the newspaper business

We will be num-chucking our way through the airport security to try and reach Ft. Myers, FL sometime on Turkey Day (if the plane doesn’t crash.)

I really like reading the Snooze Press print edition when we visit. My daughter and SIL are subscribers. Don’t get excited, they are both news junkies.

However, I also am reading a lot via RSS. I’m writing this now, because I’ll probably forget it later. That’s a good thing: then I won’t be aware if I am reading more RSS or more print Snooze Press and we’ll see how things go.

I’ll also get to see my granddog show off.

Newspapers will die if we don’t act to improve the health of the industry, writes Kevin Martin, head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, in an op-ed piece. The FCC “should modify” the rule that bars ownership of both a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in a single market.

There is never discussion about small markets like this one. Meanwhile, WNKY and WBKO have been allowed to double their advertising inventory by becoming affiliated with more networks. WBKO ABC/FOX/CW and WNKY NBC/CBS.

The newspaper owns a radio station, and that was grandfathered in. But if we wanted START a TV station, what choice is there? So locally, who cares what the FCC does, it won’t have an impact here.

 UPDATE: It has been reported that new FCC rules if enacted would only effect top 20 markets.  #20 is Orlando,  so you can see how restrictive this proposal really is.

The New York Times gave Moveon.org a price break on the General Pretraeus / General Betray Us ad.

Two weeks later they admitted they made a mistake.

Why so long?

At first, I thought it was stalling. After some thought I can understand why it took so long.

First, the ad was scheduled on a Friday for a Monday insertion. Moveon.org was told by a NYT ad rep that the ad would cost $65,000. The ad ran Monday. By the end of the week, all hell broke loose as the price break became public.

The Times first said the price was appropriate because it was a “stand-by” rate for advertisers who didn’t care when the ad ran within the next seven days.  A common practice among newspapers.

Then they backed off completely and said it was a mistake and never should have happened.

Why so long? Because they wanted to get it right.  First they had to confirm there was a price break. A short call to billing would do that. They they had to start down the chain of command to determine the exact sequence of events, how they occured, why they occurred, and who was involved.

When they felt they had it right, they gave it to their public editor to make a column out of it.

Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, said, “We made a mistake.” She said the advertising representative failed to make it clear that for that rate The Times could not guarantee the Monday placement but left MoveOn.org with the understanding that the ad would run then. She added, “That was contrary to our policies.”

Those outside the business - and maybe some inside the business - will say its just the NYT showing its liberal bias.

I think its a case of haste makes waste. The ad rep was pressured by Moveon.org to get the ad in, he knew about the stand-by rate, thought it qualified and accepted the ad. I would wager that the ad rep slept well Friday night not realizing the furor that was about to be unleashed because he didn’t think to get management approval to accept the ad.

At a high school in Naples, Florida, if you want a good grade in journalism, you better be prepared to sell some ads or spend some money.

The syllabus says $600 will get you an A, $500 will get you a B, $400 gets a C, $300 gets a D and less than $300 worth of ads sold will earn a student an F on the assignment.

It would be pretty unusual for kids in journalism class in ultra upscale Naples to actually go out an “sell” an ad. First, Daddy and/or Mommy would probably buy the ad for the family business or favorite charity. Second it’s not really “selling” it’s asking for a donation.

What about the less affluent kids? I guess if they are working two jobs after school, they could hit up their employer, that would go over well.

A brilliant school board member said:

… the district needs to take a closer look at this class, and others, to find a better way to grade students.

There has to be a way to encourage participation without it being related to money,” said Abbott.

Gee, ya think?

Hat tip.

Shameless self-promotion (maybe)

BGDailyNews.com employment site, called The Job Network, is now affiliated with Yahoo’s Hot Jobs.

Not too long ago this would have been treason. Yahoo was out to take our employment ads, take our classified ads, and more if they could.

Now, both sides are realizing that cooperation and competition is the best of both worlds.

So if an employer is looking for help, by calling our classified advertising department, the employers ad can appear on The Job Network, and on Yahoo Hot Jobs.

Times are a’changin’ and we’re working hard to keep up.

Macy’s quarterly earnings were down for the quarter and it cut it’s second quarter outlook.

Maybe they should reconsider their advertising strategy. This year Macy’s is planning to spend 40% less with the Daily News than last year. We were not alone in this drastic cutback.

A newspaper and technology blogger summarizes Macy’s ad strategy.

Paul Ginocchio, a securities analyst at Deutsche Bank provided this detail:

In Paul’s hypothetical analysis, he estimates $254 million of the money pulled from newspapers would go to additional TV advertising, $22 million more would fuel online advertising and $40 million would be left to fatten Federated’s bottom line.

Paul says the operators of major metro papers – the New York Times Co., Tribune Co. and Washington Post – are the most vulnerable to a potential shift in Federated’s media mix. Chains in smaller markets not served by Macy’s or May – like Lee, Gannett and Media General – have less to lose.

Paul bases his projection on the way such national chains as Wal-Mart, Sears and Target spend their advertising dollars. But there may be a reprieve for newspapers.

Rather than buying advertising to generically tout its stores as great places to shop, Macy’s historically has used its ads to promote individual products to drive sales. To date, newspaper advertising has proven to be the best “call-to-action” medium for Macy’s, Kohl’s and other merchants employing this strategy.

After the number of pages are established (see previous post) the next queston is: where does the news go? Again, the answer is determined primarily by advertising.

Late, morning, the day before publication, the process begins.

There are certain pages that are off-limits for ads. Editorial, comic, sports agate, some section fronts, etc. As before, some ads have to appear on certain pages because of color capacity, advertiser request and aesthetics. The person who does the layout tries to leave enough space on the page so that the copy editors can design attractive pages.

If we chose, the paper will be laid out by computer, but we choose to do the procedure manually because in our case it has proven to be more efficient.

The newspaper layout with ad sizes place on the page are printed on a reduced version called a dummy. Each page has its own dummy.

The dummy is then distributed around noon to the production departments and the news departments and the next day’s newspaper begins taking shape. At 11:30, day of publication, the final page moves to the imager and plate-maker and at noon the pressrun begins. (This is our Monday through Friday schedule. Saturday and Sunday are different because we got to press in the late evening for morning delivery.)

So if you happen to be in the office and hear someone refer to the dummy, hopefully they are talking about tomorrow’s newspaper layout.

How do we decide how many pages should be in the paper each day?

Advertising.

the old rule of thumb for profitable newspapers our size was to run 45-50% advertising. But that was in the day before the full age and double page grocery store ads and the full page department/discount store ads changed to sections printed someplace else and we insert them into the Daily News.

In 2005, the twelve newspapers we confidentially share information with ran 35% advertising. the Daily News ran 40% advertising.

Above is the way we calculate the number of pages for each issue.

There are 126 column inches on a page, a column inch is one column wide by one inche deep. Th estimated number of advertising column inches is divided by 126 to get the number of ad pages and then multiplied by 2. In the above example it indicates 28 pages.

There are other variables that will effect the number of pages. Does news need more for a story, how much color are running, is it full color or a single (spot) color, four sections or two, etc. In a perfect world we would hit our estimate exactly and all the color would fall on the right printing units and that would result in a 50/50 newspaper.

But as you know, Sunday has a lot more ads, and Tuesday a lot fewer. November has a lot more ads and February a lot fewer.

Now you know who to thank if you want more news - our advertisers.