Cover: Signs of the Times

The road map to the future is filled with twists and turns

By PRESSTIME Staff | Illustrations by Paula Pindroh

First Published: January 2009

Across the country, newspaper publishers are taking drastic steps to shore up their existing businesses and find ways to tap into future technologies. Previously unheard of tactics, such as outsourcing printing and cooperating instead of competing in news coverage, have become commonplace. It’s a brave new world out there, and the road map to the future is filled with many twists and turns.

For the second year, PRESSTIME devotes its January cover story to key trends that are driving changes in the industry. Some of these topics deserve, and will receive, more in-depth coverage throughout the year, but consider this report our quick update on the business challenges that should be on everyone’s radar now:

Consolidating operations
Rethinking and redesigning the core product
Realigning staff
Tapping into social media
Reducing your carbon footprint
Finding opportunities in e-reader technology.

We look forward to bringing you more information about these and other key issues during 2009. I welcome comments or suggestions on how we can better meet your industry information needs through PRESSTIME in print and online at www.naa.org/presstime, where you also can access our new digital edition.

Have a healthy and happy new year!

Rebecca Ross Albers
PRESSTIME Editor
rebecca.albers@naa.org

The Rush to Consolidate

by Mary Lynn F. Jones

More isn’t necessarily better.

In the current economic climate, it’s a familiar concept for many publishers, including Brad Hurd of The Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho (average daily circulation, 19,401). In August, his employer, Lee Enterprises Inc. in Davenport, Iowa, folded The South Idaho Press in Burley and four weeklies into The Times-News.

The consolidation allowed Hurd to close the unprofitable weeklies, although The Times-News now targets their coverage areas on specific weekdays. Shutting down the press in Burley also saved about 12 percent on newsprint and printing costs.

On the labor front, Hurd eliminated 20 positions, although two employees from the weeklies and two from The South Idaho Press now work at The Times-News. Seven employees also remained in the Burley office to write stories, sell advertising and work in circulation for a zoned edition of The Times-News.

“Nobody likes to close papers, but it really helped us secure [our readership] going forward,” Hurd says, noting that at least 87 percent of subscribers to the other papers are subscribing to The Times-News post-merger.

As publishers explore ways to cut costs, they’re carefully evaluating current operations and, in some cases, turning key production functions over to others, sometimes competitors.

The difficult economic environment facing newspapers brought the trend of consolidation “to the fore,” says industry analyst John Morton, president of Morton Research Inc. in Silver Spring, Md. While newspapers “used to be very protective of” the areas they are now consolidating, such as printing and distribution, publishers realize they can achieve lower costs if they collaborate rather than replicate each other’s work, he adds.

Decommissioning its aging presses and taking advantage of improved and more color and better registration at presses nearby made sense for the Palladium-Item (evening, 14,388; Sunday, 18,615) in Richmond, Ind. It will move printing operations to The Indianapolis Star this month since both papers are owned by Gannett Co. in McLean, Va. The change allows the Palladium-Item to reduce its staff by about 60 employees and to stop pouring money into repairing its presses.

“It’s a reality of economics,” says Juli Metzger, president and publisher of the Palladium-Item and The Star Press in Muncie, Ind.

Such deals are taking place even when newspapers operate under different ownership. The Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach, Fla., owned by Cox Newspapers Inc. in Atlanta, planned to outsource its production work by the end of December to the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, owned by Tribune Co. in Chicago, and eliminate 300 jobs ("Newspapers Tap Competitors for Printing," December, p. 54).

The Washington Post also plans to consolidate printing operations by closing its College Park, Md., plant in late 2009 ahead of a previously announced June 2010 target date, with all of the work concentrated at its larger Springfield, Va., plant, as a way to “meet current and future business needs,” says Rima Calderon, a spokeswoman for the paper.

The Springfield plant can handle the paper’s circulation and advertising needs, houses an inserting operation and warehouse that the College Park plant lacks and offers room for expansion, Calderon says.

The Post decided not to move College Park’s 10-year-old Mitsubishi presses to Springfield and plans to sell them, Calderon notes.

Until the economy improves, look for consolidation to continue, Morton predicts.

Rethinking the Core

by John Heys

In early 2007, executives at The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City began talking about reducing the newspaper’s then 50-inch web width to 44 inches. Although driven by economics, the cost-cutting move also offered an opportunity to do something more than slim The Oklahoman’s pages, says Editor Ed Kelley. “We wanted to create a new experience for readers.”

After 16 months of research, focus groups and work with newspaper design consultant Mario Garcia and his firm, Garcia Media (www.garciamedia.com), the new Oklahoman debuted in late September. In addition to the new page width, changes included color-coded section fronts, new typography, shorter stories, more article summaries and, on most days, just one story that jumps from the front page.

“It took a rethinking of what we were doing, not just a redesign, to get readers’ attention,” Kelley says.

The Oklahoman certainly isn’t alone. The eight newspaper properties of the Tribune Co. in Chicago—starting with the Orlando Sentinel in June—overhauled their print editions last year, as did several other papers around the country as publishers and editors continue searching for ways to increase readership while limiting costs in a tough economy.

Newspapers are rethinking their core print products from several different strategic angles, says Randy Bennett, NAA senior vice president of business development. One is to improve the consumer experience with various design elements for those who want a quick read and more entry points for those who want to delve deeper into certain stories and topics. Papers also are accommodating reductions in size, both in terms of web width and consolidated sections.

“Ultimately, the goal is to provide a more compelling reading experience all the way around,” Bennett says.

The Boston Globe’s retooled print edition, which hit newsstands in October, was driven by reader research, but also took economic realities into account, including the need to reduce newsprint consumption. The newspaper’s new “g” section, a daily magazine-style tabloid, combined several existing broadsheet sections that featured sometimes overlapping arts, entertainment and lifestyle content, says Editor Martin Baron, who adds that the new section did not result in a reduction in coverage.

Other changes include color comics each day and a standard, four-section format—Main, Metro, Sports and “g”—Mondays through Saturdays, a step intended to improve navigation through the paper. At presstime, reader feedback had been generally positive, although it was too soon to expect any circulation results from the changes, according to Bob Powers, Globe vice president of communications and public affairs.

In Kansas, staffers rethought the Monday edition of the Lawrence Journal-World (average daily circulation, 18,635) to grow readership among a valued demographic. Launched in mid-October, Go!, a 32-page, full-color tabloid targets women ages 25 to 45 with families. Developed by an ad manager and one of her designers—and featuring content produced by the newsroom and from the wires—the tabloid wraps around the Journal-World’s two main broadsheet sections each Monday.

Executives considered a range of options for Mondays, which generated little advertising revenue, says General Manager Al Bonner, including dropping the edition altogether or adopting a tabloid format. “If you don’t take some bold steps,” he asks, “what are you going to have left?” As of presstime, the Journal-World had booked advertising contracts for Go! representing $340,000 in new revenue, and single-copy sales of the Monday paper were up about 15 percent since the product’s launch in mid-October, Bonner says.

Along with changes in appearance, a fresh approach to content will remain crucial to the success of any redesign, says Alan Jacobson, president and chief executive officer of Brass Tacks Design (www.brasstacksdesign.com). “You can’t just change the way a paper looks and expect it to make a difference,” says Jacobson, who stressed the importance of story selection and relevance for readers. As newspapers work to maintain and grow print readership in difficult economic times, openness to these and other changes would be well advised, Garcia adds: “This would be a good time for rethinking what you’re doing.”

Changing Times, Changing Roles

by Mary Lynn F. Jones

After Sharon Rosenhause accepted a buyout offer from the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale in August 2008, the newspaper didn’t name a new managing editor. Instead, four deputy managing editors, as well as a fifth legal and recruiting editor, now report to Earl Maucker, the paper’s senior vice president and editor.

As a result, Maucker’s role changed, too. “I find myself definitely more involved in the day-to-day” operation, playing a more active role in daily news meetings and meeting once a week with the deputy managing editors, he says.

Like fitting pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, moving personnel to fit changing needs requires executives to think about their goals, how best to restructure staffs to accomplish those goals and how to help employees adjust to new duties.

The absence of Rosenhause—whose office is now a conference room—isn’t the only change at the Sun Sentinel, which eliminated about 20 percent of its newsroom staff last year. For example, the consumer team became part of the business desk, and one person can now manage the entire department since the total group is smaller.

In making changes, editors should not only rely on recommendations from department heads—who know their departments best—but also try to put emotions aside and consider whether a manager is best equipped to bring the department into the future, Maucker advises.

The News & Messenger in Manassas, Va., not only realigned its staff but also adopted a new name as a result of an October merger between the Potomac News in Woodbridge, Va., and the Manassas (Va.) Journal Messenger, both owned by Media General Inc. in Richmond, Va. After cutting its staff by about 25 percent since 2006 and still faced with fewer resources, the paper’s editors focused on covering “the heck out of Prince William County,” says Susan Svihlik, group executive editor for Media General Northern Virginia Community Newspapers.

The News & Messenger “turned the beat structure upside down,” Svihlik says. Reporters—who previously covered a single topic area, such as courts, for both papers—switched to geographic beats. Now, the reporter covering a specific territory is responsible for all stories there, including “slice of life” features, which appear largely on new community pages. The paper’s staff can “reach down into neighborhoods” and offer deeper coverage, Svihlik says.

Adding more local coverage is one reason Kim Nussbaum, president and publisher of the Abilene (Texas) Reporter-News, plans to hire three full-time and three part-time employees by the end of March. The new positions include an online-only advertising sales manager to drive revenue, a reporter to cover additional local news and a reader-relations specialist to focus on the paper’s e-edition audience, since about 30 percent of its circulation is in outlying areas. Additionally, the Reporter-News will begin printing the San Angelo (Texas) Standard-Times this month and add 14 press and mailroom employees.

Faced with rising newsprint costs, revenue losses from classified advertising and a tough economy, Nussbaum also decided to eliminate seven full-time and four part-time positions, including three circulation customer-service representatives and three graphic designers, with their work largely being outsourced. “Our business is evolving and in order to position us for future growth, our business model had to shift,” Nussbaum says.

Telling employees about the changes is just as important as developing the plan, she says. Nussbaum hosted 13 gatherings with eight employees each so they would feel comfortable asking questions in small-group settings.

“We wanted to make certain every employee understood why each change was being made,” she says. “This time with them has been key in us moving forward in the direction we need” to go.

Tapping Into Social Media

by John Heys

As social networking becomes more mainstream, newspapers continue to explore how social media can generate additional online visitors, market the newspaper brand to new audiences and create communities of shared interests on the Web.

For the Chicago Tribune, its exploration produced Colonel Tribune, an online character that uses the likeness of longtime Tribune Editor and Publisher Robert R. McCormick, who died in 1955. Since last March, the Colonel has been interacting with users, gathering story tips and passing along interesting Tribune stories through social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Fark, Reddit and Digg. “You’re connecting to a broader audience,” says Bill Adee, editor of digital media for the Tribune, who has the numbers to prove it.

Launched with a goal of generating 1 percent of monthly page views for www.chicagotribune.com, the project accounted for more than six times that amount of traffic by June, says Adee, whose current team includes a producer and several interns who monitor various sites and interact with users as the Colonel. At presstime, visitors from social media sites were generating about 7 percent of the newspaper’s total monthly online traffic.

Turning to social media for new marketing channels not only provides a cost-effective alternative to traditional marketing programs, says Diane Hockenberry, NAA director of audience development, “but it also provides opportunities for reaching new audiences such as young adults, tech-smart consumers and groups such as moms who use social media to connect with others.”

Although the News Sentinel in Knoxville, Tenn., can’t point to a huge increase in traffic to www.knoxnews.com from its free, branded YouTube channel—which features videos that also appear on the newspaper’s site—Jack Lail, news director of innovation at the paper, still sees a marketing benefit. “We do think it’s a really cheap way to extend our brand out there,” he says.

The YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/knoxnews) also was useful when a video clip the newspaper posted on its own site and on YouTube in October—about a 73-year-old man who made the basketball team at a community college—was picked up by ESPN, FOXSports.com, MSN.com and other outlets. When the resulting traffic crippled www.knoxnews.com’s video server, the newspaper asked FOXSports to link to the YouTube version instead. The News Sentinel also embedded the YouTube version of the clip into the newspaper site’s video player, shifting the playing load to the popular video-sharing site. As of presstime, the clip had been viewed more than 450,000 times and had generated more than 800 comments on YouTube.

Newspapers also are enhancing the social networking features on their own Web sites in an effort to build communities of users around shared interests and increase user engagement. In September, The New York Times debuted a public beta version of TimesPeople (http://timespeople.nytimes.com), a social network that allows NYTimes.com readers to share recommendations, comments, ratings and reviews. Users also may follow the public activities of other members and synchronize their TimesPeople updates with their existing Facebook accounts.

To expand a network of community and staff bloggers the Savannah Morning News launched about two years ago, the newspaper was looking for a human resources professional at presstime to write a blog for the newspaper’s online jobs site (http://new.savannahnow.com/shop/jobs/hotjobs). Staffers hope the blog will generate relevant content that will improve the site’s ranking in search engine results, says Director of Marketing Stacy Jennings. “It’s all about increasing audience, building it in little takes,” Jennings says.

While obituaries remain the biggest single traffic generator for Savannahnow.com, Spotted, the site’s photo-sharing gallery (http://spotted.savannahnow.com), ranks a strong second, accounting for about 12 percent of the newspaper’s 4.5 million monthly page views, Jennings reports. In addition to images uploaded by readers, the site features photos from staff and volunteer photographers.

The photo gallery, the blogs and the Morning News’ other forays into social networking—including a Facebook page and a Twitter account, both launched in the past six months—have helped convince the newspaper that social media will remain a part of its marketing strategy going forward.

“It’s definitely past the fad stage,” Jennings says. “It’s not a flash in the pan anymore.”

For more information about social media and building online communities, download the NAA Online Community Cookbook at www.naa.org/digitaledge/cookbook.

It’s Still Not Easy Being Green

by Mark Toner

After Paul Jakubski completed the painstaking process of totaling the greenhouse gas emissions at Dow Jones & Co.’s 17 production plants last year, he found the newspaper company’s carbon footprint had a few unexpected wrinkles.

About 85 percent of the company’s footprint—the total amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by all its operations—comes solely from electricity use. Just 45 percent is tied to its network of printing facilities. And as Dow Jones kicked off an energy-saving initiative to help meet its parent News Corp.’s goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2010, it focused on the people it discovered have the most impact on the environment.

“Employee, customer and business partner engagement are key elements in our program, since their footprints are much larger than [ours],” says Jakubski, Dow Jones’ environmental and safety director.

With a new administration in Washington, D.C., growing public concern over global warming and increasing energy costs, more publishers will seek ways to reduce their carbon footprints in the coming year. While proposed legislation around GHG emissions stalled in Congress this past year, “it is expected to be a top priority in President-elect Obama’s administration,” says Kathy Mason, NAA vice president of government affairs. What’s more, “publicly traded newspaper companies are being asked to document their environmental practices and policies for shareholders who wish to invest only in those companies that support environmental stability,” she says. Even those who escape such scrutiny will likely still face higher energy costs as a result of pressures placed on the energy sector, according to Mason.

That’s already been true at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, where energy-saving initiatives put in place a decade ago have reduced overall electricity consumption by 25 percent, says Vice President of Operations Frank Anthony. But at the same time, “the cost of energy has increased so much…it’s hard to prove that by looking at the dollars spent,” he says.

That’s one reason newspaper companies are using carbon footprints as a way to measure and ultimately reduce energy consumption. NAA’s newly created Environmental Advisory Council will develop a “best practice tool” to help publishers identify and calculate GHG data, says Jakubski, who also is chairman of the group.

That’s critical, given the different standards and protocols for calculating GHG emissions. Even within existing standards, there’s considerable leeway in what factors to include. Consider a newspaper company that uses independent contractors to distribute its publications. Under the World Resources Institute GHG protocol used by Dow Jones & Co., the contractor’s emissions are considered an indirect, optional portion of the company’s overall carbon footprint. But a different life-cycle analysis would include all emissions from delivery trucks.

“Generally, your boundaries should be set on what you can operationally control,” Jakubski says. “Each company needs to make its own decisions in this regard.” For instance, Dow Jones’ corporate parent, News Corp., chose to include one optional factor with far-ranging implications—business air travel—in its calculations, according to Jakubski.

For News Corp., focusing on its carbon footprint has begun to pay off. Last January, News International Ltd. became the first UK newspaper company to become carbon neutral, a result of switching to green energy sources, conservation and offsetting its remaining GHG emissions by investing in wind energy projects in India.

While it’s not clear if the Obama administration will require U.S. companies to move in similar directions, NAA and its Environmental Advisory Council will focus on being “a clearinghouse of best practices for the newspaper industry in forging more sustainable practices,” Mason says.

In the meantime, some publishers are finding that uncertainty about the economy trumps uncertainty about the new administration’s plans. While Anthony has put calculating his paper’s carbon footprint on the back burner, “we’ve had our consciousness raised to the point that we’re at least asking questions [about sustainability] when we make purchases,” he says.

Next-Generation E-Readers Become Reality This Year

by Mark Toner

When Amazon.com’s year-old Kindle got the star treatment from Oprah Winfrey in October, it was the clearest sign yet that the long-nascent market for portable e-readers is poised to enter the mainstream. That’s promising for the next generation of portable readers, which will feature significant improvements in display capabilities and flexibility in 2009, and for the newspapers continuing to experiment in the space.

“My sense is that electronic readers will continue to grow as companies build on the success of the Amazon product,” says Randy Bennett, NAA senior vice president of business development. “But I believe in the near-term, it is still a niche audience and not likely to achieve mass-market penetration within the next two years.”

Amazon doesn’t release sales figures for Kindle, but nearly 30 newspapers around the world provide content to the wireless device for a monthly subscription fee, with the online retailer handling formatting and fulfillment. Several next-generation e-readers will enter the U.S. marketplace this year, including a magazine-size device with enhanced display abilities from iRex Technologies (www.irextechnologies.com) and Plastic Logic’s (www.plasticlogic.com) 13-inch portable reader, which will use a plastic substrate instead of glass to make the device somewhat flexible—albeit not “something you can roll up and put into your pocket,” says Roger Fidler, program director for digital publishing at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia. All of the products use low-power display technology developed by E Ink Corp. (www.eink.com), the longstanding display innovator in which Hearst Corp. in New York City holds a stake.

The next-generation devices have one thing in common: “They are not alternatives to laptops—they’re alternatives to paper,” Fidler says. However, it’s looking less likely that those paper alternatives will ultimately resemble a broadsheet newspaper. Instead, they will likely become multipurpose devices for personal documents, books, magazines and newspapers. “Publishers are going to have to support whichever screen wins, rather than trying to create something that reminds them of the medium they used to have,” says Michael Rogers, former futurist-in-residence at The New York Times Co.

The 32-member Donald W. Reynolds Digital Publishing Alliance, which includes newspapers, The Associated Press in New York City, several foundations and journalism schools, continues work on creating publishing models that can be adapted to whichever screen wins, with ongoing experiments with its eMprint publishing model (“Gazing Into the Future of Digital Publishing,” January 2008, p. 45). In December, the alliance launched online Digital Newsbook stores featuring special, long-form content from its member newspapers repackaged into e-reader friendly formats, on two key e-Book sites: eReader Outfitters (http://ereaderoutfitters.com) and MBS Direct (www.mbsdirect.net).

“Newspapers have been disadvantaged by the Internet because the focus has tended to be on breaking news that does not call attention to the real heart of newspaper coverage—the analytical and explanatory journalism,” Fidler says, calling the newsbooks “a way to promote the importance of newspapers” on e-readers.

Other publishers also continue experiments in the space. Newspaper Direct (www. newspaperdirect.com) will provide subscription-based services to the iRex family of devices, while The New York Times’ existing Reader application, which allows subscribers to download a print-like replica of the daily paper to their laptops for offline reading, and an upcoming version based on Adobe Systems Inc.’s AIR technology (www.adobe.com/products/air), are critical, Rogers says. “They’re a key to the future of newspapers—getting back more control over layout and presentation…and taking key newspaper attributes and adapting them to the medium and screens that exist today, rather than waiting for e-paper to evolve.”

Despite E Ink’s high-profile prototype of truly paper-like plastic sheets embedded into a cover of Esquire magazine this past year (“Electronic Cover Marks Esquire’s 75 Years,” October 2008, p. 6), that evolution is still a long way off. “I’ve been competing with paper for 20 years, and the longer I do so, the more I respect it as a display device,” Rogers says. Still, when the woman who launched countless book clubs calls an e-reader “absolutely my new favorite thing in the world,” all bets may be off.

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