Publishers Around The World Should Study Closely The Tampa Tribune’s New Business Plan – It’s Making All Of The Cost Adjustments Metropolitan Newspapers Must Fulfill In The New Media Age While Positioning Itself As Tomorrow’s Leading Multiplatform Hyper-Local News Force

Philip Stone April 12, 2007

Too often newspapers announce various cost cuts coupled with some idle talk about increasing digital revenues, but not with much of an implementation plan. Which is why publishers everywhere need to take a look at the Tampa (Florida) Tribune’s announcement this week of combining “Out With The Old” with a solid plan “To Bring In the New?” It may just be the recipe to save metropolitan newspapers.

Under the “out with the old” it is:

• Firing 70 staff, but less than 10 of those will be editorial. But there are big changes ahead in editorial operations, but more on that later. 
• Combining two separate Friday special sections into one – it says that serves the reader better by putting all of that weekend information in one place, but the more likely reason is that it will save some newsprint.
• Reducing page width by four per cent (1/2 inch, 1.25 cm), again more newsprint savings.
• Ceasing distribution in three counties outside of the Tribune’s core market, saving circulation and newsprint costs and some editorial effort.
• Realigning some Sunday sections “to improve ease of use and reduce costs”.

And with “in with the new” it is:

• Dropping geographically zoned sections for various suburbs and the content will be shifted to already existing community newspapers that better provide highly local news, better connecting readers to local advertisers.
• Expanding the TBO.com web by launching at least 15 “hyper-local and interactive community web sites.” More may follow once those have settled and best practices can be determined. New web tools will enable readers to contribute content and interact more easily.
• Not firing the editorial staff that had worked on the zoned weekly sections, but reassigning them as primarily online producers. They’ll be thinking online first and print second. TBO.com, shared between the newspaper and  its sister WFLA-TV claims it is one of the world’s first converged (newspaper/TV station) multimedia news organizations, and its current dedicated staff of 14 will now jump to more than 40. 

The Tribune is catching up on all the things that many metropolitan newspapers have done before it – outsourcing back office jobs (classified advertising telephone sales, circulation, customer service), changing page width, getting rid of zoned sections, finding various ways to lessen the print news hole, reduce circulation area, reduce staff etc. -- but there is a plan to go with that to improve local and citizen reporting within existing community papers and especially on the web site.

Denise Palmer, president and publisher of Media General’s largest daily newspaper, said, “We know from research that our readers want news that is hyper-local and useful to their daily lives. Our newspaper is experiencing the challenges of changing reader needs and fundamental shifts in spending by our traditional advertisers. We are reducing resources in areas that are in decline and investing in areas of growth, including local news and the Internet.”

The economics of print dictate that the less copies one has to circulate or print, the lower the costs. Newsprint and circulation take up about 17% of a newspaper’s total expenditure. So reducing paper use, restricting circulation areas, goes straight to the bottom line.

But it took investment to allow all of this to happen. “The Tampa Tribune has invested approximately $16 million in capital improvements over recent years, including a new shared editorial and advertising system and tools for Web partner TBO.com. These improvements facilitate content sharing and improve reader functions such as Internet search. In addition the new tools will enable readers to contribute content and interact with the papers more easily,” a company statement said.

The big unanswered question for metropolitan newspapers that have suffered the brunt of circulation decline – in the September, 2006 audit the Tribune’s daily circulation sank 3.9% to 204,408 and its Sunday edition lost 4.6% to 278,411 – is whether hyper-local online will work for them? It’s certainly cheaper to do it online than in print, but will the local communities go online for that very local news or is that what they want in print?

Every publisher knows that online revenue needs to increase dramatically, and quickly. It’s all well and good for the National Association of Newspapers to brag that some 35% of web use goes to newspaper web sites, but as Tom Cruise asked in that Jerry Maguire movie, “Show Me the Money!” Print still rakes in 95% of a newspaper’s advertising revenue. Can hyper-local make those readers who have left print go to the Internet site in fast enough-growing numbers so the site can start increasing its advertising rates as inventory sells out?

Dante Chinni, a senior associate at the Project for Excellence in Journalism, questioned in a recent Christian Science Monitor article whether the closing of foreign bureaus by some metropolitan newspapers really translates into their doing a better job of hyper-local reporting. The Tribune isn’t closing foreign bureaus, but the same philosophical question still applies.

“Simply closing distant offices …won’t improve local coverage. Making local coverage better is ultimately going to require a reimagining of the way the coverage is done. And do it right may be just as expensive – even more expensive – than having a few reporters in distant lands.”

And he asked the all-important question: “Will hyper-localism lead newspapers to a new, more sophisticated way of covering their bigger backyards or will it simply become a new way to describe doing less?”

In the Tribune’s case, they have reduced the boundaries of their geographical franchise that they wish to own, but they are maintaining most of their current editorial staff to cover that franchise not only in print via community newspapers but also online, they are inviting citizen participation, and they are showing imagination as they figure out the way forward. Time will tell if all of that is editorial resource enough to cover all of the local governments,  schools, businesses,  clubs, neighborhoods, etc.

Local weekly newspapers are returning about 6 – 10% annual revenue increases. Can metropolitan newspapers take advantage of the local weekly newspaper business model and increase revenues accordingly? The answer to that will probably come when the print newspaper and the web site see just how many journalists and how much local reader participation is necessary to be considered really hyper-local.

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