Training’s Perfect Timing

Here we go again.

Advertising is slowing down. Newsprint prices are going back up. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s getting tough to even take electricity for granted. And here we are, running a cover story about...training?

What’s wrong with this picture?

Maybe nothing, actually. True, training programs historically get cut before you can finish saying, “Corporate, we have a problem.” But slowdown or no, a number of ongoing operational challenges continue to bedevil our industry, with no signs of relief in sight.

The first is quality–and more specifically, advertising quality. At a time when ad spending is slowing, defending newspapers’ piece of the $58 billion national-advertising pie becomes all the more important. Ted Fournier, a member of NAA’s Color Reproduction Quality Task Force, tells us that the percentage of poor-quality tear sheets that came across the transom at the Newspaper National Network fell last year (see story, p. 30). But we’ve still got a long way to go, and one of the best ways to improve, quality experts have long argued, is to give employees a sense of quality’s importance and the tools they need to achieve it.

In other words, training.

Speaking of employees, there’s also the job market itself. In Leesburg, Va., home to Times Community Newspapers, managers have to contend with a mind-boggling 1.2 percent unemployment rate (see p. 17). Even in less prosperous climes, it’s hard to picture out-of-work press operators driving from town to town like characters in a John Steinbeck novel. They’re simply too hard to find, so papers have to keep finding ways to bring new ones into the fold.

In other words, training again.

Anecdotally, we’re seeing reactions slightly less drastic than the proverbial defensive crouch. Preliminary results from NAA’s annual capital-expenditures survey suggest that slowdown or not, publishers intend to continue investing in technology. The final tally will be released closer to NEXPO®, but early responses indicate that publishers will continue spending because, quite simply, they have to.

That’s definitely the case in energy-starved California, where at least two publishers recently wrote checks in the six- or seven-figure range for generators because, once again, they felt they had to (see p. 24). And at least one newspaper group’s top production executive now ranks electricity as his top concern, signaling that the problem could soon be a national one.

In spite of shortages and slowdowns, other needs continue unabated. At this spring’s far-from-deserted AmericaHEast trade show in Hershey, Pa., one speaker projected continued annual insert growth of 5 percent over the next decade at his paper, The Journal News in White Plains, N.Y. (see p. 34). Add that to the 400 million inserts it’s already distributing across 400-plus zones using 18-year-old equipment, and you get a picture that suggests expansion even in less-than-optimal times.

Maybe the New Economy that people keep prattling on about has become a bit of a bust. Maybe this is just a temporary hiccup. Either way, the current slowdown has given our industry a reminder of the challenges that face it, in good times and bad.

Mark Toner
Editor
tonem@naa.org

TechNews Volume 7, Number 3: May/June 2001

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