August 2018 - Editor & Publisher by Duncan McIntosh Company

egacy

ction, Your

their new

nding

“Our republic and its press will rise and fall together.” L-R photos by: © Sharon McCutcheon, © rawpixel.com, © Ambreen Hasan

— Joseph Pulitzer September 9-11 | Chicago | JW Marriott

REAL REVENUE

NEWSPAPERS

INLAND’S 133RD ANNUAL MEETING Registration is now open! www.inlandpress.org

SUCCESS

You’ve got a partner in Inland’s Annual Meeting A partner in serving your community.

At Inland’s Annual Meeting, sessions are led by industry experts who will guide you step-by-step through new and legacy platforms that enhance newspaper’s most valuable role: Building a community.

A partner in serving your nation. Newspapers are freedom in action, shining a light on the actions of governments and giving voice to citizens. Your participation at Inland’s Annual Meeting signals your commitment to this sacred task

A partner in serving your media company. Inland’s Annual Meeting is a three-day resource for ensuring the sustainable growth of newspapers in all their forms. Learn proven revenue opportunities in legacy platforms and exciting new ventures, such as voice-enabled devices. From the startups you’ll meet at Inland’s NextTech presentations to the interactive success stories sessions to Inland’s famed collegial networking — the ROI on attending the Annual Meeting is immediate and long-lasting.

REGISTRATION FEES: Rate increases after July 27

• Members: $795 • Additional registrants from the same newspaper only $350** ** newspapers only are eligible for this discount and must be from the same newspaper (not media company.)

• First time attendee from member newspaper: $495* *Member newspapers only are eligible for this discount

• Non-members: $995 • Spouse/Guest: $250 • Student Journalist : $25

ACCOMMODATIONS: JW Marriott Chicago 151 W. Adams Street Chicago, IL 60603, US Room rate: $299 For more information or assistance in registration or accomodations, contact Patty Slusher, Director of Membership & Programming, at pslusher@ inlandpress.org or 847-795-0380.

inside

August 2018 FOLLOW US ON

BE OUR FRIEND ON

VISIT US ONLINE EDITORANDPUBLISHER.COM

A Section

Features

Departments

TRUE OR FALSE

PRINT 18 Returns to Chicago Sept. 30-Oct. 2

CRITICAL THINKING

RJI Futures Lab provides fact-checking website for newsrooms . . . . . . . . . . . p. 8

CREATING COMPELLING STORIES

Annual event highlights new features without losing its purpose . . . . . . . p. 31

Tronc opens new branded content agency, Studio 1847 . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 9

Unleashed and Unstoppable

LEARNING LABS

Watchdog journalism finds new ways to make an impact in print and online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 32

Northwestern Local News Initiative partners with newspapers to launch research and development project p. 12

SUSTAINABLE JOURNALISM MARKETPLACE

Civil is building a decentralized newsroom using blockchain technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 13

ONE VOICE

Ohio news media collaborate to report on important statewide issues . . . . p. 14

Crisis Prevention

How can journalists create more unity against Trump’s anti-press tactics? p. 15

DATA PAGE Metered pay models, U.S. digital ad spend on the rise, strong mobile growth within digital formats, most popular online platforms among teens . . . . p. 18

PRODUCTION

Four problems with news and democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 38

The latest production trends rely on learning from our industry’s history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .p. 26

Keep Them Wanting More

NEWSPEOPLE

From behavioral data to exclusive content, newspapers are creating valuable strategies to retain readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .p. 44

New hires, promotions and relocations across the industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 51

SHOPTALK Newspapers are missing opportunities in radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 58

PHOTO OF THE MONTH

Sam Owens/Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 16

Columns INDUSTRY INSIGHT

BUSINESS OF NEWS

DIGITAL PUBLISHING

To sustain journalism, news organizations tweak the for-profit model . . . . . . p. 20

Seven tips for newsrooms as more consumers prefer receiving their news through video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 22

For the New York Times, puzzle and cooking apps are leading to more subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 24

2 | E & P | FEBRUARY 2016 editorandpublisher.com

+TOC.indd 2

editorandpublisher.com AUGUST 2018 | E & P | 3

7/19/18 1:36 PM

editorial

The Good Place

here’s a comedy show on NBC called “The Good Place” about a group of recently-deceased people who wake up in the afterlife thinking they’re in heaven, but as it turns out (SPOILER ALERT), they’re actually in the Bad Place. It’s an experiment designed by a demonic architect (played by Ted Danson) whose goal is to make the occupants’ afterlives as miserable as possible. Although their “good place” ended up being an illusion, they also found out a real “good place” did exist. The goal now was to get there. For the Los Angeles Times staff, they may have found their “good place” in June when the paper returned to local ownership after 18 years. Los Angeles billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong purchased the Times, along with the San Diego Union-Tribune, for $500 million from Chicago-based tronc. On the day the sale was finalized, Soon-Shiong was met with applause and cheers in the newsroom, where he also introduced Norman Pearlstine as the paper’s new executive editor. Pearlstine spent 50 years in journalism working at publications like the Wall Street Journal, Time Inc. and Forbes. He was also an advisor to Soon-Shiong during the transition plan. Despite these changes (including moving the newsroom last month to El Segundo, a city 20 miles away from its longtime downtown location), the Times seems to be embracing this new era. Those in the industry know it hasn’t always been that way. In 2016, when Michael Ferro became the largest shareholder of tronc (then called Tribune Publishing, although it’s been reported that tronc is returning to its former moniker), it sent the company into a tailspin. First, the company combined the editor-publisher positions across all its papers; it spent most of 2016 rejecting bids to sell to Gannett until Gannett finally gave up; and it rebranded itself as a “content curation and monetization company” that Ferro ambitiously thought should be making 2,000 videos a day, thanks to artificial intelligence. 4 |

+editorial.indd 4

E & P | AUGUST 2018

The following year wasn’t any better. In Los Angeles, tronc pushed editor-publisher Davan Maharaj, along with several other senior editors, out the door. Former Yahoo executive Ross Levinsohn was named publisher and Lewis D’Vorkin of Forbes was named editor-in-chief. In less than a year, both men were gone. Now that I’ve caught you up, you can probably understand why the Times welcomed Soon-Shiong with open arms. To some of those employees, Ferro was the architect who deceived them into believing they were in the “good place.” But they quickly realized they were not. Earlier this year, the Times newsroom voted for the first time in its 136-year-old history to form a union. Kristina Bui, Times copy editor and guild organizer, told E&P in May that it was the hiring of Levinsohn and D’Vorkin that made them realize tronc “did not have their best interests at heart.” From what I’ve read on Soon-Shiong, he seems to be the complete opposite. “We will continue our papers’ dedication to truth, integrity, journalistic independence, and storytelling that engages, informs, educates and inspires with care and compassion,” he wrote to readers in a full page ad the weekend before the sale was finalized. Pearlstine also seemed optimistic about Soon-Shiong’s abilities to run a newspaper. “Whenever somebody comes to a field like media from another place, you always want to make sure they fully understand what they’ve gotten involved in,” he told the Columbia Journalism Review. “His ability to both operate at 50,000 feet and then, somewhat annoyingly, to be very granular in his sort of deconstruction of everything from staffing to beats and so forth has just been remarkable.” I don’t know if you want to call this the honeymoon phase; we’ve seen our share of billionaires save newspapers, but we’ve also seen some that have burned out. I’m still curious to see where Soon-Shiong takes his newly-formed California News Group. Let’s hope it’s to a good place.—NY

CORPORATE OFFICES (949) 660-6150 FAX (949) 660-6172 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jeff Fleming jeff@editorandpublisher.com MANAGING EDITOR Nu Yang nu.yang@editorandpublisher.com GRAPHIC DESIGN Meredith Ewell ASSISTANT EDITOR Rachael Garcia rachael@editorandpublisher.com CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Rob Tornoe, Tim Gallagher Matt DeRienzo SALES AND MARKETING CONSULTANT Wendy MacDonald, ext. 231 wendy@editorandpublisher.com CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING SALES Jon Sorenson (800) 887-1615 FAX (866) 605-2323 classifieds@editorandpublisher.com SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES (888) 732-7323 MANAGER OF FULFILLMENT Rick Avila rick@editorandpublisher.com CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Emily Wells Horneff Dustin Nguyen PRODUCTION Mary Monge TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR David Kelsen OPERATIONS MANAGER Jennifer Chen, ext. 214 jennifer@editorandpublisher.com

DUNCAN MCINTOSH CO. FOUNDED BY: PUBLISHER Duncan McIntosh Jr. CO-PUBLISHER Teresa Ybarra McIntosh (1942-2011)

EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING MAILING ADDRESS 18475 Bandilier Circle, Fountain Valley, CA 92708 www.editorandpublisher.com Editor & Publisher is printed in the U.S.A.

America’s Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry With which have been merged: The Journalist, established March 22, 1884; Newspaperdom, March 1892; The Fourth Estate, March 1, 1894; Editor & Publisher, June 29, 1901; Advertising, June 22, 1925.

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 1:39 PM

Get Mobile & Get Moving! Increase revenue on the go with... ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Online Order Entry Real Time Sales Updates Real Time Account Balances One Click Pick Up Ads View Account History View Current & Prior Ads Request Tearsheets Ad Proof & Approvals

AD TRACKING Improve your sales team's productivity!

518.434.2193

sales@vdata.com

www.vdata.com

comments ))) Denver Post Should Embrace Changes

Time to Rethink Letters to the Editor Policy Our city and school board elections are usually not contentious; sometimes there aren’t enough candidates to fill the vacant seats (our average town population is less than 1,000). (“Critical Thinking: Should More Newspapers Charge a Fee to Publish Political Endorsement Letters?” June 2018) State elections are another matter, though. Nearly all of the letters we receive endorsing political candidates come from political party spokespeople or colleagues, spouses, neighbors, even first-grade Sunday School teachers. Neither the candidate nor the letter writers are part of our local communities, in most cases. Our official policy is that each candidate for any office gets one “free” story announcing their candidacy, with a photo if they choose. Anything after that needs to be a paid ad that we format to look like an actual letter, and we include the usual “paid endorsement” verbiage in the ad. We run incumbent columns, when they focus on local or government issues and not the upcoming election. We had to set this policy because of abuse by one candidate who had five to seven people sending us letters every week; his wife sent us a new letter nearly every week. This same candidate is the reason for another policy: all political advertise6 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+comments.indd 6

ments must be pre-paid. (Yup, this guy lost the election and didn’t pay for the few paid ads he ran.) If we ever get more engagement for truly local elections, we’ll have to rethink our letters to the editor policy. JEAN MATUA Editor Tri-County News Kimball, Minn.

Submitted on editorandpublisher.com

Newspapers, the ‘Voice of a Community’ Newspapers are often described as the “voice of a community,” so we always want to encourage engagement. (“Critical Thinking: Should More Newspapers Charge a Fee to Publish Political Endorsement Letters?” June 2018) Small to mid-size markets make for an ever better forum. Although we try and publish all qualified letters here in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho at our flagship, The Press, we are not bashful about prioritizing letters submitted by subscribers (with an audience reminder). Newspapers—the voice of a community (and) supported by the community. LARRY RILEY Regional Publisher Hagadone Media Northwest Idaho

Submitted on editorandpublisher.com

I worked with Guy Gilmore for four years and found him to be one of the most capable and knowledgeable publishers I’ve ever known. (“Editorial: A Call for Action,” June 2018) I constantly felt inadequate when around him every week in revenue flash meetings, but after leaving his leadership, his tough but valuable words kept ringing in my ears. We went through a similar situation with navigating through a series of layoffs which were some of the toughest days in my career. I know that before he acts, he gathers facts from multiple sources, is open for input, weighs all the options, and then puts a strategy together that will keep the news flowing to readers everyday as cost efficiently as possible. Today’s newsrooms will not look like yesterday’s newsrooms. We have so many options and ways of delivering the news better, faster and more interestingly than ever. My recommendation to those at the Denver Post is to embrace change and do it now. If these changes are happening, there is the possibility you might not stay in business if things don’t change, so support your organization. Figure out your value to the company and spend time finding your role in the new Denver Post’s future. Guy told me one time that I was receiving an education I couldn’t pay to get and he was so right on. I learned so much under his direction and leadership that has benefited me in many situations over the years. Regretfully I didn’t recognize it at the time. Trust in his leadership. He is trustworthy. Build your value and communicate your value and you will be fine. DEE MCCANTS

Submitted on editorandpublisher.com

Send us your comments nu.yang@editorandpublisher.com “Comments,” Editor & Publisher, 18475 Bandilier Circle, Fountain Valley, CA 92708 Please include your name, title, city and state, and email address. Letters may be edited for all the usual reasons.

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 4:04 PM

PubofYearFP18.qxp_Layout 1 7/11/18 3:31 PM Page 1

r e h s i l b Pu ar 2018

e Y e h t f o

Connecting the complex facets of publishing with vision and purpose

Submit Your Publisher of the Year Nomination Today Official nomination form available online: e d i to ra n d p u b l i s h e r.co m /p oy The accelerating pace of change in today’s information age requires a greater need for effective leadership. A successful newspaper leader must not only strategize from the trenches with practicality and realism, but also think with foresight and imagination. We are looking to honor a publisher who has risen above the rest and accomplished what seems like the

impossible, outmaneuvering the competition, outthinking the future and maintaining profitability. We are seeking your assistance in recognizing a leader with business acumen, technical savvy, and a deep understanding of what needs to be done to stay successful — along with the fortitude and tenacity to implement change.

Submission Information:

• Submission time period: Now through Sept. 21, 2018.

Please complete the online form and include a short synopsis of why the nominee should receive recognition. Include specific leadership successes, innovative program development, obstacles and challenges overcome.

• All entries will be treated with the strictest confidence. But the selected publisher should be prepared to be interviewed by Editor & Publisher for the special “Publisher of the Year” issue.

Eligibility: • “Publisher of the Year” recognition is open to all newspaper publishers worldwide, from papers large and small.

Nomination Deadline Sept. 21, 2018

the A section VOLUME 151

FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST 2018

ISSUE 8

> Look Ahead

True or False RJI Futures Lab provides fact-checking website for newsrooms By Rachael Garcia

act-checking is a way to deliver accurate information to the public, but to do that requires a lot of time and research. To help newsrooms, the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute Futures Lab is offering an “Innovation in Focus” video series that tests technology and methods of storytelling for journalism—one of those methods is a fact-checking website. “We want to help newsrooms innovate in all aspects of their work—help them try new business models, use cutting edge tools and be the strongest storytellers they can be to serve their communities,” said Kathleen Duncan, senior video editor of the RJI Futures Lab. “We know newsrooms are getting smaller, have less money, and their staff has to do more every day to meet the demands of their owners and readers, and we want to help.” The video series breaks down a new journalism method into two to three segments. For the fact-checking website, the first piece was on a local story; the second was with an expert fact-checker, PolitiFact’s Angie Holan; and the third featured fact-checking tips and tools, which is how the fact-checking website was conceived. For the project, Duncan’s student, Suzy le Bel, fact-checked statements made about education in Missouri, } Kathleen Duncan, RJI Futures Lab senior video editor where she looked up laws, public 8 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+ASection.indd 8

education documents and researched each individual statement to figure out the rating of truth the lab could assign it. Some of those fact-checked statements included: “Politicians were trying to spend money we don’t have. So we’re left with two choices: Raise taxes or cut spending. I will not raise your taxes,” made by former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, which the lab found out was true. However, the statement, “People are tired of spending more money on education than any nation in the world per capita,” a statement made by Donald Trump, was only found to be mostly true. The fact-checking files are available for newsrooms to download and use at github.com/rji-futures-lab/django-fact-checker. “The fact-checkers are essential because they strip away everything but the core statement and its level of truth based on fact,” Duncan said. “I believe this helps the public understand controversial issues because it drills down to the very essence of the story they’re interested in.” The fact-checking project has been completed, but the Future Labs team is already planning new projects for its video series. Upcoming topics will deal with drone journalism and data driven storytelling. Another goal for Duncan is to work more closely with newsrooms. “We hope to partner with more newsrooms to help their innovative projects be successful, create amazing opportunities through our fellowship program for year-long projects that journalists want to tackle, and continue to test tools and methods ourselves to provide the information that newsrooms need to get started in new and exciting aspects of our field.” For more information about the fact-checking website, visit rjionline.org/factchecker.

“We want to help newsrooms innovate in all aspects of their work...”

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 1:50 PM

the A section

Creating Compelling Stories Tronc opens new branded content agency, Studio 1847

he ever-evolving media landscape changes the way consumers engage with brands, but tronc’s new in-house marketing division, Studio 1847, is here to bridge the gap. Launched in April, the branded content agency (named after the year tronc’s Chicago Tribune printed its first issue) uses its unique position of being a division of a longstanding newspaper owner to help brands tell their stories through custom content and experiences. “Because tronc has such a credible, massive following—given our scale nationally, regionally and locally with our paper properties—brands look to us for help,” said Robin Gruen, vice president of branded content. “We’ve been working in local markets for hundreds of years, and we’ve created trust and commitment from our audience.” The agency’s holistic marketing approach } Studio 1847 creates graphics, articles and videos for several national and regional brands. provides every client a custom approach and solution to digital solutions, content and creative, and events. “We help brands connect with consumers in an authentic, meaningful way, where consumers want to be found, met and inspired,” Gruen said. She added that the more the team can learn from clients’ differing businesses and goals, the better they become at creating unique experiences for their customers. The agency was created due to a demand and interest from advertisers. With more than 70 employees, the team is led by Gruen, Tim Giles, vice president of sales, and Elsa Case, vice president of events. The content team is comprised of former journalists, editors and copy editors that have a handle on the differences between newsroom content and paid content. Some of their clients include TV network FX, Rush University College of Nursing, and Menards. Each of those campaigns contained visually appealing graphics or video. However, the team also creates traditional content, such as articles, infographics and listicles, and helps brands plan special events. Gruen said that because storytelling is in their DNA, they are able to tell brand stories with an authentic and credible voice. “That’s rare for a content studio. But because we are publisher-owned, we are held to wonderfully high standards,” she said. With newsroom budgets dwindling, it isn’t uncommon for newspapers to branch out to other revenue generators now. Moving forward, the studio wants to continue to provide cli} Robin Gruen, vice president ents with creative content and experiences to enhance their of branded content

editorandpublisher.com

+ASection.indd 9

clients own relationship with consumers. “It’s important for newspapers to evolve as audience evolves,” Gruen said. “We must continue to innovate with the times, and marketing solutions is a fabulous way.” For more information, visit studio1847. io. —RG

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 9

7/19/18 1:51 PM

the A section Tornoe’s Corner

4 0 0 , 0 0 0 The number of standalone subscribers to the New York Times Crossword, doubling the number of subscribers in just two years. A subscription gives users access to the daily crossword puzzle online and on phone apps.

LEGAL BRIEFS Photographer Sues St. Louis Post-Dispatch Over Photo Credit As reported by the Riverfront Times, photographer Larry G. Philpot has filed a lawsuit against the St. Louis Post-Dispatch because the paper allegedly used a 2013 photo of Ted Nugent that Philpot had published on Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license to illustrate a March 2016 blog post. Under the Creative Commons license, others can use the photo as long as they include attribution, but the Post-Dispatch al-

legedly didn’t include a credit to Philpot. The photo has since been removed, but archive.org, which periodically saves older versions of web pages, shows that Philpot’s photo was on display for at least two months. Philpot is suing for copyright infringement and violations of the digital millennium copyright act.

Freelance Journalists Finally Awarded $9 Million After 17-Year Copyright Lawsuit According to the New York Times, after 17 years, the nearly 3,000 freelance journalists who filed a class-action lawsuit against publishers after they licensed their articles to Lexis/ Nexis and other digital indexers without getting the writers’ approval, are finally getting paid. The Authors Guild filed the suit, along with the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Writers Union, and 21 freelance writers in 2001. The lawsuit was against the New York Times, Dow Jones, Knight Ridder, and Reed Elsevier, the provider of Lexis/Nexis. The parties came to an agreement in 2005, but negotiations 10 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+ASection.indd 10

stalled over disagreement of how to handle plaintiffs who had not registered copyrights for their work. The groups appeared to have reached a final agreement in 2014, only to endure four more years of delays caused by 41,000 objections from the defendants and specific claims by the authors. Each plaintiff payout varied depending on how many pieces were published and when they appeared in print. The settlement also allowed for additional reimbursements of nearly $4 million in attorney fees and close to $900,000 in administrative expenses.

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 1:51 PM

the A section From the Archive OF THE MONTH

 Pictured is Robert H. Willis, editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel, accompanying Darrell Dent on his paper route. Willis’ assistance was just one of the prizes Dent won as top carrier in the Sentinel’s fall sales campaign. The 149 orders he obtained also netted him a bicycle, tickets to the Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Bucks, $30 worth of records and $254 cash. This photo originally appeared in the March 12, 1983 issue of E&P.

> Wise Advice

 David Skok

“What kind of subscription models did you look at before starting The Logic, and how did you decide on your final choice?” We really didn’t consider any other models because we fervently believed that consumer revenue is about more than simply a business model. It’s about fundamentally changing the relationship that we’ve had with readers for more than 150 years where the product is subsidized by advertising. Consumer revenue is about creating a direct relationship with our customers that forces our editorial, product and business strategy to be singularly focused on creating value for the reader. If we’re not worth paying for, then we’re not going to succeed.

David Skok is CEO and editor-in-chief at The Logic in Toronto, Canada. He is the former associate editor and head of editorial strategy of the Toronto Star.

editorandpublisher.com

+ASection.indd 11

With recent scrutiny of the media’s institutional barriers that women face, Sourcelist helps close the gap between good intention and good practice. Sourcelist (sourcelist. org) is a database that can be used as a resource to facilitate more diverse representation and broader perspectives from professional female experts on certain topics. The first database is dedicated to women in tech policy and currently features 542 profiles of tech professionals. Although the database contains user-submitted profiles, each submission is evaluated and managed by a team of volunteers from the Brookings Institution and Fellow Susan Hennessey. “It’s my hope that Sourcelist will eliminate the excuse that diverse experts couldn’t be found to comment on a story or participate on a panel,” said Hennessey. “I’ve seen the appetite for diversity firsthand. And I know the talent is out there, but I haven’t seen the two connecting.” Brookings Institution communications director Elizabeth Sablich added, “Should we ever get to a point when Sourcelist is no longer needed—when Rolodexes are filled with the names of women and other diverse individuals who get called just as frequently as men—then it will have done its job.” Users are invited to submit suggestions for future lists to info@ sourcelist.org.  Susan Hennessey

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 11

7/19/18 1:51 PM

the A section

Learning Labs Northwestern Local News Initiative partners with newspapers to launch research and development project

} Facilitator Tran Ha gives a presentation to news executives, thought leaders, philanthropists and representatives of the Learning Lab news organizations during the Medill Local News Summit.

here’s no question consumers are rapidly changing how and where they access news and information. How newspapers should reinvent themselves to remain a relevant news source is a different story. The Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative is a two-year research and development project hoping to tell that story by providing a greater understanding of how individuals engage with local news and to find new approaches to bolster business models. In addition, Northwestern (home to the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communication in Evanston, Ill.) has also partnered with three news publications—the Chicago Tribune, Indianapolis Star and San Francisco Chronicle— as Learning Labs. “We were looking for metro news organizations with different ownerships—in this case Hearst, Tronc and the USA Today Network (Gannett),” said Tim Franklin, a Medill senior associate dean, professor and leader of the Local News Initiative. “We also wanted to leverage the scale of these larger companies, so that our learnings could be shared widely within those organizations. Generally, metro news outlets have been among the most affected by digital disruption. And, we also needed news outlets big enough to enable our data researchers to find clear trends and patterns.” San Francisco Chronicle editor-in-chief Audrey Cooper said, “When (Tim) asked me if we would be interested in the project, I didn’t hesitate. The more brains we have working on supporting local and regional newsrooms, the better. A lot of people have a lot of ideas about how to attract new readers to the coverage provided by media institutions, but many theories are supported by little

12 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+ASection.indd 12

} Medill associate professor Rachael Davis Mersey addresses the Local News Summit on understanding audiences.

statistical or empirical evidence.” The research takes two forms: first, Medill’s Spiegel Research Center will perform deep data mining and analysis of anonymous readership, engagement and customer service data at the three Learning Labs. Then, the faculty and student researchers will look for patterns in reader behavior at all three } Tim Franklin newspapers. “They’ll be able to analyze the behaviors that lead to actions such as buying a digital subscription or consumer advertising,” Franklin said. Simultaneously, Medill’s Knight Lab will go into the field in each of the three markets to conduct research on the local news needs and expectations of residents. “We hope to provide a much greater understanding of how individuals engage with local news, and then we believe we can help local news organizations deliver more of what readers value and are willing to pay for,” Franklin said. Although the project is slated for two years, the initiative will share the proprietary findings later this year with the Learning Labs individually, and then share the broad trends and other findings with the entire industry. Afterwards, the initiative will begin the development phase of the project, where the Knight Lab faculty and students will explore the creation of new digital tools and products that could help boost engagement, grow business and improve sustainability.—RG editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 1:51 PM

the A section

Sustainable Journalism Marketplace Civil is building a decentralized newsroom using blockchain technology

here’s a new kid on the block. Civil is a blockchain-based platform that supports a broad, global community of newsrooms with a new funding model. The platform is committed to bringing new sources of quality information to the public and help raise public trust in evidence-based reporting, but the key is that it’s a decentralized marketplace. Civil currently runs in 11 newsrooms, including Block Club Chicago, FAQ NYC and Cannabis Wire. The Civil marketplace is built on a protocol that is built on the Ethereum blockchain. A journalist must earn access to Civil’s platform, and they must pledge to abide by the protocol’s accountability

D V M & A

standards, community-driven governance and citizen-first business models. Civil recently received $5 million in funding from ConsenSys, a top developer of Ethereum. Co-founder Mathew Iles believes this

protocol will soon support a vast network of independent newsrooms operating transparently with citizens all over the world, and he expects at least a thousand newsrooms globally to be published on the Civil platform by the end of 2018. The Civil Media Co. is the founding entity of the Civil ecosystem, which includes the Civil Foundation, an independent, nonprofit focused on working with the community to uphold and evolve its purpose; the Civil Studios, a for-profit entity created to house and fund works of journalism; and Civil Labs, a for-profit entity established to develop software apps, tools and widgets for the ecosystem. For more information, visit civil.co. –RG

BLACK PRESS, LTD HAS SOLD

AKRON (OH) BEACON JOURNAL 81,000 daily circulation 70,000 Sunday circulation and related publications and websites

NEW MEDIA INVESTMENT GROUP We are pleased to have represented Black Press, LTD in this transaction.

Dirks, Van Essen, Murray & April Santa Fe, NM t: 505.820.2700 www.dirksvanessen.com

editorandpublisher.com

+ASection.indd 13

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 13

7/19/18 1:51 PM

the A section

One Voice Ohio news media collaborate to report on important statewide issues

} Jordyn Gryzeleswski, reporter for Youngstown Vindicator and Lindsay McCoy, WFMJ-TV weekend anchor, listen to Ohio citizens as they share personal thoughts on the opioid crisis. (Photo provided)

ounded in late 2015 by Doug Oplinger, the former managing editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, Your Voice Ohio is a collaboration made up of Ohio news media on broadcast, print and digital platforms, working together to shed light on diverse voices in the community. In 2016, Your Voice Ohio first came together to share resources and content } Doug Oplinger, Your Voice Ohio founder on election stories and identify top issues using statewide polling. The polling was unique because it didn’t offer people a series of issues to rank, but instead asked them to name the most important issue to them, why it was important, and how they could find a solution. “That provided a mind-blowing wealth of diversity, which helped us realize that we shouldn’t segment people,” said Oplinger. After successfully working together in 2016, the group believed they still had potential for restoring their position of trust and usefulness. First, they had to find a subject: the opioid crisis in Ohio was an opportunity to experiment with their model of community focus groups and the sharing of resources across news outlets. “The opioid crisis was out of control and everything we were doing to cover it was making no difference,” Oplinger said.

14 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+ASection.indd 14

} Dayton Daily News reporter Katie Wendell sits with citizens in Cincinnati to share experiences with the community. (Photo provided)

It wasn’t easy asking some competing news outlets to work together, said Oplinger, but that changed at a community meeting filled with residents and journalists, where he explained why the newsrooms should collaborate. “Journalists are working together tonight because they believe 4,000 dying yearly in Ohio is a crisis,” he told the room. “Like you, we believe this has to be fixed. We have to work together to turn this around.” After that meeting, Oplinger said, “We were able to form collaboratives, find reporters willing to experiment and the goodwill from the public was overwhelming. And that goodwill is critical— that’s our first step to restoring trust.” And it seems to be working. Participating news outlets have grown in two years from around six to 10 to about 40, and their work has garnered interest and expanded across the Ohio River into West Virginia as well. Going forward, Your Voice Ohio plans on creating a sustainable organization by finding new ways to understand people through more newsroom collaboration and transparency. And as of press time, Your Voice Ohio is working on a new series exploring the future of work and the economy in Ohio. “We’re going to discuss envisioning a more vibrant Ohio—how should it look and what should we do to get there,” Oplinger said. “That allows people to define vibrancy as jobs, the economy or something else. Maybe it’s education. Maybe it is quality of life.” To learn more, visit yourvoiceohio.org.—RG editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 1:51 PM

critical thinking

If you have a question you would like to see addressed, please send it to rachael@editorandpublisher.com.

J-school students and industry vets tackle the tough questions

“A former editor described Donald Trump as a ‘magician’ who has ‘led (journalists) by their noses around the circus ring by his cheap acts.’ How can journalists create more unity against Trump’s tactics?”

Since the beginning of his presidency, Donald Trump has attacked journalists for their seemingly biased reporting and labeled any news unfavorable to him as fake news, causing the public to cast doubt on otherwise credible news organizations like CNN, the New York Times, etc. This obscure war on journalism is merely one example of Trump’s tactics used Tatiana Diaz, 30 sophomore, Grand Rapids to distract journalists and the public (Mich.) Community College from the real story or from what is reDiaz is pursuing a career in ally going on in Washington with his journalism and is editoradministration. in-chief of the student-run The president is using Twitter as newspaper, The Collegiate. his personal newspaper to communicate directly with the public. This is yet another tactic that keeps journalists running around the circus ring, diverted from the real issues—like his connection to Russia and Russia’s possible meddling into the 2016 presidential election. And so far, his tactics have worked. Time and time again we are entertained by the shiny dangling keys in front of us noting his remarks on certain foreign countries as “shitholes” and blaming Democrats for our nation’s immigration troubles as newsworthy without focusing on the bigger picture. Trump’s war on journalism created an “us versus them” rabbit hole which we will never escape unless we—journalists—put an end to it. The answer is simple: journalists can expose Trump’s tactics by simply doing their jobs and not fighting back. This isn’t a war. Journalists have an obligation to the public, to report the truth and protect democracy with every story published no matter who the president is.

Trump’s war on journalism created an “us versus them” rabbit hole which we will never escape...

editorandpublisher.com

+Critical.indd 15

The best way to sum up President Trump’s attitude toward the news media might be “love/hate.” He loves the attention, and there’s no doubt that lavish amount of unquestioning coverage he got during the 2016 campaign helped him get elected. But Margaret Sullivan he has also called journalists “scum,” media columnist, Washington and he has referred to the press as the Post worst problem in the United States— Sullivan joined the Washingand of course, there is the constant ton Post in 2016. Previously, name-calling directed at the “fake she served as the New York Times’ longest-serving, and news media” to describe coverage that first female, public editor. She he doesn’t like. That, unfortunately, is began her career at the Buffalo the “hate” part of the equation. (N.Y.) News. But we journalists shouldn’t follow suit. We shouldn’t give oodles of unquestioning coverage to Trump, but neither should we be involved in a war against the president. My boss at the Washington Post, Marty Baron, has expressed it with beautiful simplicity: “We’re not at war. We’re at work.” The work we do is on behalf of citizens who need accurate information. That requires toughness when we’re under attack. And it requires a constant commitment to fairness. It’s not at all our job to take down the president—and the journalists I know are not interested in that. We’re interested in digging out factual stories and telling them honestly and courageously. But this is important: That doesn’t mean doing things the same old way. Confronted with a president who very often misrepresents reality—sometimes indulging in obvious lies—we have to make sure we are not magnifying those falsehoods. False statements, even by the president, should not be amplified in headlines, leads of stories or the top of broadcasts. Yes, what the president says is—by definition—newsworthy. Even if his statements come in the form of tweet storms. But we should be careful to stay with our primary purpose: to find and present the truth. The linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff has one idea of how to do this: It’s the “truth sandwich.” Present the overall, context-rich reality first; then include the president’s statements; then, if necessary, fact-check those statements—all within the same article or broadcast piece. The “truth sandwich” concept can help us think about how to avoid being pawns. That’s important because American citizens certainly don’t need journalistic pawns right now. They need a fair-minded, truth-telling press with a strong spine and a sense of mission.  AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 15

7/19/18 2:43 PM

photo of the month

16 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+ASection.indd 16

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 1:51 PM

FIERY TOUCH ď ˝â&#x20AC;&#x2026; Sam Owens/Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press North High School seniors (left to right) Ryan Huebner, Alex Mosteller and Hatch Gerth perform a methane gas bubble experiment during a science show put on for visiting Delaware Elementary School first-graders inside a science lab at the high school in Evansville, Ind.

Send us your photos! E&P welcomes reader submissions for our Photo of the Month. rachael@editorandpublisher.com.

editorandpublisher.com

+ASection.indd 17

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 17

7/19/18 1:51 PM

data page Metered Pay Models Based on a survey of 333 online news sources, 236 of them newspaper websites

Pay Models

Newspapers

Metered

Average Regional Pricing

Online-Only

Region

72%

Avg. Price

$140.01

Northeast-New England

N/A

$133.57

West-Pacific Free

20% 92%

Freemium

Hard

Survey Only

$120.05

South-Atlantic

$116.53

Northeast-Middle Atlantic

5% 4%

Midwest-West North Central

$111.75

South-East South Central

$104.60

0.4% N/A

Midwest-East North Central West-Mountain South-West South Central

3% 4%

$90.42 $86.57 $82.25

Source: Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, survey conducted September 2017-March 2018

Almost 7 in 10 Americans Have News Fatigue Based on a survey of 5,035 adults 18 years of age or older % of U.S. adults who say they are worn out by the amount of news these days

AMONG THOSE WHO FOLLOW THE NEWSâ&#x20AC;¦ 62%

Most of the time Only when something important is happening

78%

AMONG THOSE WHO THINK NATIONAL NEWS ORGANIZATIONS DO_____IN COVERING IMPORTANT STORIES Very well

Fairly Well

Not too/Not at all well

48% 69% 80% Source: Pew Research Center, data collected Feb. 22-March 4, 2018

18 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P DataPage_r2.indd 18

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 1:57 PM

U.S. Digital Ad Spend On the Rise

Strong Mobile Growth Within Digital Formats

U.S. digital ad spending set a new record in 2017, topping

$88 BILLION, an increase of 21% from 2016.

Mobile search ad revenue is up

31% to $22.1 billion.

Mobile represents a

57% share of the total digital advertising revenue in the U.S. marketplace.

Mobile banner advertising is up

35% to $18.4 billion.

Total mobile ad spending reached

$49.9 BILLION in 2017, an increase of 33% from 2016. Digital video hit $11.9 BILLION in 2017, a 33% year-over-year increase from $8.9 BILLION in 2016.

Mobile video ad revenue is up

54% to $6.2 billion.

Mobile audio ad revenue is up

36% to $1.2 billion.

On mobile devices, video revenue increased by

54% to $6.2 BILLION, representing the first time that mobile video revenues surpassed desktop video. Source: IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report/ New Media Group of PwC, May 10, 2018

Source: IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report/ New Media Group of PwC, May 10, 2018

Most Popular Online Platforms Among Teens Based on interviews with 1,058 parents who haves teenagers, as well as interviews with 743 teens ages 13 to 17

% U.S. teens who… Say they use…

85%

Say they use_____most often

72% 32%

YouTube

69% 35% 15%

Instagram

51% 32% 10%

Snapchat

Facebook

3% Twitter

9% <1% Tumblr

None of the above

Source: “Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018,” Pew Research Center, survey conducted March 7-April 10, 2018 editorandpublisher.com

+E+P DataPage_r2.indd 19

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 19

7/19/18 1:58 PM

industry insight

Getting What You Pay For

To sustain journalism, news organizations tweak the for-profit model By Matt DeRienzo

rofits have disappeared. Survival is in question. So why don’t local news organizations just become nonprofits? It’s a question that’s been posed with increasing frequency in recent years, often in the wake of steep newsroom cuts. Hundreds of independent online news sites operate as nonprofits. Public radio is an increasingly important and active part of local news ecosystems. The Philadelphia Inquirer is a for-profit daily newspaper now owned by a nonprofit. And a handful of similar newspaper ownership models have existed for years in places such as Manchester, N.H., Saint Petersburg, Fla., and New London, Conn. Considering how many daily newspapers have been acquired by big, profit-driven corporate chains such as Gannett, GateHouse and Digital First Media, a widespread movement toward nonprofit status is unlikely. 20 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P IndustryInsight.indd 20

But especially among independent local news outlets, a third way is emerging. You might call it the “mission-driven for-profit.” The shift from advertising to reliance on reader revenue is forcing news organizations to articulate why individuals should purchase a digital subscription or membership. Unlike traditional print subscriptions—a more transactional purchase of a physical product, in which scarcity was a factor—getting people to pay for digital news can be mostly about convincing them that your work and mission are vital. Some for-profit newsrooms are gaining reader revenue through voluntary paid membership programs, public radio-style, instead of via paywalls and subscriptions. For that to work, they really do have to walk and talk like a nonprofit—articulate the altruistic nature of their mission, be somewhat transparent about their finances, and engage with and be accountable to their

readers (who include both paying members and potential members). Others are going beyond reader revenue in blurring those lines. Knight and other foundations focused on journalism have funded a small but growing number of projects at for-profit newsrooms. Report for America is placing subsidized AmeriCorpsstyle reporting positions at for-profit daily newspapers. And arguably, one could make the case that the occasional billionaire’s purchase of a major daily newspaper is more philanthropic than a business move. And in the Rust Belt town of Mansfield, Ohio, local independent online news site Richland Source recently raised $70,000 from a group of local businesses to support a series of “solutions journalism” stories. They will be “thanked for their support across all mediums (text, audio, video, and live events).” But it wasn’t an advertising contract. The $70,000 was a donation editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:00 PM

representing “a financial show of support for solutions work at Richland Source” and something that “associates a brand with rigorous and responsible local journalism; work that has a visible impact in the community we call home.” Like a nonprofit, Richland Source’s website has prominent references to “Our Story” as an organization, and “Our Mission and Goals.” Switching to nonprofit status could provide a significant help in asking readers and businesses for money. It would become exceedingly clear that there is an altruistic mission behind what you do. And for publishers whose profits are negligible and prospects for cashing out slim, there are few downsides. Yes, the organization would be formally mission-bound and you’d cede control to a board of directors. But beyond some restrictions on formally endorsing political candidates, nonprofits can operate a media business very similarly

to for-profits. An example is Mother Jones, which brings in millions of dollars in advertising and other earned revenue in addition to reader donations and foundation support. As a for-profit, Richland Source is unable to offer the incentive of tax deduction to readers who become a member or businesses who underwrite solutions journalism coverage. But its results are perhaps showing that’s an exaggerated factor. Remaining for-profit allows ownership to maintain equity and continue taking profits, obviously, but also flexibility and control. Similarly, for-profit status hasn’t stopped local independent online news site Berkeleyside from building voluntary paid membership into a major source of revenue. It also invited readers to become investors in the site and raised more than $1 million. Before the direct public offering, Berkeleyside took advantage of California’s “public benefit corporation” law and has a corporate structure that is for-profit but binds shareholders to

remaining focused on its mission of local news coverage. A mantra of the Institute for Nonprofit News, which works with 150-plus nonprofit news organizations across the country, is that nonprofit status isn’t a magic formula for sustainability. Foundation funding to support local news is scarce and rarely straight-out covers operations. Nonprofit and for-profit publishers alike need diverse revenue streams and a business model beyond the tax status.  Matt DeRienzo is executive director of LION Publishers, an organization that supports local independent online news publishers from across the country. He is a longtime former newspaper reporter, editor, publisher and corporate director of news.

6ROG Sun Coast Media Venice, Florida Cribb, Greene & Cope is pleased to KDYH UHSUHVHQWHG WKH Dunn-Rankin family in their sale to Adams Publishing Group.

John Cribb

ribb@Cribb.com 406.579.2925ȱ

editorandpublisher.com

+E+P IndustryInsight.indd 21

Gary Greene

reene@Cribb.com 434.227.0952ȱ

Randy Copeȱ

ope@Cribb.comȱ 214.356.3227

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 21

7/19/18 2:00 PM

business of news

Now Recording Seven tips for newsrooms as more consumers prefer receiving their news through video By Tim Gallagher

top me if this has happened to you: You’re in a room with several colleagues or relatives and start to speak. No response. Around the room, everyone is staring at a cellphone. One finally slowly looks up from the screen and asks, “Did you say something?” We used to joke that they were looking at cat videos, but today the evidence is mounting that they are looking at news. A 2016 Pew Research Center study showed half of Americans between 18 and 39 prefer to get their news online. And most of them prefer to get the news through videos rather than having to read text. Our brains are wired to choose the path of least resistance and it is less taxing cognitively to be shown the information rather than having to read it and process it. Our industry is built on the intellectually engaging exercise of a reporter distilling 22 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P BizNews.indd 22

reams of information into the most salient ones and delivering them in 800 carefully composed words. Further, we ask a reader for a cognitive deposit—will you invest your time into the mental consumption of this article and even think about it critically, or discuss it with someone? It is easy to bemoan this as another example of a lost generation that likes to be fed with a spoon—a generation that lacks the ability to think critically. Some would argue that this is why we have elected people who offer solutions to the challenges our nation faces with all the intellectual power one might expect from the fellow on the next bar stool who is deep in his cups. This is, however, the reality that print journalists face. We have become the medium of choice for one in four persons between 50 and 64; one in 10 persons between 30 and 49; and one in 20 persons between the ages of 18 and 29. This might

portend the end of another industry within a few decades. But adaptation is the first step in creativity and journalism is too important to die. Rather, this should be a tipping point, a time in which a greater of our resources moves to training and production of news videos. Here are seven things to think about as you transition.

Consumers love live news in video. They would rather watch a live walk-out by high school students protesting gun violence over the cat video. Breaking news and live video are crucial. Around 80 percent of respondents in a New Yorker and Livestream study preferred live video to social posts. And about 60 percent mostly wanted to watch breaking news.

Journalists are great storytellers editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:03 PM

•Dart N

and can be trained to tell stories in video. We have trained and hired those who do this best in prose. But our standards and expectations must change. Talented producers and editors must join our newsrooms to help us create the compelling content.

This is an opportunity for us to brand ourselves uniquely. Facebook is losing the battle for credibility. Online users say they are relying less on social media channels for news, according to Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. But closed messaging apps are picking up the slack because they offer the protection of a group of interested people. However, young people are more likely to pay for online news content. Take the still-trusted local brand for news that you own and combine it with a safe distribution method and you have an audience that

is willing to pay for a subscription.

The move is clearly mobile, so stories need to fit on screen 4.7 inches from corner to corner. And each video must work in the appropriate video formats.

Protect your brand as unbiased. Most consumers value our watchdog role but think the national media is biased. It is very easy to slant a video in one direction, but you must apply the same standards of fairness that you use in print.

Video consumers are more likely to be browsers. Just as people scan headlines on newspaper pages, they will scan pages of video with captions. They spot click-bait (“You won’t believe what happened…”) quickly and you will lose them.

Remember that viewers imagine themselves in the scene. The mirror neuron mechanism in the brain makes it easy for viewers to become attached to what they are watching. “Our brains mirror what’s unfolding before us as if we were part of the scene, even if we are just passively on the sidelines,” writes Liraz Margalit, PhD, in Entrepreneur. 

Tim Gallagher is president of The 20/20 Network, a public relations and strategic communications firm. He is a former Pulitzer Prizewinning editor and publisher at The Albuquerque Tribune and the Ventura County Star newspapers. Reach him at tim@the2020network.com.

SEE THE LAST MILE AS CLEAR AS YOUR FIRST.

[Inspired by your desire to monitor every delivery from every depot]

It’s early morning. You’ve got one carrier with a flat, another with a payment dispute, and a subscriber with a wet paper and a bad temper. Enter: Dart. Dart helps you re-route deliveries in seconds, track carrier compensation, and calm an angry subscriber with a quick re-delivery. Dart helps you see it all and handle it all—effectively and affordably.

Learn more at editorandpublisher.com TrustDART.com +E+P 23 9 x 5.4375.indd 1 •DartBizNews.indd News & Tech Ad

7/19/18 8/15/17 2:03 3:48PM PM

digital publishing

For the New York Times, puzzle and cooking apps are leading to more subscriptions By Rob Tornoe

ine across. 10 letters. The clue is, “The New York Times is attracting digital subscribers with theirs.” The answer, of course, is crosswords. Specifically, the time honored, hand-curated puzzles that have appeared in the pages of the Grey Lady for more than 75 years. Only now, those puzzles are increasingly driving digital revenue as part of the newspaper’s standalone crossword app. The Times has settled on a successful content strategy of offering a miniature puzzle (complete with an addictive timer) for free that acts as a stepping stone to the digital version of the paper’s daily offering, which is actually uploaded the night before. “A lot of people find the crossword to be intimidating,” said Eric von Coelln, executive director of puzzles. “(The mini crossword is) kind of fun, it’s kind of quick, and 24 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+e+p digitalpub.indd 24

you realize you can do crossword puzzles and I think that opens up the door to users saying, ‘Oh, I may try these other types of puzzles.’” Von Coelln credits much of the success of the standalone app to the hand-curated puzzles overseen by wordplay celebrity Will Shortz, the Times crossword editor since 1993 and NPR’s resident puzzle master. The Times continues to accept puzzle submissions from anybody, so Shortz oversees an editing process that receives as many as 80 puzzles submissions a week. “We invest in and create this really great curated handmade product,” said von Coelln. “We know there’s value in it, and people want to pay for that value.” Back in May, the Times also introduced an addictive new daily word puzzle called “Spelling Bee” into its crossword app. According to von Coelln, his team is proto-

typing a new game each month, and at any given time, there are two to three new puzzles in various stages of development. It’s a content strategy based around the idea of getting readers and players to form a habit with its products. So far, despite a few missteps like the shuttered NYT Now app, it appears to be paying off for the industry’s leader when it comes to digital revenue. In June, the Times announced that more than 400,000 people have subscribed to its digital crossword puzzle app, and that more than 2 million people are playing crosswords digitally each month. That’s an astounding 88 percent increase in subscribers since June 2016, when the app had about 212,000 online subscribers. At $6.95 a month (or $39.95 a year), those numbers begin to add up to real revenue coming in for the Times. According to their latest quarterly financial statement, editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:08 PM

HOLIDAY Sections That Sell

revenue from its crossword and cooking apps was $4.84 million, a 63.6 percent increase from the $2.96 million the Times earned during the first quarter of 2017. More importantly, from a business standpoint, is that more than 50 percent of the people who have subscribed to the standalone crossword puzzle app do not have a subscription, digital or otherwise, to the Times itself. That’s helping the company drive a broader audience to its other subscription products. During the first quarter of 2018, 40,000 of the 139,000 new digital subscriptions the Times received came from users who had already downloaded either the crossword or cooking app. Not only are they generating revenue on their own, but both products are also driving digital subscriptions on the Times’ main news product itself. “I think the New York Times is smart,” said von Coelln. “Getting a paying relationship with a user allows us to over time to expand and let them see all the things the New York Times can bring.” The emphasis on its puzzle offerings is just one part of a broader strategy to take some of the less-newsy features the paper is also known for and attempt to make them work as standalone subscription experiences. Another great success has been the digital overhaul of their online recipe section, which has been transformed in recent years into a vibrant digital product experience valuable enough for readers to pay $5 a month to access. This is in an age when most online recipes are free and just a simple Google search away. “Both crosswords and cooking are kindof candy subscription experiences because people play the crossword regularly and the people who subscribe to cooking are regular home cooks,” said Alexandra MacCallum, head of new products and ventures. “So we’re able to have users develop a habit with both of those products.” The Times is currently hard at work preparing its third product launch: a vertical devoted to parenting that’s scheduled to debut sometime next year. Unlike its cooking and crossword apps, which are built on archives of content going back years, the editorandpublisher.com

+e+p digitalpub.indd 25

parenting product doesn’t have a database of content to draw upon. MacCallum says that’s okay because what’s more important than an archive of content is creating an experience that can form a real habit with its readers, ultimately leading to a subscription. “We’re really focused on how we can create an area digitally that we can have users create a real habit in, and then figure out how we can bring the advantages of the New York Times to that area,” she said. “With parenting, we think that parents are looking for trust and authority, and the Times’ experts and research and reporting intends to really bring that to the parenting space.” The Times picked parenting as its next standalone product back in the fall of 2017, after undertaking a study of the habit-forming potential of 15 different verticals, which included books, travel, home and personal finance. MacCallum said in the second half of this year, the new product group will figure out how to prioritize among the rest of the vertical candidates moving forward and decide which ones her team will tackle next. All this shows what newspapers have known for a long time—that part of the reason readers subscribe to their print products is the fondness for its lighter offerings, such as comics, travel and yes, pet photos. We live in an age when fun content produced by serious media outlets is quickly decried by many in the newsroom as “clickbait,” but the Times’ success is a reminder that news organizations shouldn’t overlook lighter fare that can provide both engagement and an opportunity to grow digital subscription revenue. 

Rob Tornoe is a cartoonist and columnist for Editor and Publisher, where he writes about trends in digital media. He is also a digital editor for Philly.com. Reach him at robtornoe@gmail.com.

Start boosting your revenue today.

GREEN SHOOT MEDIA

GreenShootMedia.com

7/19/18 2:08 PM

production BY JERRY SIMPKINS

} Instead of labor intensive and inaccurate color keys, plotters can produce color matches in a fraction of time on newsprint stock.

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE The latest production trends rely on learning from our industry’s history

’ve been in newspapers and printing a long time, so when it came to writing an article about innovation and upcoming trends in our industry I thought “No problem. This should be a breeze.” Much to my surprise, I found myself frustrated, even dare I say angry, at so-called innovation in our industry in the past few years. Pretty strong emotions for someone who keeps defending the print industry and truly believes in the value of the printed word. Here’s what brought me to this point. When I started looking at current innovations and trends in our industry, I began searching my mind for material. After coming up short, I figured I’d give the internet

26 |

a shot to get the creative juices working. I googled “innovations in the newspaper industry.” The most interesting thing I got back was an explanation of Gutenberg’s wonderful invention, the printing press. At this point, some frustration set in. That same afternoon, a vendor stopped by and I figured I’d bounce my innovation question off him—nothing. That’s when anger set in at our industry. This industry that I love and enjoy every day, that has provided a wonderful living for me for many years, was now coming up flat. I thought back to when innovation was running wild in the industry and it brought back pleasant thoughts, but made me realize all the more how much we’ve been

resting on our laurels over the past few years when it comes to printing. We fear the internet and digital news is going to run print out of business, yet I couldn’t find a thing to boast about how “innovative” we’re becoming. Strangely enough it reminded me of the Mike Tyson/Buster Douglas fight. What does this have to do with newspapers? I grew up in upstate New York about a mile from Mike Tyson, Cus D’Amato and yes, the infamous pigeons. At the time I had hope in the hometown guy, similar to how I felt about printing. Tyson went into the fight a shoo-in; Buster Douglas was a 42-1 underdog. Like print, Tyson couldn’t be stopped. He’d been around for

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+Production.indd 26

7/19/18 2:12 PM

Photos courtesy of Jerry Simpkins } This old punch is far from the vision benders we have today. Innovation has been strong in this area and advanced in the platerooms of today’s newspapers.

awhile and in his career, he walked through anyone who got in his way. He was the big guy on the block that no one could stop; he owned his industry. Sort of like the printed version of our newspaper. Douglas was the internet—not a big threat, something that at the time we couldn’t regard a serious threat. One of these fighters had heart, determination and desire; the other fully expected to do what he had done all along and didn’t prepare, didn’t have the heart and surely didn’t innovate. We all know how that ended. Hopefully you’ve drawn the parallel now back to print. The threat of the internet was greatly underestimated by many and now we’re paying the price for our ignorance. The fear for the print media started in the 1940s. For many publishers, the arrival of radio and television spelled the demise of the print industry. When television journalism began to grow, so did the decline of print readership, but it was nothing compared to the last few years. In newspapers, the majority of our revenue has always come from print. Now, as a result of the decline in readership, the revenue model has flipped over to the majority of our revenue coming from circulation. I’m not quite sure how long we can sustain this model if we don’t do something to show our superiority over news on the

} Technology to maintain fountain solutions on offset presses has come a long way in a short period of time.

internet (hint: more hyperlocal coverage). We need innovation to move things forward in newspapers immediately, so let’s take a look at some of those production trends that could affect which direction we take.

New Trends in Ownership Say what you will about some of the new owners in our industry. I’d agree that the cost reductions have been painful and we’ve all been affected by them in one way or another. But these cost reductions and new “innovative” methods of management have also saved many newspapers from extinction. Newspapers need to be profitable to succeed and this takes money from innovative management, innovative new ideas and innovative owners. The same old/same old will just contribute to the continuous backslide of print. I believe the trend we’ve seen by hedge funds and billionaires to buy print newspapers throughout the industry will continue to expand in years to come.

Consolidation of Printing Sites This has saved more newspapers than anything else I can think of over the past few years. As everyone knows, press and production operations are expensive to

operate. When we were enjoying 40 or 50 percent margins, you could exist on printing a 10,000 circulation daily paper and still remain very profitable. As new ownership (in most cases group ownership) purchased smaller newspapers, the trend of consolidating printing to one common site has taken on a life of its own, for the right reasons. I hate that this has cost us jobs at individual small papers in the production departments, but this trend has saved several newspaper operations and therefore saved jobs in other departments outside of production, and continued to provide local news for many in small rural areas.

Commercial Print Operations Not to be confused with consolidation, commercial print will continue to thrive in well run shops throughout the industry. The days are over when our industry enjoyed enormous profits, printed just our daily paper and actually told advertisers if they didn’t hit the deadline their ad wouldn’t run (I have to admit I miss those days). Today we need to simply manage more innovatively, and one way to do that is to fill our press downtime with profitable work in the form of outside printing. Those smaller shops that no longer can afford to print just their own daily, or the

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

+Production.indd 27

| 27

7/19/18 2:12 PM

Photo courtesy of Jerry Simpkins } Huge banks of electronic/digital drives have made offset printing more reliable and show a distinct advantage of older analog drive systems.

shops whose press is wearing out and now costs them more to keep running than it’s worth, are turning to outside printers to stay afloat. This process is a win/win for most print sites that have stayed current and have open print windows and the talent to take on additional publications from outside. Commercial printing will continue to be a strong trend for smaller properties to move to and larger properties to profit from in years to come.

Production Technology The recent shortage of new innovative technology in the printing industry was what started me on the early tirade in this article. Now I’ll try to put a positive spin on things, but I’ll warn you that while I’m overjoyed to write on where we’ve come in the last 20 years, I’m still none too pleased on where we seem to be going now. Prepress: When I got into the printing business many years ago, all the “old guys” were still reminiscing about the days of hot metal and how this new trend of cold type was nothing but the devil’s doing. I spent the early part of my career trimming single galleys of type with a pair of scissors and running them through a 28 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+Production.indd 28

waxer before carefully placing them on the gridsheet strip by strip. Then innovation arrived (or so I thought at the time). It was wonderful when someone made it possible to put multiple columns of type on a wide galley of photosensitive paper and saved me a whole lot of trimming, but that was just scratching the surface of what was to come. Cutting to the chase, prepress technology soon became totally computerized and pagination was born. In a very short span of time, we went from the point of millions of dollars in front-end equipment to desktop publishing. New publications were popping up all over the place. Anyone with some journalistic ability and a few dollars to purchase a computer and the necessary software package could now be a newspaper publisher. Granted this has some shortcomings, but overall it was good for our industry. Most of all, it was innovation we all could be proud to be a part of. Platemaking: Second only to improvements in prepress technology, this may be the most innovative and advanced area of newspaper printing. When I first started in the business, I remember my plateroom running bare

medal (aluminum) plates through a coater to put a protective finish on them. It was a messy process. If you didn’t get an even roller pressure, it would result in an uneven coating and spell troubles on press; if you touched the plates before they were dry, you’d leave fingerprints; and at best, it was a slow process. Adding to the fun, this all had to be done in a dimly lit, yellow light environment. Afterward, you’d “burn” the image from a negative to the plate. You’d have to be sure the negative vacuum was good and the negative drew down onto the plate evenly across. A little bit off on the exposure and you’d have a mess; either it wouldn’t last for the whole pressrun or you’d plug the images. I won’t even go into what it took to produce a negative before the plating process outside of saying it had its challenges. Fast forward through the years, we now have CTP (Computer to Plate) technology in just about every shop, large and small. We’re able to send a file (normally as a 1-bit tiff) to the equivalent of a big “printer” and reproduce that image onto a pre-coated plate in a fraction of the time it used to take with precise quality and sharpness. These plates are now bent to a precise fit and alignment with a vision bender verses the old manual bending process that was at best highly inaccurate. Color keys: When it came time to proof an ad or color photo, we took a thin piece of plastic called a 3M color key and developed each color (CMYK) and hung them up to dry, placed them together to hopefully replicate what the final color photo should look like, and sent it to the press. Today we output a PDF to the plotter and minutes later have an accurate color proof on newsprint to help the press match color. Now, that’s innovation. Presses: As an industry, we’ve been through lithographic printing, traditional offset, flexographic printing, and for awhile, I thought we’d be off and running with digital printing. I’ll probably catch a lot of flak for this but I’m still not convinced the economies exist to make digital printing our next trend. Digital presses lend themselves to short

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:12 PM

September 30 - October 2, 2018

McCormick Place | Chicago, IL USA

Join Us at PRINT 18, Where Emerging Technology and Business Meet. PRINT is the one event that will help you enhance your knowledge, build your connections and Grow YOUR Business. • Over 50 engaging education sessions that take

you directly from the classroom to the hottest technologies live in action on the exhibit floor— from inkjet and digital printing to augmented and virtual reality to data management and IT systems.

• Learn from forward-thinking leaders inside

and outside the industry, including Keynote Seth Godin, best-selling author and former dot-com business executive.

• Connect with the most comprehensive

mix of experts to help you identify tangible opportunities to Grow YOUR Business.

THE LATEST FROM… Dart

How does Dart Distribution Technology keep up with the challenges and evolving needs of print distribution? The short answer is we listen, we learn, we respond. We listen to our clients, we listen to the industry and we listen to our own operations. Our deep engagement in the industry and inherent understanding of our clients’ challenges, many of which we experience in our own operations, is a tremendous advantage to the ongoing evolution of Dart and our success as a trusted partner. And, it is reflective of our mission to be known for groundbreaking innovation and exceptional collaboration. Because Dart performs in a highly stable, reliable manner, we are able to routinely enrich the product with new tools, capabilities and improvements to its existing functionality. We have a dynamic product roadmap and vigorous review process, driven by our customer experience and applications development teams, addressing the spectrum of delivery management, workforce management, and results management. In many cases, enhancements and new developments are the direct result of feedback and requests by our client partners. For example, recent enhancements to Dart Distribution Technology include: 1. Adding color to route lists to help delivery service providers more easily and quickly distinguish different products for more accurate delivery. 2. Making compensation statements directly accessible to carriers via the Delivery Service Provider Portal, thereby saving the operational team time and the cost associated with that routine task, and supporting carrier independence through control and access to their own data. 3. Enabling web services for complaint files, making it the fastest, most reliable way for publishers to send subscriber issues and re-delivery requests to the operation for response and customer satisfaction. These are just some examples of how Dart continues to evolve and there are many more in the pipeline. Michael Giordana is the vice president of strategic business integration at PCF and a leading driver of its Dart line of business.

30 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+Production.indd 30

runs and due to low/or no waste and minimal manning are very formidable opponents for our conventional offset printing process. But when we get into larger pressruns, I just don’t see the financials working. That’s all I’ll say—that and “I’ve certainly been wrong before.” When I got into the printing industry, all operations were manual. We set ink by hand with keys. Granted many presses still are manual, but look at the innovation in presets and inking systems. Automation is a wonderful thing. For water systems, the normal choices were socks or brush dampeners; then along came spray bars, which was a welcome innovation. From the days of cleaning out brush rollers with a wire brush or replacing a blown sock in the middle of a run, we can now set pulse rates and spray patterns with a maraud of control settings at our fingertips. Inline web systems now control color registration with small high-speed cameras running across the web and sending data back to a computer that then adjusts accordingly to ensure registration. This is a huge improvement from the days of running up and down ladders to move comps and/or shutting down and shimming plates. Inserting operations: Many of our newspapers couldn’t afford high-end inserting equipment. If you’ve worked in newspapers for any length of time, you’ve no doubt hand-inserted papers. My first automated inserter experience was on a small Kirk-Rudy. OSHA may not have been as serious about guards back then and often it looked more like a war zone than a mailroom. Anyway, it was quite an advance from hand-inserting. Over the years equipment has become faster, more reliable, and now we’re able to program multiple zones, spit out productivity reports on pieces per hour, doubles, misses, etc. We’ve come a long way with inserting equipment, and the innovations here have been nothing short of wonderful.

More Innovation is Still Needed To borrow from my earlier boxing metaphor, print is in the tenth round and on the canvas frantically reaching for its mouthpiece. Unless we in production—with the help of some bright individuals much smarter than me—find new and innovative ways to continue the trends that have brought the printing processes and production in general ahead, we’re simply going to be swallowed up by the internet. We need to put processes together and develop technology to more efficiently and cost effectively produce better quality with less labor cost and more predictability. So now that I’ve gone though some of our trends, triumphs and innovations of the past, I will return to my original thought and ask you, “What innovations have you seen in the last few years in printing?”  Jerry Simpkins is vice president of the West Texas Printing Center, LLC in Lubbock, Texas. Contact him on LinkedIn.com or at simpkins@tds. net.

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:12 PM

} More than 22,000 visitors attended last year’s show. (Photos by Oscar & Associates)

PRINT 18 Returns to Chicago Sept. 30-Oct. 2 Annual event highlights new features without losing its purpose By Nu Yang

RINT 18 may have a new name, a new schedule and a new floor layout, but the event still has the same message—print is alive and thriving. The annual printing conference returns to Chicago’s McCormick Place Sept. 30 to Oct. 2. Registrations are still coming in, but if last year’s attendance numbers are any indication (the 2017 show had more than 22,000 visitors), the event will once again be packed with printing professionals and vendors from around the world. Earlier this year, NPES—The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies announced a name change to the Association for Print Technologies. According to Association for Print Technologies president Thayer Long, the process started two years ago as the group noticed how the industry, as well as the organization, was changing. They also spent time conducting in-depth interviews with industry executives, printers and suppliers. Long said the new identity now builds on the strength of its community as the Association celebrates 85 years. In addition, the Association also designated its PRINT brand as the name of the annual printing show held in Chicago (the name used to alternate between PRINT editorandpublisher.com

+E+P Feature_Print_Preview.indd 31

and Graph Expo). “We wanted to quickly acknowledge to our members that print is still the focus of the show,” Long said. “It was a strong message to send back to the industry.” Once a four-day event, PRINT 18 will now instead be held over three days. The shorter show, according to Long, fits with the market and the needs of vendors. “I have a strong feeling that the tradeshow model is evolving,” Long said. “We believe in industry events, and strongly believe solutions will be found on the exhibit floor and in learning lessons. We also have a great opportunity to learn from people outside the industry.” One of them will be keynote speaker, Seth Godin, an entrepreneur and bestselling author. “He is definitely going to wow the crowd,” said event marketing director Sherry MacDonald. “He promises the audience will leave with actionable takeaways that can shape their personal and professional lives into the future. He is an expert on a century of marketing, industrialism and print.” Education will be a top priority this year. More than 50 sessions on business growth are on the schedule, and seminars will also be offered on the exhibit floor.

“The industry has been great at telling its customers ‘what’ they need to do, but fallen short on showing them ‘how’ to do it,” Long said. “This year, we want to focus our efforts on the ‘how’ because we measure our success on if our attendees can grow their business.” New this year is a virtual reality experience, career fair and a technology guide to the exhibit floor, which was redesigned to highlight small vendors and put more emphasis on networking. PRINT 18 also marks 50 years since the first PRINT event took place, and as the industry continues to evolve, so will the show. “We don’t believe in doing the same thing,” Long said. “We believe in innovation and creating community building events infused with vibrancy.” For more information, visit printevent. com. 

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 31

7/19/18 2:45 PM

32 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Feature_InvestigativeJRN.indd 32

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:22 PM

Watchdog journalism finds new ways to make an impact in print and online By Jennifer Swift

an you follow the money if you don’t have money? That’s been the challenge for newsrooms since the newspaper business was buffeted by financial headwinds roughly a decade ago. Desks emptied, never to be filled. Travel budgets cut, fact checkers, then copy desks, and editors were all purged by publishing’s retrenchment. Often lost in the cuts was the ability to conduct watchdog/investigative reporting. The idea that a publication could commit its best reporters to a project for months seemed a mountain too tall to climb with ad revenue drying up. From what we’ve seen this year, 2018 doesn’t seem to be reversing the trends seen in newsrooms: more buyouts, more layoffs, mergers and closings. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Media companies are turning away from their heavy reliance on advertisers to fund journalism. Publishers are following the money—rather than the clicks. Now publishers are relying on reader revenue, through paywalls at print newspapers and memberships in the case of nonprofit newsrooms. “All of this is happening against the backdrop of a shift in reliance on advertising revenue to reader revenue, and I think that’s possibly a really positive thing for investigative reporting,” said Matt DeRienzo, executive director at Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers, who writes E&P’s Industry Insight column. “Ad revenue was all about chasing pageviews, not impact.” And impact is what investigative journalism does well.

editorandpublisher.com

+E+P Feature_InvestigativeJRN.indd 33

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 33

7/19/18 2:22 PM

Pulling on the String Shannon Mullen started at the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey 31 years ago, that’s more than 10 years before Google launched and almost 20 years before Twitter was birthed. He worked in a bureau that at the time had as many people working in the satellite office as the company employs now. In April 2016, the veteran newsman was working a regular breaking news/weekend shift—a beat that in the past was the domain of cub reporters—when an explosion ripped through a local apartment complex. “That day I contacted one of the fire inspectors and asked him what had happened and he told me that in this apartment building, there was a basement tenant whose apartment was so overrun with cockroaches his wife had called him at work and I guess she had really reached the breaking point,” Mullen said. “So I guess he sprayed the hell out of that apartment when he got home and those fumes ignited.” No one was hurt (including the roaches), but as Mullen talked more with the code enforcement officer on the scene, he quickly learned the code enforcement office was in way over their head. From there, Mullen started a five-month journey uncovering the gross-mismanagement of the New Jersey public housing. Like some of the best investigative stories, Mullen said, it’s not something he came up with as a topic, sitting around the newsroom. This was a reporter following a single story and pulling on the string until what unraveled was a tale of mismanagement and a lax government oversight. “When it comes organically through something in the news, there’s a more natural process of discovery, like where’s this leading, and that’s the case with this story,” Mullen said. “We thought maybe a breaking news story, then maybe a local news story that was worth following up on, then maybe a regional piece, then really a statewide story. That was the evolution.” Mullen and his colleague, Payton Guion, worked on what would become an fivepart series with more than a dozen followup stories titled “Renter Hell,” (on.app. com/2znWpa9) earning them coveted spots as finalists for awards from the Investiga34 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Feature_InvestigativeJRN.indd 34

tive Reporters and Editors, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting competition and the American Society of News Editors, and their stories served as the impetus for proposed legislation. Still, their investigative series didn’t relieve them of their other responsibilities. As typical in small local newsrooms, Mullen and Guion juggled their investigation along with their daily story load. And while reporters at national publications have the luxury of focusing on a single topic, like national security or criminal justice, a reporter at a paper like the Press will cover everything from parking woes to city council meetings. With so many stories coming at them from different angles, managing the workload meant Mullen had to turn down plenty of stories he would have before turned around quickly for ones with more impact. “You almost have to have a more general assignment type approach to it looking for those good stories at the local level,” he said. There are fewer reporters out covering small fires that could turn into series, board meetings, etc. But both Mullen and DeRienzo agree that’s not all bad. “I think it’s a mixed bag right now,” said DeRienzo. “There are fewer reporters, but I think that people are starting to realize— including at the places that are being cut— among some of the worst that have been affected that they sort of have to be focused. Take what’s left and do what’s meaningful.” As publishers move toward engagement and readership rather than just pageviews, they see what reporters have been headlining for decades—local investigative journalism that matters to people. “There’s enough of a historical track record,” Mullen said. “The readers respond to it, the policy makers respond to it, and so we have the confidence to know that this is worth doing, and we can do this.” Recently, Noah Smith wrote in a Bloomberg article that local journalism can also lead to higher engagement because doing something about what’s read seems within a reader’s realm of possibilities. “When people learn about war in Ukraine, there’s little they can do to change things,” he wrote. “But when they learn

} Shannon Mullen, Asbury Park Press investigative reporter

about corruption and waste in their local government, even if it’s no more interesting to them than war in Ukraine, they’re able to do something about it.”

Supporting the Watchdogs

Even before the newspaper industry shrank to the size where it could be drowned in FOIA requests, nonprofit newsrooms have long been at the forefront of turning away from advertising to fund investigative reporting. The Center for Investigative Reporting founded in 1977 was the first nonprofit news organization dedicated to watchdog/investigative reporting. The Center for Public Integrity followed in 1989. And in recent years, nonprofit journalism has been on the rise with the Trace, Marshall Project, ProPublica, Texas Tribune, Voice of San Diego and the New Haven Independent leading the charge. The national outlets have benefitted from a bounce in donations. Individual donors and foundations are increasing their support for investigative journalism—both locally and nationally. Last year, the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Democracy Fund joined in to match donations made to organizations part of the Independent News Network (INN). According to Poynter, $4.8 million was raised by donors and foundations in that drive, including funds from editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:46 PM

“It just seemed like an opportunity for us to launch a site with a niche, with a tight mission and to be able to fill a void...” more than 200,000 individual donors. In May, DeRienzo and LION announced the launch of “Impact-Designed Investigative Grants.” The grants were awarded to 18 local news publishers in an effort to support their hyper-local investigative efforts, and to give publishers the bandwidth and funds to begin exploring how to make investigative journalism sustainable in their outlet. A community taking on news as something it needs to support isn’t necessarily new, but it’s still nice to see people putting their money where their mouth is, said Lynne DeLucia, the co-founder of the Connecticut Health Investigative Team (c-hit. org). DeLucia started C-HIT eight years ago with Lisa Chedekel, a former co-worker who has since passed away. DeLucia and Chedekel have a storied friendship that survived from newspaper to newspaper in the Connecticut area. But when they saw a hole in health and safety coverage and the upcoming newspaper shifts on the horizon, they decided to start out on their own. “We wanted to start C-HIT because we just felt like we could fill a void in healthcare coverage,” DeLucia said. “Newspapers that are being bought by other companies were going through quite a bit of downsizing and it just seemed like an opportunity for us to launch a site with a niche, with a tight mission and to be able to fill a void in health safety and medical coverage. We wanted to do investigative reporting because we felt that it was a way to engage and inform readers.” DeLucia continued, “Our individual donors are starting to grow for us, and that shows that there is an interest in the work that we’ve been doing. When we started, we editorandpublisher.com

+E+P Feature_InvestigativeJRN.indd 35

were 100 percent foundation funded, and now we’re about 50/50.” The rest comes from what DeLucia dubs “self-generated” funding including individual donations, ads, sponsorships and payments from media partners. DeLucia said that diversity in funding is critical for nonprofits that want to survive. On the backdrop of a college campus that has certainly experienced the schism between “old” and “new” journalism, DeLucia and Chedekel also began a camp for high schoolers where they investigated stories for a week. “One of the things we talked to them about is journalism is evolving,” DeLucia said. “It’s certainly not the way it was when I started in journalism back in the 1970s. The profession has certainly evolved, but there are so many opportunities.” Now that most newspapers have eliminated their healthcare coverage and much of their investigative teams, they are still getting the stories out there by partnering with organizations like C-HIT, a model that has been duplicated at national publications. ProPublica and the Marshall Project have partnered with publications like the New York Times. ProPublica also has recently begun partnering with smaller market newspapers in states across the country on projects, offering them data and editing support, and in some cases, financial support to conduct investigations. Still, partnerships don’t supplant local journalism, DeLucia said. According to DeLucia, the website has garnered a following by hosting events and forums throughout the state to engage with more people. By getting out in the community more, they hear the stories that are AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 35

7/19/18 2:22 PM

} Pactio founders: Adriano Farano, chief executive officer (left) and JulieAnn McKellogg, chief content officer

“The message I’ve gotten loud and clear from my editors is we’re not walking away from this right now.” most important to the people they cover. An added benefit is that it allows the outlet to be more creative, DeLucia said. She tells the students at the high school camp that they can use their skills in a variety of ways now to produce journalism in many different ways. The creativity doesn’t have to stop at the front page. Pactio (pactio.us), a for-profit co-founded by two John S. Knight Fellows, is creating new ways to help pay journalists to do the investigative reporting most important to their community. Pactio works like a crowdfunding model, where backers make contributions for a reporter. The idea behind it stemmed from a need to fill the gaps of local investigative 36 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Feature_InvestigativeJRN.indd 36

journalism and to provide journalists with the platforms and ways to make a living. The company recently fully funded their first journalist, Molly Peterson, who is now covering the impact of climate change in Los Angeles. “Our goal is to create a sustainable level of funding to carry them month to month or grant to grant or contract to contract as independent journalists,” said JulieAnn McKellogg, Pactio co-founder and chief content officer. Mixing impact reporting with service journalism is a great way to engage a community to support the issues most impactful to a community. “Being as service oriented as possible is really critical to our future,”

McKellogg said. The one way street of journalists picking the stories and the people paying for them is no longer a road to prosperity for media. “In my experience, as much as we’ve embraced this idea of audience and building audience, we’ve done very little to put ourselves face to face with readers, viewers and listeners,” McKellogg said. “We believe that by creating smaller communities of supporters, there’s a level of relationship building that can occur that isn’t occurring in local and national newsrooms right now.” Pactio encourages members to financially support the journalists working on stories, and in return, receive direct access to them. McKellogg said in her research, she noticed people were still getting their local news and recommendations by word of mouth. Pactio is a way to tap into that “game of telephone” people are already playing in their communities.

Staying Persistent Two years and four months after Mullen’s first “Renter Hell” story was published, he was on the beat, covering the condemnation of yet another public housing building. After the series was published, legislative bills stalled to rectify problems pointed out by the Press. “It looked like things were going to get done, but literally nothing has changed,” he said. “The message I’ve gotten loud and clear from my editors is we’re not walking away from this right now. We want to know what happened. Why wasn’t there meaningful change that resulted from this? I don’t know the answer.” Looking back at his initial story, Mullen also can’t figure out an answer to how those roaches in that apartment had survived the blast. But what he does know is he will be just as persistent and unrelenting in holding the people in power accountable.  Jennifer Swift is a freelance journalist living in New York. She is the co-founder and former editor of DC Witness, a non-profit website dedicated to covering homicides in the nation’s capital. Before that, she covered state politics, policing and education for the New Haven Register and Connecticut Magazine. editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:22 PM

EPPYFPad18.qxp_Layout 1 6/21/18 11:16 AM Page 1

2018 CALL FOR ENTRIES

Honoring the Best in Digital Media The EPPYTM Awards, presented by Editor & Publisher, honor the best in digital media across 31 diverse categories, including excellence in college and university journalism. Now in its 23rd year, this international contest has broadened its scope and also includes categories for investigative features, mobile apps,

videos, webcasts, advertising/marketing, photography and community service. Entries to the EPPYTM Awards are judged by a panel of notable figures in the media industry, chosen by the staff of Editor & Publisher.

For more information, please contact: Entry deadline: Aug. 24, 2018 Martha McIntosh at martha@editorandpublisher.com eppyawards.com

editorandpublisher.com

38 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Feature_News_Crisis.indd 38

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:32 PM

Crisis Prevention Four problems with news and democracy By Ethan Zuckerman

ere are some “buckets” for making sense of why the news is in crisis: addiction, economics, bad actors and known bugs. I’ve been studying news and digital media since 2002 and the news has been in crisis for those past 16 years, possibly longer. And not just the handwringing “Oh no, citizens are producing their own news, what will happen to journalism as a profession?” crisis. No, we’re more than a decade into the “We can’t afford to pay for the news, what happens now?” crisis, and no closer to a solution. And now we’ve got a new pack of crises spawned in 2016. The “Macedonian teenagers are destroying democracy with fake news” crisis. The “We don’t understand the Americans who elected Trump” crisis. The “Russian bots control what’s news” crisis. These crises are real, but some are more real than others. I’ve spent part of the last year meeting with the Knight Commission on Media, Trust and Democracy trying to learn the shape of these challenges and what might be done to address them. In the process of helping out as a consultant to the commission, I’m finding myself starting to become comfortable with four buckets these crises often fit into. I’m a believer that how you think about a problem shapes what solutions you propose, so picturing four crises feels like an improvement over a sea of troubles. To understand these four crises — addiction, economics, bad actors and known bugs — we have to look at how media has changed shape between the 1990s and today. A system that used to be linear and fairly predictable now features feedback loops that lead to complex and unintended consequences. The landscape that is emerging may be one no one completely understands, but it’s one that can be editorandpublisher.com

+E+P Feature_News_Crisis.indd 39

} Figure 1

exploited even if not fully understood.

What the Media Used to Look Like Media used to look something like this: ProductionàDistributionàAudience (see Figure 1). Producers made media — they wrote stories, filmed news segments — and handed them off to distributors to share with audiences locally or around the world. Often the distributors and producers worked for the same company: the same company that wrote the New York Times ensured that it got printed, bundled and delivered to people’s doorsteps. The flow of content was primarily linear and AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 39

7/19/18 2:32 PM

Crisis Prevention unidirectional — yes, people wrote letters to the editor and some may have influenced later coverage, but the influences were far sparser in more contemporary models (see Figure 2). The lifecycle of content wouldn’t be so worthy of public attention except for the civic conviction that news helps us make informed decisions about our public lives. News allows us to be informed voters, so we know when to call our representatives to express our opinions, to know when we’re so outraged that we should take to the streets in protest or boycott a company. Journalism gains much of its power from the realization that audiences are also citizens. When investigative journalists uncover corruption at city hall, their power comes from the idea that thousands of citizens are reading and will vote the bums out unless change is made (see Figure 3). In modeling the contemporary media ecosystem, it’s important to understand that citizens have a whole new set of options beyond voting or marching. Citizens amplify content they like, sending signals back to distributor that they’d like more of the same. They create content that reacts to what’s been presented to them, entering the cycle as producers. As a result, they’ve got vastly more influence over the media agenda than our earlier model. This is only one change producers face in this new model. Most no longer control distribution as tightly as they did in earlier times — unlike newspapers whose companies housed writers and editors, the presses and the delivery trucks in the same building, producers are now one link in a more complex chain. Distribution of content on the internet is free, and attention is scarce, so the power goes not to those who have the presses or the broadcast towers, but to those who control vast audiences: Facebook, Google and the other major media platforms. Anthea Watson Strong, who currently works on local news at Facebook, suggests that people think of these tools as discovery services, more than distributors, because their real power is helping people discover new content, either from their friends or from vast databases of recommendations. These discovery services are attention brokers, making their money from siphoning a fraction of attention off and selling it to advertisers. Unlike the broadcast towers and printing presses, these services are independent of the content producers, and they’re far less cooperative about sharing revenues than their predecessors were. Without them, though, many news producers would lose their audiences entirely (see Figure 4).

} Figure 2

} Figure 3

“Buckets of Problems” The first bucket of problems comes from these challenges to the business model: how do citizens continue to pay for high-quality journalism when attention and advertising dollars are controlled by discovery engines? There’s an understandable and legitimate fear that the “viral cycle” rewards certain types of engaging, popular content at the expense of important though less entertaining content. What’s especially at risk is accountability journalism, especially at local levels, which was threatened even in pre-digital days. Only a few dozen people might read the minutes of last night’s meeting at City Hall, but it matters immensely that a seasoned political reporter is scanning those notes carefully, looking for possible scandals or abuse and threatening to splash them on the front page, if officials don’t behave ethically. It’s difficult to know how this 40 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Feature_News_Crisis.indd 40

} Figure 4

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:32 PM

} Figure 5

} Figure 6

essential content is supported in an economy where attention is the scarce commodity— even if news organizations can pay the reporter, her power comes from having an audience to reach. Without high quality journalism, bad deeds go unpunished, power is not balanced with accountability and citizens remain uninformed. One of the disturbing aspects of this situation is that democracy requires not only high quality journalism, but an audience of citizens to consume it. Our problem is not just paying for stories—it may include paying for these stories to reach the audiences who need them if journalism can’t win a battle for attention in our discovery engines/attention markets. A second bucket of problems comes from the addictive nature of social media. It’s fun to play the game of discovery and amplification, and millions of people are finding it hard to put down their phones long enough to sleep. Tristan Harris has a theory on why this is: these tools have been designed by people who’ve studied gambling and other addictive phenomena, and they’re literally building tools designed to get us hooked on social media. As Tristan and others raise red flags, we are seeing indications that those in the know understand how powerful these tools can be — Silicon Valley executives have begun embracing practices of mindfulness, speaking of “time well spent” and ordering their own children to put their phones down. A nation of social media addicts may not be the most fertile field for participatory democracy. Indeed, it may be precisely the environment in which misinformation and mob behavior spreads like an epidemic in a crowded city. But questions remain about how many of these concerns are best understood as the moral panic that often takes hold with the adoption of new technologies, and what problems might genuinely affect how we think about citizenship today. To understand the third and fourth buckets of problems, let me return to the model of new media I’m proposing. While it’s likely that no one has a full understanding of the dynamics of this ecosystem and its feedback loops, bad actors are finding ways to inject ideas

into the conversation by targeting vulnerable points in the system (see Figure 5). Networks of bots amplify stories in ways that make them appear popular with thousands of users, sending false signals to distribution engines that make those stories and topics unduly popular. Content created to silence other voices online through trolling and harassment feeds into the system in much the same way as legitimate comments and reactions. Similarly, disinformation produced either to deceive or to divert attention for profit enters the system disguised as legitimate news. Dark ads allow narrowly targeted content to influence a selected audience without “outsiders” ever seeing it. If there’s good news about bad actors, it’s that the social media ecosystem would function just fine without them. It’s easy to imagine Facebook or Twitter without most kinds of bots, and platforms are already showing an increased interest in countering harassment and blocking some kinds of disinformation. What’s more disturbing is the bad behaviors that may simply be part and parcel of the new media environment (see Figure 6). Even when all participants in a system are acting in good faith, ugly behaviors still emerge. Whether it’s due to algorithms (as Eli Pariser believes) or simply due to homophily and the cognitive dangers from birds of a feather flocking together (as Cass Sunstein and I, separately, have argued), echo chambers and filter bubbles seem to form online, surrounding us with content that tends to polarize us. Some of these isolated conversations seem to gravitate towards the paranoid, leading to the spread of conspiracy theories and other unreliable content. Maintaining these communities requires some degree of control, which leads to complaints about the biases of algorithmic filters and control asserted by moderators. And even with control, mobs form and punish what they perceive to be bad behavior. What’s toughest about this fourth bucket of problems, the known bugs, is that they seem to appear even when everyone’s behaving well within a media ecosystem. Much as I dislike what Breitbart has

editorandpublisher.com

+E+P Feature_News_Crisis.indd 41

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 41

7/19/18 2:32 PM

Crisis Prevention to say, they’re producing content for audiences that want to hear it. That center-right audiences gravitate — or are algorithmically nudged — to the far right doesn’t appear to be the result of anyone’s sinister plan. Worse, it’s simply an emergent property of a complex system, which makes it harder to determine who’s to blame and who’s responsible for fixing it (see Figure 7). Taken together, even this minimal model of the problems raised for media and democracy seems pretty daunting. But understanding the problems as buckets of interrelated challenges that can be solved without unraveling the entire Gordian knot makes the situation more tractable.

Financing the News The problem of financing the news is hardly new, and it’s unlikely that my friends on the Knight Commission are going to come up with something radically better than what the collective wisdom of online and offline publishers, journalism and business schools have in the past decade. I think it’s unlikely that there’s a solution to this set of problems without insisting on the necessity of news for participation in a democracy, which opens options too seldom considered in our country, where market solutions are always preferred. News may be too important to leave to the whims of the market. Whether that means financing public media providers that are positioned

42 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Feature_News_Crisis.indd 42

} Figure 7

to give us the essential facts of the world we live in, or building a robust set of membership models that allow a small set of subscribers to make critical information available to wider audiences, there are solutions to the problem of financing the news. Unfortunately, these solutions are rarely popular because they’re expensive and hard to sell in the U.S., where they run counter to conventional thinking about markets and speech. Harder is the problem of getting people to pay attention to the high quality news that’s already produced. This is the sort of problem that will require news publishers to work closely with discovery engines, and might open intriguing possibilities, like social media systems supported in part by public media funds, designed to help people mix opinions and perspectives from friends with a backbone of information from trusted sources. Unlike the problem of financing media, many of the concerns about the addictive nature of social media are new. There’s a need for psychological research to figure out how deep public concerns should be, given a long history of public overreaction to the dangers of new media technologies. It’s likely that the field also needs strong consumer protection groups that can demand that technology platforms take our well-being seriously. And if there’s evidence that companies are building these tools with an addiction model in mind, regulating how these companies operate seems like a very reasonable step. While bad actors, the third set of problems outlined here, have provoked the most dialog since the 2016 election, they are the easiest problem to tackle, as platforms and consumers have aligned interests. Bots aren’t good for Twitter—they inflate user numbers in the short term, but lead investors to worry about whether the site’s users are real—nor are they good for users of the platform. Companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter will need to work closely with scientists in academia, opening up data sets and collaborating closely so these problems can be tackled—Twitter’s move towards collaboration on healthy media ecosystems is a step in the right direction, and if done well, the expertise of academics and activists who are already fighting harassment online can be incorporated into editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:32 PM

key systems. Platforms should be able to tackle bots with machine learning systems, as their signatures are highly recognizable. And emerging movements towards transparency in advertising are steps in the right direction in combating dark ads and other forms of paid influence. What’s most needed here is a way for platforms and their critics to share data, tools and methods in a way that’s less threatening to both sides…a problem that has become much harder with the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Right now, academics and activists can’t do their best work on these platforms without data they need, and platforms are understandably afraid of being excoriated in the press for their failings. Everyone needs a way for these parties to work together with some mutual understanding, tolerance and care, with a joint goal of making bad actors less powerful. Similarly, everyone involved with these debates also needs— immediately — to understand better how powerful these bad actors actually are. We may be giving this set of problems far more attention than it deserves, simply because the notion of Russian manipulation of elections or Macedonians marketing to ethnic nationalists is so fascinating. In truth, these may not be the biggest problems around media and democracy. It’s the fourth bucket of problems that keep me up at night. While bots are bad for Twitter and Facebook, polarization turns out to be a

great business model—it leads to engaged and passionate users, who are good for profits and bad for democracy. The platform companies simply may not have an appetite to take on “known bugs” problems, both because these bugs are hard to fix, and because they may be bugs for democracy rather than for these businesses. Here the best fixes may be environmental. Rather than tempting or threatening (through regulation, perhaps) Facebook to fix the polarization of our political system, we need to help build a climate that encourages new rival platforms to take on these challenges. For starters, we’d look at policies that required existing platforms to allow users to export their data and move it to new platforms, and to bridge between them so users can try other ways to interact online. Having a clearer shape of a problem is not the same thing as having solutions. It’s important if only so we don’t collapse in the face of a task that often seems insurmountable: making sense of how the current media environment prepares citizens to be effective civic actors.  Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT and an associate professor at MIT’s Media Lab. His research focuses on issues of internet freedom, civic engagement through digital tools and international connections through media. This edited article originally appeared on the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy website.

2018 SNPA News Industry Summit October 10-12 | Nashville, Tennessee CAN’T- MISS SESSION: GateHouse Media CEO Kirk Davis will address how the GateHouse business model is evolving to build a sustainable future for local journalism. He will address news and content innovation, building new revenue streams and the strategic way GateHouse is pursuing efficiencies. DON’T- MISS DATE: SEPTEMBER 19 • It’s the last day to register before rates increase. Visit SNPA.org/summit.html • It’s the reservation deadline at the Nashville Hilton. Rate: $254 (single or double occupancy). Call (615) 620-1000 (M-F, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) or 1-800-HILTONS. Rooms are expected to sell out early, so don’t delay! SOUTHERN

SNPA editorandpublisher.com

+E+P Feature_News_Crisis.indd 43

NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION

Learn more, register and find details about becoming a sponsor or exhibitor at: www.snpa.org/summit.html AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 43

7/19/18 2:32 PM

Keep Them Wanting

More 44 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Feature_Retaining readers.indd 44

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 3:06 PM

From behavioral data to exclusive content, newspapers are creating valuable strategies to retain readers By Gretchen A. Peck

he “Trump Bump” phenomenon experienced by national and larger regional newspapers in the wake of the presidential election brought a sea of new subscribers to their print and digital titles. Whether that was a direct response to the anti-press rhetoric that’s been pervasive in national politics, or whether people just finally realized that news has value, is still up for speculation and study. But the phenomenon was real for those larger titles, which now must make concerted efforts and campaigns to appeal to these new readers, and to keep their interest and retain their subscriptions. Smaller community titles and more regionally focused mid-markets may not have enjoyed the influx of new subscribers that their big-market brethren did, so audience/subscriber acquisition and retention are still very much daily concerns for their circulation teams. To combat subscription churn-and-burn, newspapers are taking very different approaches to retention. E&P spoke with a few of them to learn how they were hanging on to readers.

editorandpublisher.com

+E+P Feature_Retaining readers.indd 45

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 45

7/19/18 3:06 PM

Keep Them Wanting More Data and Retention Gerard Brancato is passionate about data. As the vice president of digital subscription marketing at Tribune Interactive/tronc, Brancato is tasked with the monumental role of growing and retaining an average of 30 million unique users accessing tronc titles online. In July 2018, Brancato penned a digital strategies blog for the International News Media Association (INMA), in which he spoke about “propensity models as cornerstones” of newspaper marketing (bit. ly/2L6K9vO). A propensity model is built on behavioral data, Brancato explained. In the most simplified terms, it identifies patterns of behavior, enabling the publisher to craft marketing messages and erect retention failsafes. For example, if a particular site user comes to a tronc title’s site regularly and consumes five articles a month, only to hit the paywall when they attempt to read a sixth article, there is a high “propensity” that this reader can be converted to a subscription. “Real sophisticated propensity modeling will count a number of dimensions and factors simultaneously, producing a ‘propensity to convert score,’” Brancato said. Why is propensity modeling critical for newspaper publishers today? It comes down to budgets, pragmatism and targeted marketing. “With 30 million users or visitors, we don’t have the funds to aggressively market to them all, so we would like to market to the ones who have a higher propensity to convert..who display the greatest amount of engagement,” Brancato said. Clearly, data of this kind can be invaluable in audience acquisition, but it can be equally as revealing for retention insight. Brancato’s team recently completed what they’ve called “a churn-risk regression analysis” to better understand why readers opt out of their digital subscriptions. What they discovered was that 81 percent of voluntary stops come from subscribers who’ve made fewer than three payments for their subscriptions. “And the risk of cancellation for sub46 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Feature_Retaining readers.indd 46

} Gerard Brancato, vice president of digital subscription marketing, Tribune Interactive/tronc

scribers who haven’t visited the site within the last 22 days is 133 percent higher than those who have,” Brancato wrote in his INMA blog. He told E&P these figures continue to be the two biggest drivers hurting retention. “Customers who are with us longer are stickier. Customers who just recently joined typically churn at a higher rate, and that’s probably true of any subscription model. So there’s tenure—or negative tenure—that’s a predictor of churn risk. “Frequency of visitation is another prime indicator of churn risk. So how do we execute around that? Well, once we’ve identified users or subscribers who fit either of those two categories—and we’ve identified the threshold, after 22 days have passed without a site visit—they have the propensity to churn. Or before they’ve made these three full-price payments, they are in a high-risk churn bracket. A lot of our churn is early-stage churn. People come in on a trial introductory offer and then lapse. With the data modeling, we can isolate those subscribers and then upload their email addresses to our ad platforms and re-engage them with content. At that point, it’s not so much about messaging as it about getting the right content in front of them.” Brancato also noted that social media is playing an invaluable role in reader retention. Facebook, for example, is an excellent

“Customers who are with us longer are stickier. Customers who just recently joined typically churn at a higher rate, and that’s probably true of any subscription model.”

way to get content in front of churn-risk readers. “It’s a friendly way to promote an article,” he said. “It’s visual, so you can have images or video. It’s great that we can promote articles to subscribers within their Facebook News Feed. We can upload lists of existing subscribers and synchronize it. That’s been very attractive to us. That environment lends itself really well to promoting content to subscribers.” Brancato is sympathetic to smaller editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 3:06 PM

} The New York Times hosts several live events as an added incentive for subscribers.

I would definitely get savvy about Google Analytics. If you’re really looking to get serious about digital subscriptions, this functionality is available, and I think that’s pretty exciting.”

Points of Contact

newspaper titles, who are challenged by retention yet don’t have the deep pockets and large staffs to manage it all. Still, he encourages his colleagues in circulation, data and audience to leverage some of the free tools and technologies available to them, such as Google Analytics. “Cost should not be a barrier to impleeditorandpublisher.com

+E+P Feature_Retaining readers.indd 47

ment a very basic version of (propensity modeling),” he said. “It’s not an approach that you need a six-figure-a-month marketing automation platform. Those do exist for good reasons, and based on certain organizations’ sizes, they may need something like that, but if I was a one-title publisher and I was in a smaller market,

In Newtown, N.J., the New Jersey Herald is the paper of record for the community. The paper’s motto is: “The New Jersey Herald…It’s how you know.” Executive editor Bruce Tomlinson noted that it’s a community newspaper in the northern part of “blue state,” but in a definitively “red county.” It’s a community that largely prefers its newspaper in print, he said, though the newspaper’s digital readership has shown consistent growth. “Anecdotally, in talking to subscribers, they seem to prefer the tactile feel of a newspaper,” he said. “As for the question about whether they’re easier to retain than digital subscribers, I think there is definitely a habit and tradition involved.” In the digital space, subscription retention isn’t as great of a concern for the newspaper. Rather, it’s the printed newspaper that sees the most “fluctuation” AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 47

7/19/18 3:06 PM

Keep Them Wanting More in the subscriber base, according to Jay Gillispie, circulation director. The paper currently has a daily print circulation of 10,177 and a Sunday print circulation of 14,721. The ebb and flow of print subscribers is largely a seasonal phenomenal for the newspaper, though there is also a dynamic housing market component (people moving in and out of the area) as well economic considerations that increasingly cause subscribers to “downgrade” their subscriptions from six-days a week to a long-weekend delivery, Thursday to Sunday. “As we continue to grow our digital readership, in print we’re constantly trying to offset the high volume of (subscription) starts and stops,” Gillispie said. “As I mentioned, a lot of it is seasonal, and of course with digital, seasonal isn’t a factor. There, it’s more about great coverage and fitting in with their lifestyle. I think if you fit into their lifestyle, stopping isn’t something that you see a lot. Our print circulation fluctuates up and down, between 200 and 300 copies a month, so that’s the number we focus on.” While mid- to large-market titles may have the luxury of sophisticated data teams and tools, at this small community newspaper, the best way to encourage retention is far more personal than digital messages. Subscribers get the personal service of phone calls. “I don’t have a large customer service staff,” Gillispie said, “but they all have their roles, and so they’re calling the full stops. They’re calling to confirm vacation starts and stops. They’re checking on those. We’re on the phone daily with our ‘stops and starts’ and also addressing complaints. “We try to maintain that level of contact, and it’s working fairly successfully, but only as long as those (strategies) remain systematic. When you let up on one of those areas, it doesn’t take very long until it starts going into the negative, so it’s very important to stay consistent on those contact points.” Similarly, the newspaper makes a concerted effort to take part in special community events. The newspaper is a 48 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Feature_Retaining readers.indd 48

} Ben Cotton, executive director of retention and customer experience, New York Times

“By managing communications with our subscribers, we can make sure that they’re regularly coming and engaging with us.”

sponsor of a twice-a-year “monster garage sale,” a rousingly popular event with readers. They’ve sponsored an annual “Ladies’ Night Out,” which is now in its 10th year and showcases the community’s spa and luxury-goods retailers and services. “We try to have a presence in all of the community days, as well,” Tomlinson said. “We have 24 individual communities in our country, and they each have a day, mostly during the summer. Certainly on the news side, we’re there to cover the events and to get photos, but we also want to have a physical presence.” Gillispie added, “We have a kiosk at these events every year, where we pass out newspapers and talk about our online and print products. It has been very successful. For example, we have a county fair that we sponsor, and we’ll be there for a whole week. I think, like with any business, branding is important to us. So we work hard on branding ourselves. In a community, that name recognition is important.” Fortunately for the Herald, the readership doesn’t require much enticement to maintain their subscriptions. Gillispie reveals that they’ve never had to dangle and discount or monetary incentives to keep readers, though “special offers” for retention is not something he’d rule out in the future. Instead, the publisher is incentivizing its employees. Gillispie and Tomlinson spoke about their new company-wide program called “Think Tank,” which encourages— even with monetary rewards—employees to suggest ideas related to content, reader engagement and retention. The two executives are encouraged that fresh ideas will ultimately help the newspaper reignite interest from existing advertisers and to woo new ones with sponsorships, events, great content and personal points of contact.

Membership Rewards Despite what you may have heard, the New York Times is not failing, particularly when it comes to its subscription numbers. Ben Cotton is the executive director, retention and customer experience for the Times. Within his team, there are dedicateditorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 3:06 PM

ed audience and marketing professionals who work on what Cotton calls “proactive communications” with customers. “That’s everything from onboarding, when people become customers, to offboarding—what happens when they cancel, thanking them for being a subscriber, and hoping that they’d come back—to messages they get if their credit card fails and needs to be updated. By managing communications with our subscribers, we can make sure that they’re regularly coming and engaging with us,” Cotton explained. Within the team, there are also staff members devoted to customer-service strategy and operations, and others who are focused on keeping subscribers apprised of exclusive members-only benefits. Providing subscribers with exclusive content and other value-adds, like live and digital events, has been key to retention among subscribers. The team also uses a number of messaging methods to advertise membership benefits to their subscribers. Email is an essential tool, Cotton noted, in addition to on-site or in-app links. They’ve leveraged ad space on the newspaper’s homepage (viewed across desktop and mobile platforms) to inform subscribers of what’s new, how they can access it, and why it’s worth their time and attention. Cotton’s team has been leveraging live events for a few years and recently started to experiment with hosting digital events too. These can be intimate engagements or large gatherings for hundreds of attendees, Cotton said. For example, the Times offers a “lottery” to subscribers, with the reward of sitting in on an editorial meeting during a “page one meeting,” so to speak. Largerscale live events have been held in New York City, Washington, D.C. and California, all created around timely political topics. “We’re doing periodic conference calls with subscribers on big news topics. Those are fun. We can turn them around really quickly,” Cotton said. “We can send out blasts to subscribers to say, “Hey, we’re going to have reporters on the line talkeditorandpublisher.com

+E+P Feature_Retaining readers.indd 49

“Everyone at the company should be thinking about retention. How and what are you doing for your subscribers?”

ing about climate change or the Supreme Court pick or the Trump Russia investigation, and we may get hundreds of subscribers on the line for an hour to hear reporters chat about it and then take questions.” And sometimes a personal touch is all you need to satisfy readers. For example, Cotton recalled when publisher A.G. Sulzberger penned a letter to subscribers after the paper won three Pulitzer Prizes this year: “It was a way to say to our subscrib-

ers, ‘Look at these best things that we’ve done. They’re recognized at a very high level. And that’s what your subscription dollars are going to, and you should really feel good about that.’” There is also a noteworthy cooperation with the newsroom, but that’s not surprising, Cotton said it’s because editors and reporters are excited to hear from subscribers and relish the opportunities to have relationships with them in this way. Based on feedback he’s received, Cotton said subscribers also appreciate the “community” that forms after viewing a more behind-the-scenes perspective of how the newsroom works. As for the new subscribers who came in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, they have retained remarkably well and are measurably engaged, said Cotton. “That was certainly something that we were monitoring very closely. It was a very large group of subscribers, and we were curious to know whether they were going to retain, or whether that sort of excitement about the mission was something that would sort of fade over time,” he said. Cotton is cognizant that community or mid-market titles may not have the luxury of big retention teams, but he implores them to “find a way to invest in retention,” suggesting that it doesn’t take a large investment to continually think about how to make subscribers “happier and more satisfied.” At the Times, he said, “We work on better marketing that speaks to subscribers in more of a relationship-driven way, and we always want to push ourselves to raise the bar…You don’t have to have a big team to focus on retention. Everyone at the company should be thinking about retention. How and what are you doing for your subscribers? That’s something that anyone, anywhere at a newspaper organization can be thinking about.”  Gretchen A. Peck is an independent journalist who has reported on publishing and printing for more than two decades. She has contributed to Editor & Publisher since 2010 and can be reached at gretchenapeck@gmail.com. AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 49

7/19/18 3:06 PM

WHAT IF?

What if you could join with 20+ companies from the news-media industry and assist as we create a “Loyalty Platform” through extensive collaboration and Design-Thinking. The initiative involves small, medium and large companies with one common goal; provide a scalable, actionable, engagement centered, and above all, an affordable loyalty platform available to small and mid-sized markets to roll out for under $1000 for those companies involved. It all begins at Mega Summit East! To become involved with this industry-wide “Loyalty Platform” collaboration initiative:

CONTACT: JOHN NEWBY @ 815-326-9061

- REWARD Levels Based on Usage

- MARKET to Subscribers & Non-Subscribers Alike - LOCAL News, Information & Other Content - RESPONSIVE Design Across Many Platforms - AUTOMATED Voice, Text & Email Options - MAJOR Revenue Implications - YOUR Market Controls the Rewards - SCALES Across the Country - GAMES, Contests & Promotions - ENGAGEMENT Centered - SALES FORCE available to populate your platform - Much, Much More! AFFORDABLE FOR ALL!

MEGA SUMMIT EAST Where Audience, Marketing, Retention & Loyalty Become One!

September 22-24, 2018 - Pittsburgh, PA - DoubleTree in GreenTree

360 Media Alliance

To view schedule or download the app: http://7r9e3v.m.attendify.com/

By Rachael Garcia rachael@editorandpublisher.com

NewsPeople

Marisa Porto has been named executive editor of the Virginian-Pilot. She succeeds Steve Gunn, who held the position for three years. Porto is also the editor of the Daily Press in Newport News, Va. and will split her time between both papers. She has been publisher at the Daily Press Media Group since March 2016. Prior to being named publisher, she served as vice president of content, overseeing the newsrooms of the Daily Press, the Virginia Gazette and the Tidewater Review.

Marc Duvoisin has been named editor and vice president of the San Antonio Express-News. He succeeds Mike Leary, who retired after a 46-year journalism career. Duvoisin served as a top editor at the Los Angeles Times from 2001 through 2017. Most recently, he served as an editor-at-large at the Houston Chronicle for nine months. Matt Murray has been named editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. Prior to the promotion, Murray served as executive editor. He has also served as deputy editor-in-chief and deputy managing editor. He joined the paper’s news desk in 2004, and later served as a deputy national editor and national news editor. Setti Warren has been named executive director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Most recently, he served as mayor of Newton, Mass. from 2010 to January 2018. He has also worked as deputy state director for Sen. Jon Kerry’s Massachusetts office and has held numerous positions in the Clinton White House. Lisa Macleod has been elected vice president of WAN-IFRA. She is the head of digieditorandpublisher.com

+E+P Newspeople.indd 51

tal at Tiso Blackstar Group in South Africa. She joins Michael Golden from the New York Times Co. (president) and Paul Verwilt of Mediahuis in Belgium (treasurer). In addition, seven executives were elected to new terms on the WAN-IFRA board: Alexander Mitteracker, publisher of Der Standard in Austria; Stoyana Georgieva, founder and editor-in-chief, mediapool. bg in Bulgaria; Juan Guillermo Amaya Salcedo, chief executive officer, El Tiempo; Fatemah Farag, chief executive officer, Welad Elbalad Media in Egypt; Shailesh Gupta, chief executive officer, Jagran Prakashan in India; Karin Pettersson, director of public policy, Schibsted in Sweden; and Yildirim Demiroren, chief executive officer, Demiroren Holding in Turkey. Mark Medici has been named executive vice president and chief marketing officer, a new position at Hearst Newspapers. Medici previously served as vice president of audience and newspaper operations at Cox Media Group. He will be based in Houston and will oversee the consumer marketing strategy for all Hearst Newspapers, as well as directly oversee consumer revenue and marketing for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. Prior to his seven years at Cox Media Group, Medici spent four years at A.H. Belo as vice president of audience for the Dallas Morning News. Rex Maynor, the publisher of Opelika-Auburn (Ala.) News, has resigned after accepting the publisher position with Tri-Lakes Newspapers Inc., where he will oversee

operations for a group of community newspapers. Steve Smith, the regional publisher for Opelika-Auburn News’ parent company, BH Media Group, will assume Maynor’s publisher duties. Smith also oversees the Dothan (Ala.) Eagle, Enterprise (Ala.) Ledger, Eufaula (Ala.) Tribune and the Jackson County (Fla.) Floridan. Allan Taylor has been named editor of the Dominion Post in Morgantown, W.Va. Taylor most recently was a reporter and columnist for the West Virginia Mountaineers and gave reports on West Virginia’s radio station MetroNews. Taylor will continue some of his sports coverage duties for both MetroNews and the Dominion Post; both are part of Greer Industries. The Daily Herald in Everett, Wash. has named Eric Stevick and Rikki King local editor and assistant local editor, respectively. Stevick succeeds Scott North, who has left the paper. Stevick has been a member of the Herald’s staff for 28 years and served as the assistant local editor since 2016. King joined the paper in 2010 as an intern and later became a part of the reporting staff. Kelly Scott has been named vice president of content at Alabama Media Group. Prior to her promotion, she served as the Reno (Nev.) Gazette Journal executive editor. Scott joined Gannett in 1999 as a reporter in St. Cloud, Minn. and moved to Reno as an assistant city editor in 2005. She led breaking news, political reporting and investigations before moving into the executive editor role in 2013. In her new role, Scott will oversee journalism and operations for AL.com and other editorial channels and will be based in Birmingham.

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 51

7/19/18 2:39 PM

NewsPeople ACQUISITIONS Adams Publishing Group has acquired Sun Coast Media Group, based in Venice, Fla. Sun Coast Media Group is a family-and-employee-owned company founded by Derek Dunn-Rankin in 1976. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. This is APG’s first newspaper acquisition in Florida. The newspapers included in the sale are the Venice Gondolier, the Arcadian, the West Villages Sun, the Englewood Sun, the North Port Sun, the Charlotte Sun and the Charlotte Sun Times. The purchase also includes outdoor advertising, radio, wine, recreational vehicles and philanthropic endeavors. The Coastside News Group, a newly-formed company, has acquired the Half Moon Bay (Calif.) Review newspaper and related publications from Wick Communications. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The Review was the only California property in the privately-held Arizona-based company’s portfolio. Newspaper Media Group of Cherry Hill, N.J. has acquired the Hudson Reporter Association, LP from publishers Lucha Malato and David Unger. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The Hudson Reporter publishes eight community newspapers and three community magazines. NMG is the publisher of more than 50 weekly newspapers in southern and central New Jersey, as well as the Greater Philadelphia market. The Hudson Reporter chain was started in 1983 by Joseph Barry with his first newspaper, the Hoboken Reporter. Richard and Chris Budman has purchased the Santa Clarita Valley (Calif.) Signal from Paladin Capital Partners, who has owned the paper since January 2016. The Budmans also bought the Signal’s parent company, Paladin Multimedia Group, in an equity purchase at an undisclosed price. Richard has been in the publishing business for 30 years and was publisher of the Signal from 2004 to 2007. For the last several years, he has owned news and lifestyle publications in the South Bay. The new owners plan to expand the paper’s schedule from five days to six days by adding a Sunday edition. The Chicago Reader, owned by Sun-Times Media, has been sold to a group led by Dorothy Leavell, publisher of the Chicago Crusader. The Sun-Times owned the Reader since 2012 and will retain a 15 percent interest in the publication.

Bill Nagel has been named publisher and CEO of the San Francisco Chronicle. He replaces Jeff Johnson, who was promoted to president of the newspaper division of parent company, Hearst Newspapers. Nagel joins the Chronicle from Cox Media Group, where he most recently served as vice president of shared audience. He also served as executive vice president of marketing and business services at Tribune Publishing and vice president of business services at the Los Angeles Times. Kathryn Layland has been named chief revenue officer of ADvendio, where she will be responsible for sales and marketing. She has more than 20 years of experience 52 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+E+P Newspeople.indd 52

in operations, sales, marketing, strategy and software development. Most recently, Layland held senior executive positions in advertising management software compa-

nies in Europe and the U.S., where she was responsible for global sales and marketing functions. Matt Perkins has been named manager of partner and sponsor relations for the Minneapolis Star Tribune Media Co. Prior to joining the Star Tribune, Perkins was the marketing manager for Minnesota Public Radio’s, the Current, where he was responsible for forging strategic partnerships and building and executing events. In his new role, Perkins will organize activities to strengthen current relationships and forge new partnerships. Bob Rayner has been named editor of the editorial pages for the Richmond (Va.) TimesDispatch. He succeeds Bart Hinkle, who has left the paper. Most recently, Rayner served as commentary editor, but has had a variety of roles with the paper. He began his journalism career as an intern on the state desk of the Times-Dispatch in 1991. From there he moved to editor of the Mechanicsville Local, managing editor of Richmond Suburban Newspapers, and founding editor of Inside Business in Richmond and Hampton Roads. He returned to the Times-Dispatch in 1996 as the Sunday Business editor.

Steven Sloan has been named political editor of the Associated Press. He was previously CNN’s director of enterprise reporting in Washington, where he oversaw in-depth journalism for digital and television platforms. He also launched a digital magazine at CNN that combined long-form storytelling about politics, national security and culture with photography, graphics and animation. During the 2016 campaign, Sloan served as managing editor for content at CNN Politics and was the congressional editor at Politico.

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 3:08 PM

NewsPeople Chris Cobler has been named publisher of the Victoria (Texas) Advocate. He succeeds Dan Easton, who now plans to focus on Gordon Equities, a real estate division of M. Roberts Media and Affect Digital Media, the digital marketing agency he co-founded. Cobler had been the editor of the Advocate since 2007 and will continue his editor responsibilities along with being publisher. Mike Feeley has been named executive editor of the Delaware News Journal and Delaware Online. He succeeds David Ledford, who retired in March. Previously, Feeley served as senior director of content for PennLive and the Patriot-News in Harrisburg for the last 29 years. Gerard Baker has been named editor-at-large of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. In his new role, Baker will write a regular column in Review, the paper’s weekend section, as well as other articles for the paper. Additionally, he will host a WSJ-branded news and interview show on Fox Business Network and be a leading voice for the paper at conferences, events, and television presenting. Alyssa Rolerson has been named Dream Local Digital’s first chief operating officer. She joined the company as an intern in April 2010. Rolerson has held many roles with the company, including writing content for clients, creating marketing strategies, building the project management infrastructure and developing platforms. The Gainsville (Ga.) Times has named Shannon Casas director of content and Leah Nelson director of revenue. Most recently, Casas was the managing editor and Nelson was the advertising director for the paper. Casas has been at the Times for 12 years and served in a variety of different newsroom roles. Nelson has served as major editorandpublisher.com

+E+P Newspeople.indd 53

Norman Pearlstine has been named executive editor of the Los Angeles Times. He spent 50 years in journalism, serving at the Wall Street Journal, Time Inc., Bloomberg News and Forbes. He most recently served as chief content officer at Time Inc. Pearlstine was also a consultant to new Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong during the purchase and lead efforts with creating a transition plan.

account manager for the paper in Jacksonville, Fla., retail advertising manager for the paper in St. Augustine, Fla., and retail sales manager for the newspaper in Juneau, Ala. Keith Barlow has been appointed publisher of the Dalton (Ga.) Daily Citizen-News. He succeeds William Bronson, who has resigned. Barlow will continue to oversee the Milledgeville (Ga.) Union-Recorder as well as the Crossville (Tenn.) Chronicle as a regional publisher for parent company CNHI. Barlow started his newspaper career at the Union-Recorder in 1991 as a graphic designer, and later served as production director and then advertising director before being named publisher in 2007. Clara Garcia has been promoted to publisher of the Valencia County (N.M.) News-Bulletin. She will also continue serving as the paper’s editor. She started out as a crime and courts reporter in 1998 and was appointed editor in 2009. Garcia has covered a variety of beats, including fires, local government, politics, business and features. Julie Wood-Carroll has been promoted to general manager of two Michigan newspapers, the Iosco County News-Herald and Oscoda Press. Most recently, she served as director of sales for the last five years. In her new role, she will oversee the operations and marketing of both papers.

Tim Regan-Porter has been named South Region editor of the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Ga., the Telegraph in Macon, Ga. and the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. Prior to this appointment, he served as the executive director of the Center for Collaborative Journalism at Macon’s Mercer University and was the president and cofounder of Paste, a music magazine. Kevin Davis has been named publisher of the Atascadero News and the Paso Robles Press, both in California’s Central Valley. He previously served as the group publisher for Orange County newspapers including the Seal Beach Sun, Catalina Islander and Los Alamitos News Enterprise. Davis has served as the vice president of advertising at the Merced (Calif.) Sun Star, Los Banos (Calif.) Enterprise, and other newspaper publications in the Central Valley. Argen Marie Duncan has been promoted to publisher of the Rio Rancho (N.M.) Observer. She most recently served as the paper’s editor. Duncan has 15 years of newspaper experience, including serving as editor of the Kirtland AFB Nucleus. 

AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 53

7/19/18 2:39 PM

Business Directory AccountScout publishers to manage the accounting, billing, and production of their newspaper or media company. Dashboards, task-lists, and

Optimize archives with online platform With the ArchiveInABox for Publishers platform you can archive your weekly PDF editions and “born digital” website articles along with scans from microfilm or bound volumes on your own, dedicated website.

app for media companies nies give access to your data, no matter where w e. you are. ® A Software Company that Cares About the Details

303-791-3301 www.FakeBrains.com www. ww w FakkeBrains.com w. m

ArchiveInABox for Publishers is Free for Weeklies! There’s a dashboard where you can set public release embargo, include links to your other web properties, and customize your branding. The platform is compatible with CMS systems and even simple WordPress websites. Get your archives organized and accessible with ArchiveInABox for Publishers. Phone: 360-427-6300 Website: www.archiveinabox.com

B ett er BNC BetterBNC® is the industry standard online journalism contest platform used by 150 newspaper associations, press clubs and broadcaster groups representing over 20,000 journalists and trades people. BetterBNC exclusive features: Contestant Manager® Senior managers and editors control who and what is entered for their organization. Revenue Manager Track & manage entry fees paid by credit card or check, including by department. Open Call® Your best work is “open” to a world of entry opportunities across multiple contests. Cloud Scrapbooks Save copies of your best work all year long with free cloud storage.

Reach Decision Makers Is Explaining Your New-media Business to Newspaper Executives a Constant Challenge?

Rapid and continuous technology changes make it tough for publishing executives to keep current with products and services provided by new-media companies. Our readers constantly ask if we would create a directory, listing new-media companies and outlining how they benefit newspapers. Newspaper industry decision makers are looking to simplify their lives, and our new business directory will help publishers better understand the products and services you sell. To advertise in E&P’s Business Directory, please contact:

E&P Sales (949) 660-6150, ext. 214 sales@editorandpublisher.com

Awards Manager Publish your award-winning work on your own free web pages. Website: www.betterbnc.com

+Biz Directory.indd 54

7/19/18 3:16 PM

www.vdata.com â&#x2014;? sales@vdata.com â&#x2014;? 518.434.2193

Total Advertising

Comes complete with all billing, A/R integration, reporting, ad production and layout tools in a single, intelligent solution minimizing the need for additional 3rd party software products.

Total Circulation

Comes complete with all billing, reporting, subscriber and distribution tools to successfully manage your circulation business.

Our Total Solution Our Total Advertising and Circulation have remote web access so representitives, subscribers, advertisers and carriers can manage their accounts, make payments, place ads, etc from any browser based device. Additionally, the two systems can talk to each other so your sales team always knows whether or not their advertisers are subscribers. E&P Directory-Cusstomer Marketplace Portal:E&P Directory Ad-Leverage 5/15/18 10:59 AM Page 1

+Biz Directory.indd 55

7/19/18 3:16 PM

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Phone: 800-887-1615

Brokers / Appraisers

E-mail: classifieds@editorandpublisher.com

Brokers / Appraisers

Newspapers • Magazines • Shoppers Book Publishing • Directories • Digital Media

On-Demand Access to Tenured Professionals Meeting Multi-Media Business Challenges with Foresight & Precision

APPRAISALS ACCOUNTING BROKERING Proud to be the Expert Media Financial Valuation Resource for ”FORBES 400 List of America’s Richest People” 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015 Accounting, Tax, Debt Management, Entity Formation, Valuation & Financial Advisory Services

The Only Way To Reach a Goal is to Have One!

KAMEN & CO. GROUP SERVICES Media Appraisers, Accountants, Advisors & Brokers (516) 379-2797 • 626 RXR Plaza, Uniondale, NY 11556 info@kamengroup.com • www.KamenGroup.com

Publications For Sale

FOR SALE BY KAMENGROUP.COM: Equine magazines(NY, PA, TX) SC Maps, Tourist Guides & Women’s Magazine, Sierra County, NM weekly newspaper, National medical, holistic and fishing/hunting/outdoors magazines, NC Regional title, Washington eatery publication, NYC weekly newspapers (3). San Francisco niche magazines (2) and Oklahoma, Chicago, Wisconsin and Iowa cultural titles. Oregon, Louisiana and Alabama daily newspapers. Need to sell? Order your print and digital media financial valuation now! Confidential, accurate and comprehensive reports for all purposes. Kamen & Co Group Services - Media Appraisers, Accountants, Contract Negotiators, Brokers & Advisors. 516-242-2857 / info@kamengroup.com

Equipment For Sale

Fax: 866-605-2323

Equipment For Sale

EQUIPMENT FOR SALE: Rima RS 25-12S Compensating Stacker saves at least one man on delivery, $9,900. 2 web infeeds for Goss Community, Bill Rubber Super Surface Tensioner, $3,900. Ken Hovland, 860-798-7810, Ken@EagleGroveLLC.com, formerly Reminder Media in CT

If you are reading this, so are your customers! To ad v er tise , c all 1-800-887-1615 Help Wanted

Help Wanted

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER - CFO: Wick Communications – Corporate offices located in Sierra Vista, AZ. Wick Communications, a third-generation family-owned and operated community media company with newspapers, websites, magazines and specialty publications in 10 states, is looking for talented leadership to drive our markets and company forward. Surrounded by mountains and high desert, Wick is headquartered in Sierra Vista, Ariz. A small corporate staff works directly with publishers at its Arizona, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington properties. Entering into its 93rd year of business, the Wick family is committed to strengthening the organization while positioning it for future success. We are seeking dynamic forward-thinking CFO candidates who understand the challenges of our industry and are determined to be successful. The CFO will manage all aspects of the corporation’s financial management, including corporate accounting, financial reporting, budget and forecasts preparation, as well as development of internal control policies and procedures. In addition, the position will manage all accounting operations including billing, A/R, A/P, GL, cost accounting, inventory accounting and revenue recognition. The CFO will coordinate and direct the preparation of the budget, audit, financial forecasts and support month-end and year-end close process. The position includes managing the company’s banking relationships, real estate, insurance, and is instrumental in the M&A aspects of the organization. The successful candidate will have a Bachelor’s degree in accounting or finance and a minimum of five years of progressive experience managing a corporate finance department. Certified Public Accountant (CPA) designation is desired. Send your resume to Thomas W. Riebock, Director of Human Resources at tom.riebock@wickcommunications.com. Visit our web site at www.wickcommunications.com. DC CORRESPONDENT (PART-TIME SENIOR JOURNALIST – PERMANENT ROLE): ECigIntelligence, an independent online new organisation covering the tobacco alternatives and vaping sector, is seeking a DC correspondent for regular work covering Congress & the federal government’s activities in areas related to vaping and reduced risk products. A candidate must be based in the Washington DC area or have excellent connections and contacts in it if working remotely. The ideal candidate would have contacts in the corridors of power and the spare capacity to produce at the very minimum one major (1000+ word) article a month – with more regular availability preferred. ECigIntelligence can offer full support from a team of journalists as well as legal and market analysts coupled with competitive pay. Remuneration is usually done on a per word basis and is negotiable. To register interest or find out more details please contact Freddie Dawson at Freddie@ECigIntelligence.com

Please tell them you saw it in 56 |

E & P | AUGUST 2018

+Classifieds.indd 56

To learn more about ECigIntelligence and its independent, subscription based news reporting visit our website: https://ecigintelligence.com/about-ecigintelligence/

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 3:12 PM

Phone: 800-887-1615

Help Wanted

Fax: 866-605-2323

Help Wanted

EDITOR: Mid-Atlantic Media, a fast-growing publisher of niche community and ethnic titles, including Baltimore Jewish Times and Washington Jewish Week, is looking to add an editor to lead a stable of award-winning journalists. We’re looking for a multi-tasking leader who can work through copious amounts of copy and serve as a mentor to develop up-and-coming talent. The ability to juggle multiple projects, and the willingness to help shape multiple publications and their online experience is a must. Occasional travel will be expected. Familiarity with the Jewish community is a plus. This is a high-energy position and comes with the ability to shape how tens of thousands of people across Baltimore, DC, Pennsylvania and Arizona metro areas digest news and features. Qualifications: • Minimum 5 years of community news experience • An ability to edit quickly and accurately in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment • Strong people skills and an ability to manage and motivate a team • Technical aptitude, including comfort with WordPress, Photoshop, and digital photography • Ability and willingness to wear many hats, from high-level editorial strategy down to shoe- leather journalism and in-person community engagement Responsibilities: • Assignment editor – Help our writers uncover local scoops, select stories for coverage, create a rundown and communicate with officials, sources and readers. Monitor email and social media for story ideas and trends. • Copy editor – Regularly check and correct our reporters’ copy for errors, awkward phrasing, verbosity and un-engaging wording. Uphold AP Style and our house style. • Team leader – Set high editorial standards and motivate the teams to produce compelling, accurate community and national journalism that wins followers and makes a difference. When needed, editorial director will lead by example, reporting stories themself and assisting with breaking news coverage. • Editorial strategist – Engage with the community and help spread the word about our sites and our journalism. Work closely with the publishers to plan and execute further growth. Also, assist other management with company-wide editorial initiatives. • Problem solver – Diagnose and help to resolve minor technical problems. Ensure continuity during employee off days. Please send cover letter and resume to cburke@midatlanticmedia.com. No phone calls.

Help Wanted

EDITOR IN CHIEF: The Chicago Reporter is looking for a talented and visionary editor-inchief. We are looking for a new leader with proven, hands-on editing skills to lead a newsroom of six full time staff. The job is primarily editorial. The new editor will have resources to hire an individual to manage the day-to-day fundraising. The next leader must have solid experience in investigative reporting and editing with a reporting focus in the areas of race and poverty. The new editor will build on the Reporter’s legacy as a one-of-a-kind nonprofit media organization with a 45-year track record of combining data analysis and narrative storytelling to shed light on racial inequities in one of the most segregated cities in the nation. We seek someone who can shape and direct editorial strategy and coverage, manage investigative projects, and serve as the public face of the organization. We are looking for someone with 7-10 years of experience in digital and print journalism to continue our growth as an authority on issues of race and poverty and to advance partnerships with local and national news entities. The salary range is $100K – $115K with excellent health and time off benefits. The Chicago Reporter is an independent program of the faith-based Community Renewal Society. We are committed to diversity and we encourage all qualified candidates to apply. Applicants may send PDF formatted cover letter and resume to Jessica Hollie, HR Administrator at: jhollie@communityrenewalsociety.org. PRESS OPERATORS: The Berkshire Eagle, a locally owned newspaper group in Western Massachusetts is seeking experienced press operators. Our current equipment includes a 13-unit Goss Urbanite and 12-unit Goss Community. We require pre-employment drug screen. EOE. To apply, please visit www.berkshireeagle.com, email aswanton@berkshireeagle.com or call 413-496-6140 for more information. REPORTER: The Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World is seeking an experienced reporter who has a desire to practice enterprise journalism and understands the speed of today’s digital media business. The Journal-World operates a nationally-recognized digital news site — LJWorld.com — that attracts between 30,000 to 40,000 unique users per day, and publishes a seven-day per week newspaper that serves a growing population in northeast Kansas.

EDITOR: The Journal Record is the premier daily general business and legal news source in Oklahoma City. We are an award-winning publication and we’re committed to the highest standards of journalism ethics and excellence. We are looking for an editor to develop and manage content for our wide array of digital and print news and information services. In this position, you are the face of the organization. You establish and maintain relationships within the business community, in Oklahoma City and throughout the state, and you provide leadership to the entire Journal Record organization. Responsibilities include:

The Journal-World recognizes that ﬁnding and reporting valuable, important, interesting, and entertaining stories is the key to making community journalism work in today’s media environment. The successful candidate will be a talented journalist full of curiosity who can bolster our investigative and storytelling capabilities. There are a variety of beat possibilities available at the Journal-World, allowing the successful candidate’s skills to be matched with the best possibility. The position is well-suited for reporters who are ready to take that step from the entry-level stage of their careers to a more senior reporting position.

• managing the people who make up our award-winning newsroom • managing the content and navigability of our websites • assembling daily and breaking news alerts • continually working on features and innovations to serve readers and build paid audience • leading the preparation of our daily newspaper and special publications • serving as the company’s top representative at each of our events throughout the year

Lawrence is an exciting place to report news. Home to the University of Kansas, Lawrence offers reporters the chance to find important stories in the areas of higher education and college athletics. As a liberal college community surrounded by a politically-conservative state, journalists have opportunities to report on many of the idealogical clashes that are playing out on a national scale. With a population deeply interested in “green issues,” reporters can find meaningful stories about the environmental movement and the changes it is creating. The community has a wealth of educated residents seeking important and interesting journalism on a variety of topics.

We are seeking an experienced, digitally savvy editor with a strong track record working in a daily or weekly newspaper environment. You must be a proven leader with strong journalism skills and excellent management skills. The Journal Record is part of BridgeTower Media, provider of business and law news and information in markets across the country. We offer competitive pay, great benefits and a great team atmosphere. If you are interested in this position and meet the qualifications please send your resume along with cover letter to: apply-a2n5qet98in1@applicantstack.com. BridgeTower Media and all subsidiaries are Equal Opportunity Employers and value diversity in our workplace.

Your source for industry news and views ®

editorandpublisher.com

+Classifieds.indd 57

The position oﬀers competitive pay and beneﬁts, and is based in vibrant downtown Lawrence. To apply for the position, please send a letter of interest, three writing samples and a resumé to Editor Chad Lawhorn at clawhorn@ljworld.com.

E&P HELP WANTED PRINT & WEB AD SPECIAL 100 words of text plus your company logo both in print and online for one low price! 1 month in print + 5 weeks online - $125.00 2 months in print + 10 weeks online - $225.00 For more information or to place your ad, call 1-800-887-1615 or email classifieds@editorandpublisher.com. AUGUST 2018 | E & P

| 57

7/20/18 9:46 AM

shoptalk /commentary Newspapers Are Missing Opportunities with Radio By Glenn Serafin

ewspapers are now permitted to buy local radio stations. But it’s not happening much yet. I am the product of a newspaper and its locally-owned radio stations: the Asbury Park Press and WJLK AM-FM in New Jersey. I wrote for the newspaper and broadcast the news on WJLK at about the time Bruce Springsteen was performing down the street at the Stone Pony. The newspaper/radio station plant was in one building at Press Plaza. The radio studios were on the fifth floor. The radio newsroom and broadcast booth were in the newspaper newsroom on the second floor. WJLK had its own on-air news staff and a news director who reported to the newspaper’s managing editor. We worked alongside the print reporters. By carbon copy, we shared the wires. Every time a print reporter filed a story with the newspaper editor, we got a copy. We wrote and broadcast 10 minutes of news, sports and weather at the top of every hour. We sent headlines in a pneumatic tube to the DJs upstairs, which they read at the bottom of the hour. We read the school lunch menus at 7 a.m. every weekday morning and the obits at 1 p.m. every day, seven days a week. Just the name, age and community of residence. “The Asbury Park Press regrets to announce the names of the following area residents who have died recently…” It always was sponsored. We ended every newscast with the tag line, “And remember to read the Asbury Park Press seven days a week.” Every day the newspaper had a prominent ad promoting the radio station’s programming, sales remotes and such. The cross-promotion was constant, and so was the cross-selling. Print advertisers also bought radio air time to promote their campaigns, especially the car

It’s time for newspapers to try a radio combination by making smart acquisitions... dealers. The print and radio sales staff often worked in teams. As for content, the wall between news and advertising certainly was up, but advertisers were allowed in the building to meet staff, especially the radio staff. The bigger, local advertisers loved local sports and we did plenty of that. “Civilians” get a rush when they meet reporters and columnists they read in the newspaper and personalities they listen to on their favorite radio station. I left the Asbury Park Press for the AP in Washington and later became an AP broadcast sales rep and AP deputy director in New York, and because of my experience, I did not understand the cobra and mongoose relationship between newspaper and radio. People say there are cultural differences between the two. Yes, it is true. Some in radio view print as elitist. Some newspaper folks distrust radio, thinking radio personalities are unstable and prone to bad behavior. These attitudes can be managed. It’s time for newspapers to try a radio combination by making smart acquisitions and enforcing some discipline. The same way religious broadcasters can be with their flocks all the time, radio is a way for newspapers to be connected with their readers all the time. If radio budgets are thin,

newspaper talent is a way to supplement programming and promote themselves. What about the newspaper sports writer or columnist hosting a weekend (or daily) radio program? How about two or three hours of pre-game on NFL Sundays? There also is real estate, gardening, automotive, legal, financial and so much more, all nonpolitical. And what about the reverse, like a radio sports or other personality writing a column in the newspaper? Broadcasters can write too. But the way not to do this is to slam the two cultures together and simply tell the management of each to work it out. I like the Asbury Park model—a print publisher with a subordinate radio manager and specialized sellers who can team up as needed, and not ever sell against each other, but rather sell print/radio packages. As for the news, all of it should report to the newspaper managing editor, who can whip the entire news staff into cooperation. Radio stations are such a bargain right now. Especially AM radio. Filling the program day with interesting, non-divisive programming is not that difficult. Syndicated sports and late night/overnight programs would fit just fine. That said, a good, locally produced morning drive time radio program with male and female hosts is really important. Make your radio station the “go to” place for information and companionship. 

Glenn Serafin founded media brokerage Serafin Bros., Inc. in 1993 and served two terms as president of the National Association of Media Brokers from 20132017. He can be reached at gserafin@ tampabay.rr.com.

Printed in the USA. Vol. 151, No 8, EDITOR & PUBLISHER (ISSN: 0013-094X, USPS: 168-120) is published 12 times a year. Regular issues are published monthly by Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc., 18475 Bandilier Circle, Fountain Valley, CA, 92708-7000; Editorial and Advertising (949) 660-6150. Periodicals postage paid at Fountain Valley, CA 92708, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Please send address changes to: EDITOR & PUBLISHER. P.O. Box 25859, Santa Ana, CA 92799-5859. Copyright 2018, Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Subscription Price: U.S. and its possessions, $99.00 per year, additional postage for Canada & foreign countries $20.00 per year. Single copy price $8.95 in the U.S. only; Back issues, $12.95 (in the U.S. only) includes postage and handling. Canada Post: Publication Mail Agreement No. 40612608. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 682. Subscriber Services (888) 732-7323; Customer Service Email: circulation@editorandpublisher.com.

58 |

+shoptalk.indd 58

E & P | AUGUST 2018

editorandpublisher.com

7/19/18 2:41 PM

Explore, Educate and Engage at the 2018 NNA Convention & Trade Show in Norfolk, VA

NNA convention: An opportunity to explore the friendly, modern port-city of Norfolk and transform your organization! Get excited to enjoy the harbour, family-friendly attractions and take part in a cruise in the heart of Virginia’s Waterfront. Flash sessions and the idea exchange are events you won’t want to miss! Hop on board! Visit nnaweb.org/convention for more information! “The 2017 NNA Conference in Tulsa, Okla. was a great experience...I have already made some changes to our products, made our classifieds readable again and taught the sales team about creating better emails. It’s the best three days I have spent in a long time.” -Amy Johns, Publisher, McAlester News-Capital

CE-E & P full page:Layout 1 7/12/18 12:06 PM Page 1