Cover Story: 8 Trends to Track in ’08

From measuring total audience to hyperlocal news coverage, newspapers are auditioning new business practices in 2008

By PRESSTIME staff writers | Illustrations by Nip Rogers

First Published: January 2008

Measuring Total Audience

As newspapers tap new ways to reach consumers in print and on the Web, tools to measure this audience footprint are changing as well. This trend toward more refined methods of capturing a newspaper’s true reach promises to affect how publishers express the full scope of their audience across a variety of platforms.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (www.accessabc.com), Scarborough Research (www.scarborough.com) and NAA last year moved another step toward a more integrated measure of a newspaper’s total reach with their Audience-FAX initiative (www.audiencefax.com), which incorporates circulation, readership and online measures into ABC’s reports (“ABC Approves New Audience Reporting,” August 2007, p. 16). Newspapers’ participation in Audience-FAX is voluntary.

This trend toward more integrated measures is important because it helps to provide advertisers credible information before making media-buying decisions to reach their customers, says John Kimball, NAA senior vice president and chief marketing officer.

The Sacramento Bee, one of 206 papers that participated in the initial Audience-FAX release in November, is well aware of the audience measurement trends. Reflecting the ongoing evolution of its operations to include multiple offerings, in November the paper changed the name of its circulation department to audience development and membership services.

Audience-FAX represents a first step in “communicating the additional products that a newspaper goes to market with,” says Dan Schaub, a member of the NAA/ABC liaison committee whose title at the Bee changed from senior vice president of circulation to senior vice president of audience development and membership services. “It’s all about making sure that advertisers and consumers know what’s under the umbrella,” he says.

Inclusion of online metrics in Audience-FAX reflects newspapers’ substantial online reach. More than 59 million people visited newspaper Web sites in the third quarter of 2007, a 3.7 percent increase from the same period a year ago, according to the fall release of NAdbase, which draws on newspaper Web site usage data collected by Nielsen//NetRatings (www.nielsen-netratings.com). The data, along with information about print and online audience data compiled by Scarborough, are available at www.newspaperaudience.com.

The online statistics, in addition to circulation information, will help advertisers compare newspapers’ reach more effectively with other forms of media, such as television and radio, says Frank Whittaker, vice president of operations for The McClatchy Co. in Sacramento, and a member of ABC’s newspaper board of directors. “We’re in the process of leveling the playing field,” he says.

As measures of audience reach expand to include online components, some reporting rules for print circulation are changing, too. ABC’s board of directors announced in November sweeping recommendations for changes to the bureau’s qualification and reporting standards after the work of a task force of newspaper and advertising executives.

The changes include revising the definition of paid circulation; classifying third-party, educational and employee copies as “verified” circulation but not paid; and implementation of a more flexible pricing model that considers a copy of the newspaper as paid regardless of the price paid by the reader (“ABC Endorses Modifying Circulation Rules,” December 2007, p. 18).

These changes may not take effect for some time. ABC expects to develop more specific rules at its March meeting and to implement them over the next three years.

Although the changes and the Audience-FAX initiative are not directly related, both efforts speak to a growing acknowledgement among newspapers and advertisers of the need to work together to develop more effective audience measures, says Elizabeth Brenner, president and publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and executive vice president of Journal Communications Inc. in Milwaukee.

The rapidly changing media environment makes this collaboration more important than ever, says Brenner, who also serves on the NAA/ABC liaison committee.
—John Heys

For more information, contact John Kimball, NAA, 4401 Wilson Blvd, Ste. 900, Arlington, Va. 22203, (571) 366-1040, john.kimball@naa.org.

Outsourcing May Save Time, Money

Many newspapers are outsourcing elements of their operations—including pre-press, press and post-press—to save money and streamline production. While some are partnering with offshore providers, others are turning over their entire press and post-press operations to a third party.

“The outsourcing that is happening in the industry falls into two categories: services and capital avoidance,” says Tom Croteau, NAA’s senior vice president of technology. “The industry will continue to look at clustering or outsourcing of services.”

Some newspapers are outsourcing ad production to companies in India where labor costs are less expensive, says Todd Brownrout, chief marketing officer for 2AdPro (www.2adpro.com), a provider of outsourced advertising services. The firm has many newspaper clients, Brownrout says, but he cannot name them because of nondisclosure agreements.

Outsourcing “is a highly sensitive topic,” he says. “Newspapers would prefer to utilize our services without bringing undue attention to the issue.”

Despite these concerns, Brownrout expects his business to grow in the United States because of the cheaper cost and the ability to provide a quick turnaround. A nine- to 12-hour time difference enables India-based design firms to turn over ads in 24 hours, returning them by the beginning of the U.S. workday.

Since April 2007, Dispatch Printing Co., which prints The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, has been outsourcing its ad production to Affinity Express (www.affinityexpress.com), a graphics services provider headquartered in Elgin, Ill., with production offices in Pune, India, and Manila, Philippines (“Papers Explore Offshore Vendors for Ad Production,” February 2007, p. 20). 

“The reality for newspapers is to save costs as much as possible,” says Joe Gallo, Dispatch Printing’s vice president and chief information officer. For newspapers to continue offering clients free ad design, they must find cost effective ways to provide the service. One option is outsourcing, Gallo says.

Phasing out the old ad production process at Dispatch Printing has been far from smooth but, Gallo says, it has improved over time. During the transition, the Dispatch’s production staff continued to help with ad production but has since relinquished those duties and is responsible primarily for pagination.

When the newspaper first switched to Affinity Express, the service was not as good as it had been when all ad production was done in-house, Gallo says. But, he adds, “now we have equal service, and we’re shooting for better service.”

In contrast, the San Jose Mercury News had a better experience when it outsourced ad production to Express KCS (www.expresskcs.com) in July 2007. “We’re doing 100 percent of our ad production offshore,” says Mary Evans, director of advertising operations. The move also provided a way for several newspapers in the San Francisco Bay area—all members of the California Newspapers Partnership—to standardize ad production business operations.

The Mercury News has not had to change any elements of its ad production—from its workflow system to its deadlines—to fit the new model.

While several newspapers have partnered with offshore companies to boost pre-press services, at least one California newspaper is turning its entire press and post-press operation over to a third party.

The San Francisco Chronicle announced in late 2006 plans to outsource its press and post-press operations to Transcontinental Inc. (www.transcontinental-printing.com), a Canadian printer that is building a state-of-the-art production facility in the San Francisco Bay area (“Chronicle Outsources Printing,” January 2007, p. 48). The new facility, scheduled to be operational next year, will be equipped with three MAN Roland COLORMAN XXL presses capable of printing heatset and coldset, and post-press equipment from Goss International Corp. and FERAG.

“While we wanted to enhance the print product with state-of-the-art technology, going forward we want to focus on developing editorial content and other information our audiences find useful,” says Henry S. Ford, senior marketing director at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Though this is the first time Transcontinental has offered this service in the United States, Ted Markle, senior vice president of the commercial printer’s new U.S. Division, says the company has been  printing The Globe and Mail in Toronto, La Presse in Montreal and many large Canadian dailies since 1994. Transcontinental also prints editions of The New York Times for the upstate New York and Ontario, Canada, markets.

“The model has been successful in Canada, and we thought it would also work in the United States,” Markle says. “We knew the same trends and pressures exist in the American newspaper market.”
—LaShell Stratton

For more information, contact Tom Croteau, NAA, 4401 Wilson Blvd., Ste. 900, Arlington, Va. 22203, (571) 366-1103, tom.croteau@naa.org.

Advertising Innovation Through Collaboration

When home shopping retailer QVC launched its first national marketing campaign last fall, Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC helped to ensure that newspaper advertising was an important part of the effort.

MediaLab, a creative group within the company—which owns The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and www.philly.com—worked closely with QVC, headquartered in nearby West Chester, Pa., to develop a package of 54 ads, including full-page and smaller positions, that ran exclusively in the Sunday Inquirer on Sept. 23, 2007.

The large one-day buy helped the retailer kick off a new logo, a revamped Web site and an overall refreshing of its brand. The ads also highlight a growing trend among newspapers to find innovative ways to use their products to meet clients’ marketing needs and generate new revenue.

“As advertisers are challenged to break through the clutter of thousands of messages each day all targeting the same people, newspaper media have become more resourceful and creative in finding platform agnostic marketing solutions to meet the need,” says Mort Goldstrom, NAA vice president of advertising.

In Philadelphia, MediaLab collaborates closely with advertisers, agencies and the newspapers’ ad sales department, says Ed Mahlman, chief marketing officer for Philadelphia Media Holdings. Some of the innovative ideas include new ad positions, creative ad shapes and sponsorships of editorial content, such as that of the Inquirer’s Sunday TV book by Comcast Corp. “We’re not selling ads,” Mahlman says. “We’re selling solutions.”

To help NBC showcase its new fall programming lineup, The New York Times developed an advertising program that represented more than 2,000 column inches of advertising in a single day last September. The buy included a first for the Times: spadia advertisements, which are partial pages wrapped around the spine of a section of the paper. In addition to the four spadia positions, NBC ran full-page, front-page strip and back-page ads, according to The New York Times Co.

Newspaper companies also are exploring new ways to combine their brand strengths with those of their advertisers. Wall Street Journal Digital, which includes wsjonline.com, Barron’s Online (online.barrons.com) and MarketWatch.com, launched an interactive site last fall that combines an exclusive sponsorship for automaker Acura with editorial content related to new technology.

Tied to Acura’s “Innovations for Life” campaign, the site (www.wsj.com/acurainnovations) is updated weekly with articles from the Journal and its related publications. Users may comment on the stories, which highlight emerging trends in technology.

The site includes a “presented by Acura Advance” tagline atop each page that links to Acura’s Web site and a related online video about the company. The site also features links to AllThingsDigital (www.allthingsd.com), a technology news, analysis and opinion Web site owned by Dow Jones & Co. in New York City.

Launched in late October and scheduled for an initial five-month run, the Acura program provides content that organizers hope will attract readers receptive to Acura’s marketing message, which builds on the company’s reputation as a technological innovator, says Mike Jensen, sales director for the online section with Wall Street Journal Digital.

“You need to come up with new and unique ways to engage your readers with your core partners,” says Jensen, who adds that this type of campaign might not be appropriate for every advertiser. Advertisers’ needs and readers’ interests in the content should be factors in developing these types of programs, he says.
—John Heys

For more information, contact Mort Goldstrom, NAA, 4401 Wilson Blvd., Ste. 900, Arlington, Va. 22203, (571) 366-1045, mort.goldstrom@naa.org.

Breaking Up Is Easy To Do

In seeking to boost stock prices and increase revenues, several newspaper companies are overhauling their ownership structure by separating their newspapers from other media divisions.

Last fall, Belo Corp. in Dallas announced plans to spin off its newspapers and their Web sites from its television stations to form a separate company known as A.H. Belo. The E.W. Scripps Co. in Cincinnati also said it plans to separate the company’s newspapers and broadcast stations from its interactive and cable properties, which will be known as Scripps Networks Interactive (“Belo, Scripps Split Newspapers, Other Divisions,” November 2007, p. 16). Both transactions are expected to be complete by the end of the second quarter.

“If you take companies in several different businesses and break them into component parts, theoretically the parts are worth more” than the whole, says Robert Broadwater, managing director of Broadwater & Associates LLC (www.broadwaterllc.com), an investment banking firm that works with newspapers and other media companies.

Both companies made the moves to leave their newspaper divisions without debt and make them more attractive to Wall Street. “The stock is being dragged down by the newspaper division’s performance,” says John Morton, president of Morton Research Inc. in Silver Spring, Md. By forming separate companies, other divisions can be “valued on their own.”

The new companies also can focus more strategically on competing in their specific areas. Robert W. Decherd, chairman and chief executive officer of Belo, said in a September statement that the split would allow the two companies to be “more nimble” as they “compete and grow” within their respective industries.

As a result, however, the newspaper companies may see their stock prices slip. That means family-owned newspapers could find it attractive to buy back publicly owned stock cheaply and then take the company private, Morton notes.

Some companies have not formed separate businesses but have divested themselves of properties. For example, The New York Times Co. unloaded its broadcast TV stations last May, and Media General Inc. in Richmond, Va., announced in October plans to explore selling five of its broadcast stations to reduce the company’s debt load.

If the economy enters a recession, advertising sales drop and revenue shrinks, newspaper companies may feel pressure to shed properties to reduce their debt level, notes Larry Grimes, president of W.B. Grimes & Co. (www.mediamergers.com), a merger and acquisition firm that specializes in media, entertainment and sports properties.

But that may be more difficult than in recent years. Properties for sale are attracting fewer interested parties than in recent years, he says, adding, “It’s a reflection of the economy and the scare in the credit markets,” due to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Not all companies may be able to go the private ownership route. With financing deals for companies with lower-grade investment ratings more expensive than for other companies, “I’m not convinced the market will allow for that at the moment,” Grimes adds.
—Mary Lynn F. Jones

For more information on how economic factors are affecting newspapers, see "Tough Times" on p. 33 by Jim Conaghan, NAA vice president of business analysis and research.

Multimedia Branding With Audience in Mind

The newspaper at the end of your reader’s driveway is more than just a product. It’s part of a brand identity that more publishers are attempting to stretch beyond their mastheads to portfolios of related publications, Web sites and other multimedia platforms.

“My work often involves helping news organizations shift their strategic focus from products to brands,” says Lee Rafkin, president and founder of Rafkin & Co. (www.rafkin.com), a brand consulting firm whose clients have included The Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune. “I try to create ‘liquid’ news and information brands that can seep into all of the niches and verticals that offer opportunity in this new digital age.”

The challenges newspapers face in developing new branding strategies, particularly related to online efforts, are not unique, says Rafkin, who is scheduled to speak at the 2008 NAA Marketing Conference, Feb. 24-27, at the Orlando World Center Marriott (“Building Audience and Driving Revenue,” December 2007, p. 21). Changes in consumer habits and demographics are forcing nearly all industries to reconsider their traditional marketing channels, he says.

The bright spot for newspapers is the relevance they still enjoy among consumers for local news and information. This competitive advantage, guided by consumer research, must be leveraged, regardless of the channel or platform, Rafkin says. Understanding precisely where, when and how newspaper brands are still relevant among readers, and then building and promoting these relevant new channels and platforms, are important steps in the process, he says.

“Increasingly, we’re seeing newspapers extend the long tail of their product portfolios, offering niche print and digital products to extend their footprint in their market,” says Diane Hockenberry, NAA director of audience development. “When you look at how each product in a company’s portfolio adds to its overall penetration, it really tells a great story about the company’s ability to aggregate audience, leverage resources and build its brand.”

The Arizona Republic in Phoenix uses focus groups and panels of print and online users to identify brand attributes of the paper’s different products that appeal to key audience segments, including 25-to-39-year-olds, those 40 and older, geographic communities and Spanish-speaking Hispanic consumers. “Everything for us starts with the audience,” says Brooke Christofferson, director of market development for Republic Media.

These brand attributes are then used to develop campaigns that highlight these characteristics. At presstime, the paper was developing new campaigns tailored to particular audience groups for its flagship daily edition and azcentral.com. In October, the Republic also launched Republic Media (republicmediasolutions.com), a business-to-business brand that markets the paper’s range of products and audiences to advertisers. “It’s complex, and it’s not a one-size-fits-all,” Christofferson says of the paper’s branding strategy.

Like the Republic, the Savannah Morning News produces a variety of publications and niche Web sites, including specialized sites devoted to auto and employment classified listings and PIXels (pixels.savannahnow.com), a photo-sharing forum. One of the paper’s current challenges, says Marketing Director Stacy Jennings, is determining how to expand the Morning News’ brand umbrella effectively across this stable of emerging products. “I don’t want people to say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you published that product,’ ” Jennings says.

To that end, the paper’s main Web site (www.SavannahNOW.com), branded with the paper’s print nameplate and the “SavannahNOW” logo, offers users five content channels: know, share, shop, do and read. The “share” channel, for example, links to the paper’s social networking features, including the PIXels forum, while “read” connects to the online version of the daily print edition.

But the strategy remains a work in progress, Jennings says. At presstime, the paper’s marketing staff was planning to rebrand PIXels to align the photo forum more closely with photo-sharing sites produced by other papers also owned by the Morning News’ corporate parent, Morris Communications Co. in Augusta, Ga.
—John Heys

For more information, contact Diane Hockenberry, NAA, 4401 Wilson Blvd., Ste. 900, Arlington, Va. 22203, (571) 366-1034, diane.hockenberry@naa.org.

Leaner Operations In the New Year

Like many Americans, newspapers are seeking to slim down this year, by consolidating their editorial and production operations in an effort to work more efficiently and save money.

Several papers owned by MediaNews Group Inc. in Denver share nonlocal content; similarly, papers owned by CanWest Global Communications Corp. in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, are sending more of their pages to CanWest Editorial Services for layout.

“Our papers are each looking at how they need to evolve their newsrooms to be more platform agnostic and fluid in their approach to content,” says Dervla Kelly, a spokeswoman for CanWest. Sending additional pagination work to a central location will allow the papers to “put more focus on generating content and less on packaging and moving content around,” she adds.

As newspapers seek to become more efficient in tough economic times, using technology more and combining job functions are two approaches, says Steve Buttry, director of tailored programs at the American Press Institute in Reston, Va. In a perfect world, he says, local copy editors could review nonlocal stories and offer insight the paper might otherwise miss, such as the need to add a paragraph on a local person who is a central player in a national story.

“But if anybody believes newspapers are operating in a perfect world, they haven’t been paying attention,” he says.

Last August, MediaNews consolidated news operations for its cluster of 11 daily newspapers in northern California under the Bay Area News Group-East Bay. The group installed a new front-end system to link the newsrooms and allow staffs to work together on stories, and a common copy desk in Walnut Creek, Calif., will soon edit all content. Staff training began last month for the new system, which should be fully operational by the end of April, says Kevin Keane, executive editor of the group.

Farther along the coast, two mini-clusters of Southern California newspapers also owned by MediaNews—one in the San Bernardino area, the other in Los Angeles—are consolidating operations. Each cluster is using a common copy desk and common nonlocal content, such as features, sports and wire stories, in an effort to avoid duplication of jobs and reduce staff size.

“Clearly, it allows you to operate more efficiently because you’re editing common stories and pages once,” says Dave Butler, MediaNews’ vice president for news.

The clusters have been producing common Monday pages wrapping up National Football League games for nine papers. The northern California papers are watching to see how well that works before deciding whether to do the same, Butler says.

Consolidating copy desks and content has advantages and potential pitfalls, he notes. While it saves time for one editor to put one headline on a story rather than several editors at different papers putting 10 headlines on the same story, copy editors must be familiar with the local community for the model to work, he says.

“If a copy editor doesn’t know the local community, the potential to look stupid—putting Broadway Avenue rather than Broadway Street—is presumably higher,” Butler adds, noting there is no current plan to consolidate all of MediaNews’ copy editing on one national desk.

Other organizations are consolidating production facilities. Last year, The Arizona Republic shut down its printing plant in Mesa, Ariz., and plans to sell it. The Republic had been reducing production there over the past few years and moving work to its plant in Deer Valley, Ariz., which offered color capacity that Mesa lacked. “Keeping it running no longer made sense,” says John Zidich, the Republic’s president and publisher.

Closing the Mesa plant also allowed the paper to save money on plant maintenance and some shift work. “Every efficiency is important right now,” Zidich adds.
—Mary Lynn F. Jones

For more information, contact Dave Butler, MediaNews Group Inc., 101 W. Colfax Ave., Ste. 1100, Denver, Colo. 80202, (302) 954-6406, dbutler@medianewsgroup.com.

Heatset, UV Technology Help Newspapers Attract Advertisers

To generate more revenue through commercial printing and differentiate themselves in the marketplace, some U.S. newspapers are acquiring technologies such as heatset and UV equipment that allow them to print vibrant colors on glossy paper.

“The industry needs to really consider capability beyond traditional coldset to improve quality and increase revenue,” says Michael Brady, director of NAA production operations. “Advertisers in Europe are really taking advantage of those capabilities. I think it would be desirable to U.S. advertisers for more newspapers to come up with higher-quality offerings.”

The Butler (Pa.) Eagle (average daily circulation, 28,201), for instance, has been using heatset technology for 25 years, says Publisher Vernon Wise Jr. In 2004, the Eagle purchased the nation’s first Goss Uniliner presses (www.gossinternational.com), which has one tower equipped to print coldset or heatset. Before installation, the Eagle underwent an air-quality permitting process required by all states and had to install pollution control equipment, including an afterburner.

The Eagle uses the press to print the newspaper and other publications coldset, and to print high-quality, heatset inserts for commercial clients in runs between 250,000 and 5 million.

The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va. (45,627), plans to enter the heatset market in 2009. Last October, the newspaper announced plans to equip one of its four 6x2 Goss Flexible Printing System towers with a Goss Ecocool dryer with integrated chill rolls (“The Competitive Advantage,” December 2007, p. 44). This hybrid press, the first of its kind in the United States, will be used to print the newspaper and commercial work, says John Jenkins, operations director.

The Free Lance-Star is applying for an air permit from the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Environmental Quality because of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and air pollution associated with the equipment. “The permitting process is not difficult but it’s very involved,” Jenkins says.

The Carroll County Times in Westminster, Md. (23,991), avoided the permitting process by acquiring UV capability rather than heatset. UV curing does not require a permit because it involves ink polymerization rather than the evaporation of solvents required to cure heatset inks, so it does not emit VOCs that need to be incinerated, Brady explains.

The Times installed a Manugraph DGM (www.manugraphdgmusa.com) 440 tower with a UV curing system in 2005 to enhance its specialty publications, such as its Homes magazines, with glossy covers.

Another commercial technology U.S. newspapers may consider is inert UV, currently being used by two newspaper printing facilities in Europe—one that prints Le Monde in Paris, and the other, Herold Druck, which prints Austrian newspapers Weiner Zeitung, Die Presse and Heute.

The inert UV process is similar to UV curing but occurs in an oxygen-deprived environment. The oxygen is replaced with another gas, such as nitrogen, which keeps the oxygen molecules from inhibiting the bonding of UV ink molecules during the curing process.

Inert UV can be found on many sheetfed presses, “but these are normally low- or medium-speed applications,” says Lukas Hahne, managing director at Eltex (www.eltex.de), a manufacturer of inert UV technology.  Eltex’s INNOCURE electronic current technology increases the efficiency of inerting, Hahne says, allowing it to work with a high-speed moving web. The Herold Druck, which has two INNOCURE curing units, has a production speed of 11 meters per second, faster than speeds normally found on presses using UV curing.

As pressure to find new revenue increases, more newspapers will want to enhance their presses with these capabilities, predicts David Stamp, director of marketing and communications for Print City (www.printcity.de), a strategic alliance of companies in the graphic arts industry.

Print City alliance members are working on a Value-Added Printing of Newspapers study that analyzes the technical, production and economic factors that can influence newspapers choosing to acquire heatset, UV curing or inert UV capability. “The interest from printers and publishers to have value-added printing has become much stronger,” he says.
—LaShell Stratton

For more information, contact Michael Brady, NAA, 4401 Wilson Blvd., Suite 900, Arlington, Va. 22203, (571) 366-1129, michael.brady@naa.org.

Hyperlocal Sections, Web Sites Prove Attractive to Readers

As Kyle Leonard sees it, the farther readers are from downtown Chicago, the less relevant the Chicago Tribune becomes to them. “A lot of news that they really care about is not something that an outfit like the Tribune can handle very well” because of its size, he says.

As managing editor of Triblocal, Leonard is trying to reach those readers with hyperlocal content that includes eight micro Web sites launched last April and two 16-page print weeklies, with circulations of 13,000 and 18,000, which followed in August.

Triblocal joins efforts by newspapers across the country—including The Dallas Morning News’ neighborsgo, The Washington Post Co.'s LoudounExtra and the Denver Newspaper Agency’s YourHub.com—that aim to attract readers with micro-level coverage and citizen-contributed content. The sections not only offer small, locally based advertisers an entry point into the major metros but also give readers a chance to share what’s on their minds and shape content relevant to them.

Feeding the public’s hunger to publish information, taking advantage of newspapers’ strength in covering local news and engaging the public in tough economic times are factors helping to drive hyperlocal coverage, says Butch Ward, who teaches editing, writing and leadership classes at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg. Although the instinct to cover community news is not new, he adds, technology now allows papers to “engage readers in more ways and more often than we could ever do in print.”

When The Dallas Morning News began introducing neighborsgo’s 17 print editions in 2005, readers submitted text and photos through snail mail, e-mail, phone calls and an uploading tool on dallasnews.com, the News’ home page. But with some editions attracting as many as 2,000 monthly submissions, the News decided to launch 57 micro Web sites last April—39 of which feed the print editions—to allow readers to connect with one another, post videos and better convey timely information about events.

Now, 15 editors and four assistant editors sift through information submitted online for content to include in the print editions, which run from 16 to 40 pages with circulations ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 readers.
“We’re saying, ‘This is your turn to speak up first, and we’ll take it from there,’ ” says Oscar Martinez, managing editor of neighborsgo. “We’re not creating a need to share information. We’re providing tools to be able to do so.”

Often, the content is of interest only to a particular community. For example, when a woman in Rockwall, Texas, blogged about the possibility of the local school district launching a string orchestra, the district responded, and the conversation took off.

“Mundane does not apply here,” says Cyndy Carr, senior vice president of niche products for the Morning News, who oversees neighborsgo. “The community’s putting it forth. What’s important to them is important to us.”

The hyperlocal sections feed into the flagship paper. A blog on dallasnews.com lists the most timely content from neighborsgo.com. When one reader posted a picture of a five-foot wedding cake that was a batter-and-icing replica of the bride, the Morning News’ main Web site quickly teased it.

“It’s so difficult for a large metro to stay connected to its communities,” says Martinez, adding the sections are like “17 small-town papers.”

If a majority of readers on micro Web sites are discussing the same topic, that can serve as a “tip service” to reporters and editors at the metro paper, Leonard says.

Reaching out to area residents to ensure that they contribute content is key to making the sections work. Triblocal’s staff visited community groups before the site’s official launch to encourage submissions. Residents initially sent in calendar events information and then stories, such as updates from a local man walking from California to Chicago.

Triblocal hit all of its budget goals in 2007 and is planning to expand to neighborhoods surrounding the Chicago area in the next two years, although Leonard declined to provide specific information. He would not discuss revenue but says Triblocal has attracted advertisers too small to afford ads in the Tribune.

Leonard says he hopes the communities will contribute more content. His staff of four reporters and editors is writing about 50 percent of what appears in print.

“We’ve been feeding people the news for a really long time,” Leonard says. Now, he adds, readers are the ones sharing information.
—Mary Lynn F. Jones

For more information, contact Kyle Leonard, Triblocal.com, 2000 S. York Road,  Ste. 200, Oak Brook, Ill. 60523, (630) 368-4267, kleonard@tribune.com.