Archive for the ‘Newspapers’ Category

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USAT moves toward mobile, business interests

Monday, August 30th, 2010

USA Today, the nation’s second largest newspaper, has announced its most significant changes since its 1982 debut as it de-emphasizes print and ramps up availability via mobile devices. The move will include the elimination of  about 130 jobs and a breach of the church/state divide between news and business interests.

For starters, the newspaper will no longer have separate managing editors overseeing its News, Sports, Money and Life sections. “The newsroom instead will be broken up into a cluster of  ‘content rings’ each headed up by editors who will be appointed later this year,” the Associated Press says. The paper’s current Life ME will be executive editor of content.

USA Today’s restructuring will “usher in a new way of doing business that aligns sales efforts with the content we produce,” according to a slide show presented to USA Today’s staff, which The AP obtained.

The executive editor of content will have a “collaborative relationship” with USA Today’s newly appointed vice president of business development, according to one slide.

The paper will “focus less on print … and more on producing content for all platforms (Web, mobile, iPad and other digital formats),” the slide show said.

The AP says USA Today’s circulation has fallen from 2.3 million in 2007 to an average of 1.83 million during the six months ending in March. Advertising has fallen by about 50 percent between 2006 and the quarter ending this past June.

Here’s the news release.

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How newspapers are – and aren’t – diversifying

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Media critic Alan Mutter uses a McClatchy newspaper as the negative example in a post on his Newsosaur blog about how large newspaper publishers are diversifying to survive in the new media world.

“While papers like the Kansas City Star continue to pursue the traditional model of publishing only the main title and a free once-a-week advertising product sent to the homes of non-subscribers, the ABC [Audit Bureau of Circulations] reports that papers like the Chicago Tribune and Dallas Morning News have created such a wide variety of products that the flagship paper produces just 56 percent of the average weekday circulation in each of their respective markets,” Mutter writes.

As circulations fall, “foresighted publishers are creating niche products to try to capture readers who historically were unlikely to buy the legacy newspaper – and, of course, the advertisers who covet them as customers,” he adds.

The Tribune and Morning News both publish periodicals aimed at young adults and those who prefer to read Spanish-language publications. The Tribune also publishes a free tabloid written by and for teenagers, and the Morning News delivers a free, weekly TMC, or total-market-coverage, advertising product, like many McClatchy papers produce.

Mutter predicts that the once flagship, general interest newspaper will eventually become simply one product among several niche publications that successful publishers produce.

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Better papers tap readers to build revenue

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Newsonomics author Ken Doctor finds that newspaper companies are turning to higher prices for the paper itself to battle revenue declines, rendering the traditional 80/20 ad-circulation split obsolete. And  the ones that are doing it well are getting away with charging readers more because they’ve made their papers better, he says.

“While the digital news world seems consumed with conversations about paywalls and memberships, it is old-fashioned print circulation revenue that is the gainer in the post-80/20 formulas,” Doctor writes for Nieman Journalism Lab. “Sure, advertising’s ski slope decline has greatly altered the 80/20. So has, though, the significant up-pricing of both subscriptions and single copies over the past three years.”

A leader in the trend is apparently The Dallas Morning News, which raised the price of monthly subscriptions from $18 to $30 and is earning 38 percent of its revenue from circulation, 54 percent from advertising, and 8 percent from “contract printing plus,” he says.

The Dallas paper’s parent, A.H. Belo, reported a 6.6 percent increase in circulation revenue in the second quarter, while The New York Times Company reported a 3.2 percent increase and Scripps had a 4.5 percent increase in the first quarter (Scripps’ 2Q report is due Monday).

“Significantly, I think, each of those companies may have done a better job of minimizing newsroom cuts and reinvesting — at least a little — in that now higher-priced product,” Doctor says.

Better than whom? Better than McClatchy, which reported a 2.5 percent circulation revenue decline in the second quarter (and has raised prices); Lee, which was down 4.4 percent; and Gatehouse, which was down 2.5 percent.

Doctor has the current splits for each of the four publishers, and for McClatchy, the one we follow, it’s pretty much the newly declared old-hat model of 20 percent circulation, 76 percent ads and 4 percent other.

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McClatchy shows ‘hope’ despite 83% revenue fall

Friday, July 30th, 2010

So, this is good news these days? “Despite an 83 percent drop in net income, the results announced Thursday offered at least one sign of hope: McClatchy’s ad revenue, its lifeblood, fell by its lowest rate in more than three years.”

The report by the AP’s Mike Liedtke says McClatchy’s 8 percent fall in ad revenue is the best performance since a 5 percent decline in the first quarter of 2007. But, as he also points out, today’s year-to-year comparisons are against poor performances. That’s 8 percent less than a number that was bad to begin with.

Net income for the quarter was $7.3 million, down from $42.2 million a year ago. Total revenue fell 6 percent to $342 million, the AP says.

The company is blaming the earnings plunge on “higher interest costs as we extended debt maturities,” according to the Sacramento Business Journal’s report.  Interest payments for the quarter were up 44 percent to $49 million compared to $34 million at the same time last year after restructuring in February that extended repayment to 2017.

McClatchy was struggling with a debt of $1.8 billion as of the end of June, the SBJ says.

The company also sold about 200,000, or 8 percent, fewer copies of its weekday newspapers this past quarter, though higher prices eased that hit a little.

McClatchy management projects a 4 to 6 percent revenue decline year-to-year for the coming third quarter.

“While the economic recovery hasn’t been robust or smooth, we believe it is beginning to spread across the markets we serve,” CEO Gary Pruitt said, according to the AP report.

Employment advertising, half of which is online these days, was up 1.5 percent in May, marking the first month of growth in employment advertising revenue in four years, the SBJ says. Employment advertising rose 0.8 percent in June.

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Ease of access more important than accuracy

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

More people rely on the Internet for news, as opposed to print newspapers, but they don’t trust what they read there, a new survey by the the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism’s Digital Future Project.

For the first time, fewer survey respondent – 56 percent – ranked newspapers as  important or very important sources of information for them than those who said the Internet (78 percent) and television (68 percent) were important or very important sources of information. The number for newspapers was down from 60 percent in the school’s 2008 survey.

But, 61 percent of Internet users said less than half of online information is reliable, and 14 percent said that little or none of it is reliable. The latter figure is up from previous years, according to Media Daily News.

Looks like ease of use – the computer, TV or mobile device people are connected to anyway vs. a different copy of the newspaper arriving in the driveway each day – is more important that the information itself.

More than 20 percent of respondents said they would not miss the printed newspaper.

The downward spiral in print newspaper circulation no doubt will be accelerated by  advances in online delivery of news content through e-readers or other handheld electronic devices,” Jeffrey I. Cole, director of  the school’s Center for the Digital Future, said in a statement quoted by Editor & Publisher. “After years of aborted attempts, these advances finally appear to be practical and  affordable methods of providing electronic news content to readers.  If so, what will that mean for  the future of the traditional print newspaper?”

Meanwhile, 70 percent of Internet users said online advertising is “annoying,” and half said they never click on Web ads. But 55 percent said they would rather put up with Web advertising than pay for content.


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Street no longer buying ‘cost-cutting’

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Editor & Publisher’s Mark Fitzgerald takes a look at Gannett Co.’s second-quarter earnings and says in his Fitz & Co. blog that simply cutting costs, which for the most part means laying off staff, no longer flies for newspaper publishers.

“The Street will no longer be satisfied with earnings pumped up only by continual cost-cutting. Gannett (GCI) handily beat Street estimates of earnings – but its overall earnings, in a quarter when its broadcast properties were humming nicely, was down 1.6%. … GCI got hammered for those results Friday, falling more than 10 percent.”

Gannet’s print and circulation revenues were down for the quarter also.

Other publishers’ stocks are also down as their 2Q reports come in the next several days, Fitzgerald says.

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Gannett joins Yahoo! newspaper ad group

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Gannett announced Friday that it would begin selling  targeted display ads to run on Yahoo! and sites for its 81 newspapers and seven of its broadcast stations nationwide.

The deal adds Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher, to an advertising consortium that includes more than 800 members, according to Online Media Daily. McClatchy newspapers, the third-largest publisher, was one of the first members of the consortium, formed in November 2006.

Like other publishers in the deal, Gannett may also provide local content for Yahoo! properties in the U.S., including the Yahoo! homepage.

“To date, the consortium has sold more than 40,000 ad campaigns onto Yahoo! totaling more than $100 million in sales to date, according to Lem Lloyd, vice president of channel sales at Yahoo!,” says Online Media Daily.

Yahoo’s publishing platform enables “local newspapers to target consumers according to geographic, demographic and behavioral factors in ads that appear on Yahoo! properties from mail to sports to news.”

Yahoo!, which at the time was being run by former Knight Ridder executives, said at the launch of the program that it was teaming with newspapers because they already had local advertising staffs.

Local advertising accounts for about half of the $245 billion in total U.S. ad spending, Online Media Daily says.

Gannett announced in May that it would begin to sell online marketing services, another program adopted earlier by McClatchy. GannettLocal offers search engine marketing, e-mail, digital display, website and geo-targeted print/flyers.

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USAT jumps shark with full-paper wrap

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

At least USA Today had a more-or-less straight-forward explanation for its 1A ad that wrapped the whole paper on Monday:

“Lee Jones, evp, advertising, USAT, said that in the past, concerns about editorial integrity, production and circulation deterred USAT from selling ads that wrapped the paper, but that market demand and quality of the ad allayed those worries,” MediaWeek reported.

As to “editorial integrity” versus “market demand,”  the  wrap promoting Jeep’s 2011 Grand Cherokee will bring in $1 million in a deal that includes presence on the newspaper’s iPad app and Web site.

The ad marked the first time the Gannett flagship had wrapped its news section with an ad. The wrap completely obscured the paper as shown through the window of outdoor racks, MediaWeek said.

USAT wrapped its Life section with a Verizon ad July 1 and recently introduced other front-page ads that do not obscure editorial.

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McClatchy D.C. Bureau drops polling

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Budget cuts at McClatchy Newspapers  mean the Washington D.C. bureau will drop its contract with Ipsos, which has conducted polls for the news outlet for years, Media Matters for America reported today.

Ipsos had conducted about one poll a month for McClatchy, usually about politics, Robert Rankin, McClatchy’s government and politics editor, told MMA’s Joe Strupp.

“The budget requires that that relationship comes to an end,” Rankin said. “… This hurts. We are staffing (political coverage) at about the same level. But we can’t cover the absence of polls. There is no way to replace them.”

“McClatchy’s move is not unique,” Strupp writes. “Numerous news outlets in print and on air have been cutting back on the use of polls, most citing budgetary needs.”

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Gannett experimenting with paywalls

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Gannett has initiated a “small-scale test” of paywalls at three of its smaller newspapers’ websites “to help [the publisher] develop [a] long-term strategy for paid content,” according to a report from Poynter’s Bill Mitchell.

The sites for the Tallahassee Democrat, The Greenville (S.C.) News and The (St. George, Utah) Spectrum are charging $9.95 a month for online-only access. The fee for web access bundled with a print subscription varies by market.

Gannett’s Kate Marymont, vice president of news for Gannett’s Community Publishing Division, told Mitchell the company targeted sites with niche content – such as Clemson football coverage in Greenville and Florida State football in Tallahassee.

“We want to test the idea that our journalism is more of a service than a product, and that we should give readers a selection of delivery methods,” Marymount said.

Robin Pence, Gannett’s vice president of corporate communications, said the company will use what it learns from the test sites “to help us develop our long-term strategy for paid content.”

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