MediaFile

Tribune365, thinking beyond newspaper circulation

Robert MacMillan

Oct 26, 2009 16:58 EDT

Monday’s newspaper circulation numbers please no one who makes their living from selling papers. That’s evident when you look at the top 25 dailies by circulation and see that the best performance came from The Wall Street Journal, which rose less than 1 percent. Considering that advertisers use these numbers to determine where to spend their money, there is little reason to rejoice.

Tribune Co’s two largest papers, the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, both posted steep declines on Monday, but the company is urging advertisers to look beyond numbers that it considers less relevant than they were before the Internet. Instead, it wants them to look at how many people they can reach through Tribune’s diverse lineup of papers, websites and television stations.

To make this easier, Tribune has started “Tribune365,” a “multichannel sales solutions group providing customized marketing programs to advertisers looking to reach consumers across a variety of media platforms.” (More on what this means — in English — below.)

“We want to change the conversation around both how we sell and how people perceive newspapers.” Print circulation,” said Vincent Casanova, Tribune’s senior vp of publishing operations “just doesn’t tell the whole story… The objective is to change the conversation from a narrow look at topline circulation results to a broader discussion of the power of newspaper advertising and how to deliver results.”

For Tribune365, that means no longer selling ads to national buyers through a bunch of different sales teams that sell different kinds of ads for this or that part of a paper or this or that part of a website or TV station.

Tribune365 President Don Meek cited a recent ad campaign for big-box retailer Target, which set up one of a 16,000 square-foot “pop-up store” in Chicago (Those are the temporary stores that spring up in cities for a few days at a time, sell a bunch of stuff, and move on):

“We were able to put together an integrated program on WGN, WGN-TV, the Chicago Tribune, RedEye, Hoy… The only thing we couldn’t deliver was the outdoor bus shelter advertising on Michigan Avenue. Not only were we able to provide real estate and promotional support, it was also a fully integrated ad program. They said it was one of the most popular programs that they ever did.”

New York Times job cuts: Read the memo

Robert MacMillan

Oct 19, 2009 15:53 EDT

The New York Times will cut 100 positions in its newsroom by the end of the year, Executive Editor Bill Keller told staff on Monday. This is the second time that the paper has taken this unfortunate step, having cut 100 positions last year (though, as Richard Perez-Pena reported in his story on nytimes.com, other positions were added so it was not a net reduction). Thing is, the TImes already cut pay for journalists and other employees this year in an attempt to forestall cuts. So… it’s not good news, but it is fit to print. Here is Keller’s memo:

Colleagues,

I had planned to invite you to the newsroom and break this news in person today, but I’ve been hit by something that seems to be the flu. Though I strongly believe in delivering bad news in person, I don’t want to add insult to injury by spreading infection.

Let me cut to the chase: We have been told to reduce the newsroom by 100 positions between now and the end of the year.

We hope to accomplish this by offering voluntary buyouts. On Thursday, the Company will be sending buyout offers to everyone in the newsroom. Getting a buyout package does NOT mean we want you to leave. It is simply easier to send the envelopes to everyone. If you think a buyout may be right for you, you have up to 45 days to decide whether you will accept it or not.

As before, if we do not reach 100 positions through buyouts, we will be forced to go to layoffs. I hope that won’t happen, but it might.

Our colleagues in editorial and op-ed, and on the business side, also face another round of budget cuts.

Newspapers stay on message in tough times

Robert MacMillan

Aug 5, 2009 15:30 EDT

It must be hard to churn out positive messages about the newspaper business when papers are losing their advertising revenue at alarming rates and the Internet is not yielding up any easy secrets for survival.

Don’t underestimate the Newspaper of Association of America’s ability to stay positive. Here’s part of a press release that it issued today:

Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 70.3 million unique visitors in June (35.9 percent of all Internet users), according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America. Newspaper Web site visitors generated 3.5 billion page views during the month, spending 2.7 billion minutes browsing the sites over more than 597 million total sessions.

“The newspaper audience continues to expand as publishers aggressively capitalize on their investments in digital properties, adding robust features and launching new products to attract a highly valuable consumer audience,” said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. “Advertisers who want to reach consumers ready to make purchasing decisions continue to use the trusted newspaper brand to ensure their messages are heard through the crowd.”

Also:

The latest Nielsen numbers come as early data from a MORI Research survey of 3,000 adults, indicates that newspaper advertising remains the leading advertising medium cited by consumers in planning, shopping and making purchasing decisions. The study, part of a series entitled “American Consumer Insights,” also found that 82 percent of adults said they “took action” as a result of newspaper advertising – from clipping a coupon or making a purchase to visiting a Web site to learn more.

Along with that came this pitch from the NAA spokesman, Jeff Sigmund, a guy who could claim political asylum in most industrialized nations after the pain I’ve foisted on him for the past few years (I’m sorry, Jeff, I can’t help it!):

Did *anyone* like the Los Angeles Times ads?

Robert MacMillan

Apr 13, 2009 11:28 EDT

You have to hand it to Sam Zell and his band of outsiders at bankrupt media company Tribune Co. They are going to remake the newspaper business if it kills them.

The gang got broiled for a front-page ad that the Los Angeles Times ran last week that looked like an article. After that outcry, the Tribune-owned paper did it again, this time with another an ad supplement for Paramount’s movie, “The Soloist.” That one includes an interview with Steve Lopez, the Times columnist who wrote the book that became the movie. The ad also ran under the LA Times’s own banner.

As it turns out, nearly everyone who cares enough to talk about these ads in public despises them. You could have said that LA Times employees were just kvetching when they circulated a petition voicing their opposition to the ads — broke down and dispirited by bankruptcy, and repeated waves of layoffs, they stuck to the old line that there needs to be a distinction between ads and editorial copy for various ethical reasons.

Now we can add LA Times Executive Editor John Arthur to the mix. Here’s The Wrap:

Arthur, who was on vacation last week, said he was blindsided by the ad…  The editor said it was initially envisioned to go down the right side of the front page, usually the space reserved for the paper’s lead story. “I’d been told an ad like that was coming, and before my trip I’d complained about it,” he said. “But I was told it was not imminent, that an ad of this shape was weeks or months away — May or June was mentioned to me.”

Arthur was also critical of a four-page advertising supplement about the upcoming Paramount movie “The Soloist,” which was published on Sunday under the signature Los Angeles Times banner. … “I thought the type font that was used in the words ‘The Soloist’ at the top was uncomfortably close to the font we use in section fronts,” Arthur said, adding that he did not know that the supplement was coming either. Lopez could not be reached for comment.

But Lynne Segall, vice president for entertainment advertising at the paper, retorted in an email to TheWrap: “Russ Stanton, his boss, the editor of the paper, approved both advertorial units. The ad department in this company is not in a position nor would we ever be allowed to go out in the market to sell units like this without editorial vetting and giving us permission first.”

L.A. Times staffers fume over front-page ad

Dan Whitcomb

Apr 9, 2009 15:40 EDT

The decision by the Los Angeles Times to run a front-page ad that looks like a news story has raised eyebrows in media circles. LAT staffers, meanwhile, are raising their pitchforks.

Horrified by what they see as a deceptive blurring of the line between paid advertising and news stories, some 100 employees at the paper have signed a petition to Publisher Eddy Hartenstein “strenuously” objecting.

“This place already had horrible morale problems with decimating layoffs, but now to have our publisher whore out the front page is more than we can stand,” one editorial staff member told Reuters. “It blurs the line between paid content and content that our reporters are producing.”

The ad, which runs down the left column of the front page, is for the new NBC police drama “Southland.” It’s topped with the headline: ”Southland’s Rookie Hero,” followed by the sub-head “A ride-along on an officer’s first day.”

The ad is surrounded by a black border and has the NBC logo and word “advertisement” above it, but resembles a news story.  Along the bottom of the front page is a more conventional, banner-style ad for the show, announcing that it premieres tonight.

“The NBC ad may have provided some quick cash, but it has caused incalculable damage to this institution,” the petition reads. “This action violates a 128-year pact with our readers that the front page is reserved for the most meainingful stories of the day. Place a fake news article on A-1 makes a mockery of our integrity and journalistic standards.”

Newspapers are pushing the boundaries between advertising and editorial content as they struggle to compete in the Internet age.  Many used to run front page ads way back at the beginning of the 20th century, and some, like The Wall Street Journal, are trying it again.

New York Times brings IHT into the fold

Robert MacMillan

Mar 30, 2009 08:25 EDT

It’s no secret that the International Herald Tribune is part of The New York Times Co, so why not flaunt it? Visitors to nytimes.com and iht.com saw evidence of this thinking Sunday (or Monday, depending on where you are).

When you visit the IHT website, you now see a Web link on your Internet browser that says this: http://global.nytimes.com/?iht. The flag at the top of the page now reads: “International Herald Tribune: The Global edition of The New York Times.” The layout of the website also has been adjusted to resemble that of nytimes.com’s homepage. If you visit nytimes.com, a banner across the top of the page invites you to “try the new global edition,” which, of course, is what iht.com used to be. If you’re a regular Reuters reader, you can’t say you’re too surprised, as we told you last June that this was coming.

We’re curious about whether bringing the IHT closer into the fold allows the Times to cut its costs in any significant way, and will update this blog entry once we get some clarity on that. The Times is dealing with falling advertising revenue and also has had to take other steps such as selling its interest in its headquarters building and borrowing money at a high interest rate from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to help pay off debt. It also cut 100 jobs in its business operations, it said on Friday, and said it is cutting staff pay by 5 percent (and in the case of union workers in its newsroom, is asking them to agree to that pay cut to avoid news staff layoffs).

Here, meanwhile, is a quote from Global Edition Editor Martin Gottlieb that was included in the press release. Somewhere in here is a “cost saving”:

Working together with The New York Times, we have been able to look at the overall balance and direction of our coverage afresh. By consolidating Web operations and improving design processes, we are freeing up editorial energies to focus on delivering the accurate reporting, thought-provoking writing and sharp analysis that our international readers need now more than ever.

There also is an advertising case to be made here, which comes courtesy of a quote from Jean Christophe Demarta, international advertising director for The New York Times Media Group:

The new online Global Edition and the new-look newspaper have generated a wealth of new opportunities for advertisers looking to reach our influential, international audience.

Read Washington Post chairman’s letter to shareholders

Robert MacMillan

Mar 25, 2009 15:18 EDT

Washington Post Co Chairman Don Graham wrote a more than 2,000-word letter to shareholders for his company’s latest annual report. I managed to cut it down to the 587 words that I thought were really worth reading. Graham is the kind of chairman and CEO that you want to cover as a journalist because he seems to rely exclusively on straight talk instead of obfuscation — particularly when the news is bad for the company and for shareholders. Here are the 587 words, with the parts that I found even more interesting than the rest marked in bold type.

We could do without more years like 2008. … In past years, I have rattled on in these letters about our Company’s relationship to our shareholders. Generations of top managers at The Post Company have reiterated: we’re focused on the long run; we’re committed to building value for our shareholders. My own assets are more than 90% concentrated in the stock you own. All of these remain true, but I am in the embarrassing position of writing you after a year in which Post Company stock declined by more than 50%. Comparative results (“you should see what happened to the other newspapers”) offer no solace.

…

It’s central that you know this: in 1998, about 75% of the Company’s revenue came from The Post, Newsweek and our television stations. In 2008, almost 70% came from Kaplan and Cable ONE.

…

Many CEOs’ annual reports will say more about their balance sheets than they have for years; this one is no exception. Our Company for many years has had $400 million of notes outstanding; unfortunately, these came due in February. The Post has an A1 credit rating from Moody’s; we are told that ranks us in the top 10% of nonfinancial S&P 500 companies. Nonetheless, the coupon rate when we refinanced our debt was much higher: 7.25% in 2009, compared to 5.5% in 1999. We still have enough cash and marketable securities to cover the debt. The Company can handle the added interest cost. But to have no debt at all-unless for a very compelling reason-seems wiser than ever.

EW Scripps CEO: Storytellers are journalism’s future

Robert MacMillan

Mar 19, 2009 14:41 EDT

I spoke late last week with the chief executive of EW Scripps Co, the company that got its share of hisses and boos for shutting down the Rocky Mountain News this past February.

Rich Boehne, a journalist back in the day, is in charge of navigating a chain publisher of U.S. newspapers through the most difficult time that it ever has had, not to mention all the employees of the papers that the company owns. And let’s not forget the local television stations that Scripps also operates.

Boehne and I talked about the future of newspapers for a story that I was working on about the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2009 report on the state of the news media. I included some of his remarks in a story that I wrote about ideas that the report had for saving newspapers, but our conversation ranged beyond the story at hand.

Here are some thoughts that Boehne shared with me. I prefaced a few of them with paraphrases of my own questions to save you the trouble of reading the whole transcript.

Here is Boehne speaking about how newspapers will persevere despite a decline in advertising revenue that is making some of them less viable than they ever have been before.

We really tend not to look so much at just newspapers. We tend to look at local media and what’s the opportunity for local media. In most markets there are hundreds of millions of dollars of local available ad dollars, and just because you have models today that don’t necessarily work in that environment doesn’t mean there won’t be very profitable robust local media models in the future… I guess we’re maybe a little more fundamentalist in our approach. We try to spend no time looking in the rear-view mirror.

He elucidated on the tide of bad-news stories about newspapers going bankrupt, newspapers threatening to close, newspapers actually closing and what newspapers will do as ad revenue disappears.

The state of the news media? Not so hot

Robert MacMillan

Mar 16, 2009 07:47 EDT

The Project for Excellence in Journalism published its sixth annual State of the News Media report on Monday. The report, at 800 pages and 180,000 words, is a monster. The news media that it’s analyzing, however, is turning into something quite a bit smaller.

The group, along with its chief, Tom Rosenstiel, has provided a snapshot of where the news industry is today, though with an industry so large, a snapshot this size is impossible to condense into one little blog, let alone a story for the wire. If you’re looking to wallow, dig in to the specifics, follow this link.

Here, meanwhile, are some of the introductory remarks and top findings of the study, mostly in the study’s own words. Warning: These findings are not suitable for your friends in journalism who are struggling to maintain their sense of self-worth.

• Newspaper ad revenues have fallen 23 percent in the last two years.
• By our calculations, nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet.
• In local television, news staffs, already too small to adequately cover their communities, are being cut at unprecedented rates; revenues fell by 7 percent in an election yetar — something unheard of — and ratings are now falling or are flat across the schedule. In network news, even the rare programs increasing their ratings are seeing revenues fall.
• The number of Americans who regularly go online for news, by one survey, jumped 19 percent in the last two years; in 2008 alone, traffic to the top 50 news sites rose 27 percent. Yet it is now all but settled that advertising revenue — the model that financed journalism for the last century — will be inadequate to do so in this one.
• The hastening audience migration to the Web means the news industry has to reinvent itself sooner than it thought.
• The recession? The numbers are only guesses, but executives estimate that the recession at least doubled the revenue losses in the news industry in 2008, perhaps more in network television.

So what are the new trends emerging in 2009? The PEJ tells us:

• The growing public debate over how to finance the news industry may well be focusing on the wrong remedies while other ideas go largely unexplored. (i.e. Stop worrying about micropayments: Try a cable TV model, or letting people buy things from local merchants through websites instead of just getting annoyed by advertisements for them)
• Power is shifting to the individual journalist and away, by degrees, from journalistic institutions. (About time!)
• On the Web, news organizations are focusing somewhat less on bringing audiences in and more on pushing content out.
• The concept of partnership, motivated in part by desperation, is becoming a major focus of news investment, and it may offer prospects for the financial future of news.
• Even if cable news does not keep the audience gains of 2008, its rise is accelerating another change — the elevation of minute-by-minute judgment in political journalism.
• In its campaign coverage, the press was more reactive and passive and less of an enterprising investigator of the candidates than it once was.

Two-newspaper city? Try Montreal, with *four*

Robert MacMillan

Mar 12, 2009 15:16 EDT

Here’s a contribution to the newspaper files from my colleague Phil Wahba, born and raised in the city of Montreal:

With the Seattle Post-Intelligencer potentially closing its print edition or shutting down entirely next week, The New York Times wrote today that it is possible that a city of 3.3 million people, and other large cities, might only be able to support one paper.

Contrast that with Montreal, a city with 3.7 million people and four dailies, three French and one English.

According to the Canadian Newspaper Association, three quarters of Montrealers read a printed daily paper every week in 2007. (That rate, in line with the Canadian average, jumps to 82 percent in Winnipeg.)

Montreal’s papers are getting a reprieve from the forces shrinking the newspaper business elsewhere in North America because of the city’s fragmentation. With two major linguistic groups, French and English, and the city split between pro-Canada federalists, and sovereigntists who advocate Quebec’s separation, the newspapers have their niches. That might not last forever, though. Read on:

- The Gazette: Owned by Canwest Global Communications, is the only paper serving Montreal’s 600,000 English speakers. Its Saturday circulation was 150,000 copies in 2007. (In Canada, the largest weekly edition of newspapers comes out Saturday, unlike in the United States where Sunday is the big day.) But circulation has been dwindling for years, and with Canwest, the owner of the largest newspaper chain in Canada, considered a possible bankruptcy candidate, the Gazette’s prospects are uncertain.