Is It Such A Crime For Advertising And Editorial To Work Together? Let’s Remove The Stigma And Rename the Newsroom The Content Room

Philip M. Stone April 24, 2008

Sam Zell may be new to the newspaper business but in his attempt to shake up the culture at Tribune he often asks editorial employees what they had done that day to earn their keep? Not exactly a question journalists appreciate. But Zell’s point is quite simple, “I want to make enough money to afford you.”

And now with a company like McClatchy actually reporting a quarterly loss, slashing some 100 staff in Modesto, California and staff at other newspapers as its classified advertising fizzles, maybe that’s the signal that the time has come for editorial to be far more pro-active in working with its advertising cousins in getting print’s revenues up there again. And that means cutting through that huge wall between the editorial department and the advertising department. The two departments need to work together for the common good – that their publication earns enough money so everyone can keep their jobs.

Sometimes it takes new blood to show the way. At a time when this writer was a senior executive for United Press International back in the 1980s the company brought in a new editor-in-chief, Max McCrohan, formerly editor of the Chicago Tribune. Max came to the job with the eyes not of a news agency reporter, but rather with those of a newspaper editor who knew what he needed from a news agency.

So one of Max’ first decisions was that UPI would produce monthly special projects, each concentrating on a specific topic that a newspaper’s advertising department could use to sell special sections.

And Max, knowing how important lead-time was for newspaper sales people to go out and sell ads, made sure each special section was delivered several weeks ahead of intended publishing time with plenty of advance notice. For instance, this is April so UPI would have produced around February a series of stories and matching news pictures on, say, gardening, the selection ranging from how best to kill weeds, to what was best plants for shady areas, in sunny areas, etc. etc. the whole range of what the gardener-at-home might want to know.

Now this was not an easy sale within UPI whose journalists were more at home covering US-Soviet summits, or the Congress, state legislatures and the like – now this new guy wants interviews with horticulture experts! But Max pushed the concept through using the logic that a happy client would be one that would renew a subscription. If you think about it, the same concept rings true in the newspaper – reader relationship.

Armed with such a special section out went newspaper advertising departments to gardening centers and ancillary businesses to sell ads. If the newspaper’s own editorial department wanted to add some copy, or maybe complement what UPI provided with copy from other sources such as the supplemental news services then so much the better, but the fact was UPI delivered a complete gardening section for April, a brides’ section for June and other such topics during the year, on which newspapers could really make money and they didn’t have to pay an extra cent for that.

And the publishers loved it. The money they would earn from the special section more than paid for UPI’s monthly subscription fee. Now this didn’t sit too well with the Associated Press who, of course, got phone calls from their clients complaining why the co-op wasn’t doing similar, and eventually AP did follow suit.  Regretfully none of this was enough to save UPI from its continual destiny in bankruptcy court, and the special sections project finally faded away, but the idea was solid.

And there’s no reason why a newspaper’s advertising and editorial departments can’t do exactly the same thing locally today. Agree on a monthly topic worthy of a special section, have editorial provide the necessary copy plus what it gleans off the wires and the supplementals, and advertising goes out and sells the hell out of it. Not really rocket science, and if advertising does its job right it will go and find new advertisers for those sections rather than just hitting those who already advertise.

The culture at many newspapers used to be that editorial and advertising don’t really talk to one another. For editorial, in particular, those ad people were always clogging up the newsprint when those column inches should have gone to some great long prose. There was never even a thought that jobs depended on how well advertising did, probably because until around 10 years ago newspapers were doing so well there was no need to think that way.

But times have, of course changed, and editorial must now surely understand its very jobs depend on how well advertising does its job. And any help editorial can give to advertising to bring the bucks in should be par for the course.

Perhaps one way to break the mental editorial block is to rename the newsroom the content room.

Sure, there are going to be limitations. Journalistic purity should not be sullied -- stories are not going to be slanted to favor an advertiser; stories aren’t going to be dropped to favor an advertiser – at least that is the official line although those who have worked on newspapers know how it really goes (when General Motors and The Los Angeles Times “went to the mattresses” in their skirmish back in 2006 with GM withholding advertising for four months at a cost of some $10 million because it didn’t like stories the Times wrote about company executives  it was one of the few times such conflicts were ever allowed to get out-of-hand). But how many times have we all seen editorial stories when a new business opens in town and there just happens to be an ad for that new store on the same page of the editorial story?

Put another way, what used to be black and white decisions on editorial’s involvement with advertising now carry a great deal of gray. Newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post have made their reputation by honoring that black and white world and remain lucky enough to have that publishing might still behind them, but for many metropolitan newspapers where publishers are intent on slashing editorial to maintain double digit margins, then it boils down simply to finding that happy medium that keeps within the journalistic ethic while helping advertising out, and everyone keeping their jobs.

The purists will, of course, damn this column, but the business of newspaper journalism today is to stay in business. It’s no more them and us – newspaper departments need to act as a team as never before; the newspaper needs to provide that product to the community  that encourages the community to support print, and that in turn means people get to keep their jobs. And that can be done with journalistic ethics still firmly in place without the newsroom – eh, rather, the content room, cutting off the advertising nose just to spite itself.

As we said in the lead to all of this, Zell may be new to the newspaper business but he understands business real well. It’s time for more journalists and editors to better understand their newspaper business, too.