the newspaper business

One of the tightest newspaper owners in the biz has just lost his marbles. This is the same owner who built a new building for a press on the strict guidance that it not be built for the long term. He asked for a cheapo building.  At the same time, these newspaper companies are reducing staff to cover LOCAL, meaningful news, the owners are going whole hog to impress the party bosses and elite that newspapers are still relevant.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune in the past 18 months has trimmed its staff substantially through buyouts and layoffs and has frozen wages for some workers. The Rocky Mountain News has lost more than 12% of its weekday circulation in the past two years. Both MediaNews and Avista Capital, the private-equity owner of the Star Tribune, are laboring under steep debt loads.

“You forget about the P&L for this,” said Dean Singleton, chairman of MediaNews Group, which publishes both the Denver Post and Pioneer Press, among its 54 daily U.S. newspapers. “This is a week to really showcase what we do best.”

The no-holds-barred coverage comes even though broadcast and cable news television, national newspapers and a cadre of political bloggers — an estimated 15,000 people in all — are planning to blanket the proceedings at both conventions. Critics also say the proceedings are news-free events hardly worth all the media attention.

Put me in the category with Jon Stewart and that last sentence above. Political conventions are not news.

Jon Stewart took after the “established” media for getting too cozy with candidates and regurgitating campaign spin when it comes to political coverage.

Stewart said politicians in recent campaigns are “animatronic” because all of the “humanity has been managed out of campaigns.” He referenced the back-and-forth during the Pennsylvania Democratic primary over Obama’s lack of bowling skills.

Of course, I won’t be reading the Denver or St. Paul newspaper coverage, but here’s what they should do: focus on the impact locally. Forget the politics of the event.

CNN Grill (across from the Pepsi Center) Was Packed After the Convention Shut Down for the Day

Treat it like a four day siege of the city.

• Traffic can’t move,
• restaurants overflowing with undesirables,
• armed patrols on the street,
• dissent is stifled.

To quote my favorite weather cliche: It’s a War Zone.

Here’s an email I got today. It pretty much speaks volumes about how stupid newspapers are perceived by some scammers.

I am contacting you today regarding one of our largest clients. The majority of their advertising budget is dedicated to direct newspaper placement. Normally, we run a test ad for the client, and should the ad produce a sufficient ROI, the client will continue to run indefinitely.  The test ad can be any size, from a line ad to a 1/4 page to a full page ad, any day of the week that the paper runs – we would like that ad to be at no cost or very low cost to the client.

Please understand that we are interested in building a relationship with you, working with you to in order to help both organizations increase print sales.

Should you have any questions or should you have immediate space available, please contact me as soon as possible. 

Thank you

Matt

Matthew Montoya

4 3 2   F R O N T   S T R E E T   -   C H I C O P E E  ,  M A  0 1 0 1 3

P.  8 6 6  .  6 1 2  .  0 0 3 4   X 1 1 9   -   F . 4 1 3  .  2 0 6 .  0 7 0 0

WWW.ACCESSTOMEDIA.COM

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“All beings tremble before violence.  All fear death, all love life.

 See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt?

 What harm can you do?”

- Buddha

I’ve read a number of tech bloggers who are crying in their beer because U.S. Citizens don’t seem to want “broadband” as much as it seems.

Broadband adoption has kept even pace with previous years, but stalled among America’s poor, according to a report released this week.

or some variation is usually the lead paragraph in the story.

I can understand laypeople (like me) using the term “broadband” to mean fast access. But people like ConnectKentucky use the term as the equivalent to DSL. To ConnectKentucky, there are two kinds of access: dial-up and broadband.

In fact, the FCC recently recognized that if the lawmakers listened to ConnectKentucky and Connected Nation, all seems right in the U.S. internet world. Of course, it’s not. The U.S. is woefully behind other industrialized nations when it comes to moving data.

Of course the FCC was using the definitions most favorable to the telecos.

It was using the definitions the global telecom industry always has used. It’s just that the relevant standards bodies haven’t changed those definitions to reflect what actually is happening in the market.

But things are changing for the better, it’s just that the tech blogs are kinda slow to pick up on it. (Except for the MSM blogger! - a dead newspaper no less!)

The FCC has finally revised its definition of broadband Internet — which had grow, ahem, somewhat outdated.

In the past, the agency said you had broadband Internet if you got just 200 kilobits per second in either direction. From now on, it will use a more ambitious and more nuanced set of definitions:
* “First Generation data:” 200 Kbps up to 768 Kbps
* “Basic Broadband:” 768 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps

And from there, the FCC will keep track of the number of homes that get service in each of six higher speed tiers:
* 1.5 Mbps to < 3.0 Mbps
* 3.0 Mbps to < 6.0 Mbps
* 6.0 Mbps to < 10.0 Mbps
* 10.0 Mbps to < 25.0 Mbps
* 25.0 Mbps to < 100.0 Mbps
* 100.0 Mbps +

The agency will also make ISPs disclose the number of homes they serve at what speed, in which locations. They’ll also have to provide more detailed maps as to where they do and don’t offer service.

This system superscedes one that let ISPs say they “served” a zip code with broadband Internet if they offered more than 200 kbs to any one home in that zip code.

(Emphasis mine.) Hopefully all this crap ConnectKentucky and ConnectedNation has been spreading about how wonderful states are doing in providing internet access to citizens will slow.

My position is that access to the internet is too important to be left to the private sector. Access should be treated like infrastucture: law enforcement, roads, bridges, fire protection, sewer, water, electricity. Cities should move now to buy out existing cablecos and use tax money to provide access to the internet.

Like other infrastruture, some communities will spend more than others. Some may elect to go with the low end, while others (the smart ones ) will realized investing in the highest speed access to the internet is a tremendous economic driver.

Access to the internet is too important to leave to investors who expect an ROI.

My friend Rick made this video. He did a heckuva job researching the law and offering his opinion in a very dignified way.
If you agree, please link back, or embed the video.

Before, during, or after? Pop up opaque banner over the video or product placement? It’s here, and there will be more video ads because video is hot and getting hotter. Google is putting Family Guy on a few thousand blogs.  The video will be served thru their AdSense system and be about a minute or two long.

So back to the question.

I think advertisers are missing a huge product placement opportunity in online video. There is a concern by mainstream companies that their video ad may be placed alongside content that is not in keeping with their brand. Like showing Victoria’s Secret ads anytime on NBC, or ED pills anytime on CBS, or feminine sanitary products anytime on ABC. Mainstream advertisers are afraid of Youtube. So they need more control.

Remember, although Youtube is the killer, there are some great high quality, larger image video programs being produced and shown on Vimeo, Brightcove, Revver, Daily Motion, and more.

Contextual video is here and getting stronger. But traditional video doesn’t work online. People are in control, so they click away from the ads.

Product placement is the answer. Mainstream advertisers can reach out to mainstream video producers and make the deal. Edgy advertisers can reach out and make the deal.

But there still are people inside the box.

The big issue would be whether the product placement was disclosed or not in some way that would be obvious to viewers. Brook Hinton says product placements need to be disclosed at the start of the video or else he considers them even more tasteless than ads.

It’s NOT an issue - don’t disclose. Give the viewer some credit for some brains. At the end of the Highway Patrol tv programs, there was a line that said: Ford Motor provided automobiles for Broderick Crawford. No animals were injured in the making of this program, etc. etc.

Was this necessary then? No. Do they still do it today? I dunno. I’m not even sure they have credits on broadcast tv anymore.

To feel the urge to disclose that Mr. Crawford was compensated to drink Dr Pepper and use iPhone is kinda ridiculous, right? Viewers either 1. don’t care or 2. already knew that.

Give me a scenario that would be so outrageous, so devious,  that product placement disclosure would give you a clue.

Proof positive that most newspaper publishers and editors are stuck in the old way of delivering news. You probably read the same story on E & P online that I did. Hoosier newspapers were in the “run the presses and deliver the paper” mode.

Editors and circulation officials, who contend the rain-soaked area is in its worst natural disaster ever, say delivery problems have mounted due to roads closing and opening without warning…

One newspaper who normally doesn’t publish a Sunday edition, was forced to do web updates. I have the impression that if the newspaper had a Sunday edition, it would have been their emphasis - not keeping the online newspaper as current as possible.

Why is this? Why are newspaper editors and publisher in the mindset that delivering a print “disaster edition” is relevant or necessary. Even going up in pages and bragging about it. Like four more pages with twelve huge pictures is relevant.
Yes, it will win you awards at the state press association, maybe even a national award, maybe even a Pulitzer.  But to what end?  Getting accurate information to the public should be the end. The means should be the online newspaper.

My suggestion would be that when a wide-spread natural disaster hits, the whole print edition gets chucked immediately. Canceled.

Buy as many TV and radio spots as possible and go wall to wall with your newspaper’s URL.
If reporters are stranded, let them phone it in - with video.

 We had one staffer, a reporter who had to be rescued by boat [on Saturday] and her vehicle floated down a river,” Syse recalled. “It washed up on dry land and she came back to work on Monday.”

What a great first person story. But it wouldn’t see the light of day in the print edition because there are only just so many such stories that will fit and the precious space won’t be used on an employee of the newspaper, unless the staffer died.

There is a certain thrill of moving a newspaper to Starbucks. Think of the stories for the kiddles of the Great Flood of 2008 and how the paper “got out” from Starbuck’s.

“We could not get into our offices on Saturday,” said Editor Scarlett Syse of the 17,000-circulation Daily Journal in Franklin, Ind. “So we sent someone in to collect laptops, Rolodexes, and digital cameras and set up in a Starbucks for a few hours.”

“No one around here has ever seen flooding like this. It is the 100-year storm you always hear about,” says Tim D. Smith, circulation director for The Herald-Times of Bloomington and the Reporter-Times of Martinsville. “We have had carriers wading up to their chests to deliver to racks, they are really troopers.”

You betcha, and customers would have to wade through the same water to buy a paper right?

Chuck the print edition.
 

Keep carriers out of harm’s way. Smith went on to say only 25% of the Martinsville subscribers got their paper. They have 60 youth carriers and he asked them to wait for HOURS to get a newspaper to deliver.

In Columbus the story was the same, short staff, very late delivery (some next day.)

And for what? Just to have ink on paper? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s old school. It’s typical of newspapers.

During a wide spread disaster throw everything you have at the web edition. Put the press guys on the phone - or send them out with their personal phones (with video) in their big pickups and ask them to shoot and send.  Ask the graphics department to start surfing and researching and mapping and calling friends and family. Get ad staffers to grab their phones and laptops and start posting to a common blog. These editors that found themselves “short of staff” meant they were short of people who are on the newsroom payroll.

If they would have looked at an employee phone list, they might have found a great wealth of information from people just dying to help tell the story.

Instead, editors go into the tower, pull up drawbridge, and every 24 hours throw a message in a bottle into the water hoping somebody will find it and read it.

Will you give me a break? The publisher of the Arkansas Gazette is upset that somebody is linking to their classified ads. Just linking, not taking them, just linking to them.The fact that it’s Wal-mart has the publisher in a snit.Wal-mart has joined Oodle.com and apparently the Gazette agreed to let Oodle link to their content

Oodle uses a standard programming protocol to seek permission rights for searches and indexing of advertisements. If a Web site does not provide permission to make its content available to other sites, it will not be added to Oodle’s index.

So what is the big deal??? All the search engines link to their content! Why does it bother the publisher that Wal-mart is linking to their classified ads?

“I don’t think that is necessarily true,”Smith said. “We haven’t given anyone permission to lift information from our site and move it to their site.”

Hello? Oodle doesn’t “lift” your content, they link to it. That’s the way “this internet thing works.”
As soon as I heard about Oodle, I told our online manager to join and get in on the deal. I want the Daily News classified ads to be spread far and wide. It’s good for the customer. It will make classifieds work even better.

Last time I knew, making your ads work better for customers is a wise business choice.

In his last story for the Post,   staff writer Linton Weeks started the first paragraph of his story with these letters…GOODBYEREADERSMust have gotten the buy-out he was looking for.   

Is your newspaper producing a slick magazine?

If not, why not?

We are involved in two: From House to Home (FHTH) and Better Health and Living (BHL) both produced by PSA Magazines. Ours have limited local editorial content: but ALL local advertising.

We have produced a couple “magazines” as special sections, but they aren’t regular publications.

Advertisers love them and we think readers do too. After all, it’s a free bonus with their newspaper. We can tell our advertisers love them because we run FHTH quarterly and it’s 80 pages chock full of ads. BHL is sold out for the year since January.

So tell me again why your newspaper isn’t producing a magazine?

The first issue of USA Today’s Open Air magazine was in Friday’s newspaper.

It’s pretty, has pretty pictures, and I’m sure the writing is good. I can’t judge the writing because I didn’t read any of the stories. I scanned some of the shorter stories, but generally the magazine had stuff that I already had read: either in USA Today, or some other magazine.

Here are their feature stories:

• High-class hiking
• Spring break grows up
• Triathletes with a cause
• Reader photo
• The thrill of skeet

The feature stories were very generic. Name a high traffic tourist area and it was covered in the magazine, but only lightly covered. Some interesting personalities gave their insights to the tourist attractions, which was a different twist. The other features were the requisite “feel good” feature (triathletes) and unusual (skeet shooting.)

At sixty eight pages, about half ads, I’m sure it is highly profitable - and didn’t cannabalize from the regular newspaper.

I had to go to the website to find that it will be printed quarterly. It launched with no consumer marketing to back it up.

BTW: the ad for beef (above) is the most unintentionally gross ad I have seen. At first glance it looks like a river flowing through gorge. But it’s a very close up of a steak and the “river” is juices, with mushrooms the size of boulders. Gross.

All in all, very average for a magazine from a content and photography standpoint. From an ad standpoint, a winner.

Without Parade magazine, the world’s worst dictator would go unnoticed.

Kim Jong-il of North Korea has been designated the World’s Worst Dictator in PARADE Magazine’s 6th annual listing by Contributing Editor David Wallechinsky. Kim beat out Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, who held the No. 1 position for three years in a row, from 2005 to 2007. Kim was No. 1 in 2003 and 2004.