Dorsey says.

Up, Up and Away

Seeking ways to bring in additional revenue, publishers are retooling their advertising departments and spending more time with online initiatives.

The Northwest Herald’s Rung is hoping to boost revenues by changing the structure of his paper’s advertising department. In February, the Herald enlarged its sales territories by about 50 percent and put two reps in charge of each area, one to cover existing business and one to focus on driving new business. The paper also changed from an old-fashioned sales model in which one person sells classified ads while another sells retail, for instance, to one in which reps are responsible for selling a suite of products across all platforms, Rung says.

“Revenue’s revenue,” Rung adds. “Look at the nature of the sales call, not the category.”

Spending more time recruiting and developing sales talent also will attract more business, Rung says. A job search for an accountant yields 100 résumés, but one for a sales rep will produce just one or two candidates who often are not qualified. “The skill set we need is so different than it was, and we never cultivated that type of talent,” he says. Instead of simply offering a product for sale, today’s reps must be “problem solvers” who can understand how to help a client grow business, he adds.

To find that talent, Rung is looking in a variety of places including outside the industry, especially for good sales reps affected by the slumping housing market, including real estate agents and investment sales reps. Rung also is considering reps fresh from college, reps who currently work at the paper and are interested in training to sell the paper’s entire portfolio and sales assistants who are comfortable handling accounts and might want to become sales reps.

Other publishers are looking at restructuring their newspapers’ ad departments, particularly to boost online revenues, which have been growing steadily. In the third quarter of 2007, 7.1 percent of newspaper ad revenue came from digital products, compared with 5.4 percent a year earlier, according to NAA.

While newspaper sales reps have traditionally focused on reaching a mass audience, online sales reps should follow radio or cable television’s approach of going after niche segments such as country music fans or Disney lovers, says P.J. Browning, who became president and publisher of The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in January after serving as publisher at several other papers.

For instance, Browning says, the paper is launching a tourism site this month, which its entertainment sales rep will sell. There’s also discussion about launching a health and fitness site, which its medical sales rep would sell.

“Multiple sales people can target different businesses for different purposes,” Browning says, adding she plans to increase her online-only sales staff from two employees to at least three this year. The third would focus on retail banner ads. “We’re seeing an increased opportunity in this area,” she says.

“You have to follow the money and go where the advertising is,” says Orage Quarles III, president and publisher of The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. A year ago, he spent about 80 percent of his time thinking about print products and 20 percent on digital. Today, he says, it’s a 50-50 split.

“It’s a different market than eight to 10 years ago,” he adds.

In a tough economic climate, publishers also must focus on the other side of the balance sheet: cutting costs. Deciding what to eliminate can be painful, whether cuts are large or small.

Newspapers are “a business with a lot of tradition, which makes it hard” to stop doing something, says the Houston Chronicle’s Sweeney. “You look at what jobs are absolutely essential and what jobs you can make more relevant to our new challenges,” he says.

For instance, in February, the San Francisco Chronicle began printing its Sunday Insight and Books sections as tabloids and combined the sports and business sections on Mondays and Tuesdays, when the paper usually has a higher page count than later in the week. The changes allowed the paper to save money but keep the news hole intact, President and Publisher Frank J. Vega says. “We’re looking at expense reductions in a way that’s not going to hurt the reader,” he adds.

The Chronicle also asked readers to look at prototypes of what a new single section would look like and offer feedback through the Chronicle’s Web site, www.sfgate.com.

The Chronicle also is seeking reader input on a yearlong redesign begun in March, Vega says. The redesign will be unveiled as the paper moves its printing and post-press operations to Transcontinental Inc. (www.transcontinental.com/en/index.html), based in Montreal. The move is expected to save the Chronicle money while providing greater color capacity, Vega says.

Throughout such changes, Vega talks frequently with employees to explain what he’s doing and why. He also reassures them that the Chronicle retains a very important mission: to provide information from a trusted source.

Acting as a cheerleader for staff members is emerging as an important role for publishers, says The News & Observer’s Quarles. “As we go through this transition, which is very painful,” he says, “I remind [my employees] that we have a great future, but it is going to be different.”

Community Role Remains Important

Besides developing new products and balancing budgets, publishers still tend to more traditional duties, such as attending community events, pressing the importance of First Amendment issues, participating in editorial board meetings and motivating their staffs. For many, that means less personal time.

“You run pretty fast,” says Ellen Leifeld, president and publisher of The Tennessean in Nashville. The demands of the job are such that “you do all the things you used to do and you do new things.”

“I don’t think you’ll talk to any publisher who says there are enough hours in the day,” says the Chronicle’s Sweeney. 

Still, Sweeney has learned to say no and has halved to four the number of local boards on which he sits. But, he says, having a visible role in the community gives the Chronicle a competitive advantage over other businesses challenging newspapers, such as national Web sites without a significant local presence. “Most newspaper publishers in this country do so much more community speaking than any other media executive, by far,” Sweeney adds.

Being part of the community often means speaking out on the need for a free press, publishers say. In February, Chattanooga's Griscom stepped down after three years as president of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (www.tcog.info), and in June, he’ll become president of the Tennessee Press Association in Knoxville.

Arnold Garson, president and publisher of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., and vice president of Gannett’s Pacific Newspaper Group, has met with legislators in South Dakota about the need to improve the state’s open records laws. He also has been active in the Coliseum Exploratory Group, which is considering whether to bring a new events center and sports facility to Sioux Falls to help improve the city’s economy and quality of life.

“You have to make time for community, no matter what,” Garson says. “If you’re shutting the community out, you’re ignoring a part of the job that can’t be ignored.”

Many publishers also sit on their papers’ editorial boards, where they might suggest topics and meet with candidates seeking local office. Tallahassee’s Dorsey, for example, considers himself one of the board’s many voices. “I don’t believe I should be setting” the agenda for the whole board," he says. “There’s a lot of history as to where you go and the decisions you make.”

The Man (and Woman) of Tomorrow

With all of the skills required of publishers these days, there’s no one path to the job.

A modern publisher is “someone with the enthusiasm and energy to think about what the future looks like,” no matter his or her background, says Bob Weil, vice president of operations for The McClatchy Co. in Sacramento, who oversees 10 daily newspapers in the Midwest and Northwest, and was a publisher for 17 years. Finding a smart, strategic thinker who can “help chart the future” is more important than ever, he says.

McClatchy often tends to find such people in its own ranks, Weil says. 

For example, Browning came to The Sun News after serving since 2005 as president and publisher of The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph, a former Knight Ridder property bought by McClatchy in 2006. She succeeded Gary Wortel, who was named president and publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, also owned by McClatchy.

The next generation of publishers, Weil adds, could come from a wide range of disciplines within or outside the business.

Although many publishers tend to have advertising or business backgrounds, future leaders may sport résumés thick with digital experience, particularly as digital products produce more revenue and online content grows. They also could come from areas that will continue to remain important, such as news or marketing, Browning says.

Publishers of tomorrow must “have the leadership qualities and breadth of thinking to deal with change, regardless of where they come from,” adds the Argus Leader’s Garson.

But even as the business rapidly evolves, some fundamental characteristics aren’t likely to change. Future publishers will need to know the entire business, have a positive outlook about newspapers and their products, be able to motivate their employees and, perhaps most importantly, juggle.

“There are different balls today, and there may be a few more balls and some may look strange and we haven’t seen some before,” Garson says. “But we’ve been juggling balls for a long time.”