the newspaper business

We bust our buns to get an increase in home delivery of over 4%, and our preprint advertisers don’t send us enough preprints to cover all our circulation. Especially for the biggest paper of the year.

So we pick and chose who gets the advertising.

1. home county home delivery
2. home county single copy sales large volume sellers
3. outlying home delivery
4. home county single copy sales small volume setters

…and the inserts are all gone.

Advertisers are missing:

• in county small volume single copy sellers
• outlying area single copy sellers

So, the one day of the year that advertisers are busting their humps to get out their advertising message, and the one day of the year that interest in advertising peaks, advertisers decide it’s the day to save a few bucks on printing and inserting.

Frustrating. Very frustrating.

I’d like to have a media buyer explain to me the rationale behind such thinking.

Fifty muckety-mucks from the newspaper giants were summoned to an ivory tower at the American Press Institute. Suffice to say, these fifty executives have probably put the kibosh on travel to meetings for any lower level staffers. Wonder who bought the wine? The event was funded by a bailout grant.

According to James Shein, turnaround specialist and professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the newspaper industry is in a state of crisis with senior management serving as the biggest hurdle to progress.  “I’m not sure you can look at your industry with fresh eyes,” said Shein.

Ya think? Those who can, do…

Here’s another “come to Jesus” statement:

Participants agreed to reconvene in six months,…

“Why can’t we be the disruptors?” asked one. “We have nothing to lose.”

Oh for cryin’ out loud, it’s worse than I ever imagined!

My good friend, Bob Basler, at Reuters got another great question, and as usual provided a very succinct and instructive answer.

Blog Guy, please continue answering questions about photojournalism. I was wondering, what do photographers do when people they cover are out of sight?

It’s here: the newspaper bailout plan:

Unlike with banks, the collapse of American newspapers does not endanger the world’s financial system. Unlike car companies, the newspaper industry does not lose billions of dollars each month. No matter. We can position this as a proactive move to save the only industry prominently mentioned in the Bill of Rights. (Our message team likes that last bit. You’ll hear it a lot.) This industry employs over 52,000 journalists, thousands of other workers, and it faces unprecedented challenges. It takes more than a quadrennial sales spike from a closely watched election to save newspapers.

TVSpy.com is an “inside baseball” take on TV news. The editor rants about the lame stories that show up on TV news broadcasts during sweeps week.

Specifically he is after the story about a TV station finding cocaine on some random money obtained from local businesses.

His advice?

The station must have dusted-off some consultant’s old list of to do pieces for the sweeps. Regrettably, the station received attention from UPI and their story: TV station detects cocaine on cash.

Fortunately, UPI listed it under the “odd news‘ category.

Our economy is in the tank. We’re about to see a clean sweep of administrations in Washington. People are suffering. Too many are out of a job and struggling to pay their mortgage..and this is the ’stuff’ viewers have to see on local news.

Whatever you do, don’t cancel your newspaper subscription. (emphasis mine.)

…Other than violent crime, fires and traffic tragedies, local television news shops have always relied heavily on the local newspaper for the rest of their news. With recent cutbacks in staffing at most local TV stations, I imagine this is truer than ever.

TVSpy’s point really is that with newspapers cutting back newsrooms, it will have a devastating impact on local television too.

It will lead to more local stories like this:

My good friend Bob at Reuters runs Blog Guy and from time to time gives advice to aspiring photojournalists. Today he has some great advice as a result of this question:

Blog Guy, now that the election is over I hope you’re not going to stop your advice for those of us who want to break into news photography. I’ve memorized your stuff on shooting luggage, shoes, handshakes and  stairs, but I’m wondering when we’ll get to the REALLY dramatic stuff.

Here’s how you can take exciting photos like the one above.

People are reading the bag that our newspaper was put in today.

Pretty steady flow of phone calls now (we’re an afternoon paper) - from the “aginners.”

I’m glad they are holding us to a higher standard than broadcast and outdoor advertising. (By suggesting that the bag the newspaper was delivered it is really scary.)

Just proves to me that we should be charging more to our poly-bag advertisers.

UPDATE: Election Day

We have had five cancellations and about fifty phone calls.  The phone calls are divided into basically these camps:

• The bitter and profane.  These are people who are just generally angry at the world and want to call somebody and give them a good cussing out. We hang up on these people.
• Restrict accepting ads only to the candidate I favor. Their commentary usually turns into a political lecture on why their candidate deserves to win.
• Those other people aren’t as smart as I am. These subscribers hold themselves to be better than the great unwashed masses who don’t know that a poly-bag is advertising. The theory is these dopes will be unduly influenced by the local paper being delivered in a bag, especially the evening before the election.

This isn’t even close. High school yearbooks should not be on the agenda or getting awards where budding high school journalists are in attendance.

Twenty-three high schools entered their 2008 yearbook in the annual Mark of Excellence Yearbook competition. Hosted by WKU’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the School of Journalism & Broadcasting’s High School Media Institute, these awards will be presented at the conclusion of the JSD program.

The institute would be better off honoring a Facebook or MySpace page. Those with the most friends win. That’s a lot like a high school yearbook.