Newspaper Steals A Page From Airlines And Start Charging Readers For Announcements That Once Were Free

Philip M. Stone August 20, 2008

Two industries really in the dumps these days are airlines and newspapers – both hurting for different reasons but hurting all the same. One way the airlines have figured out to stop losing money is to provide less services (no pillows, blankets, food; newspapers are doing similar by downsizing the editorial hole) and airlines also charge for what once was free (baggage). And on that there is now some newspaper take-up, too.

Take, for instance, the Bee Group that publishes nine weekly newspapers serving most communities in Erie County, New York.  The group prints the same engagement, wedding and anniversary announcements in all nine editions “as a service to our readers”, as the Amherst Bee puts it, at no charge. But come September 10 that all changes. From then on such an announcement will appear for free in just one of the group’s newspapers, but for running in the others there will be a $25 charge per newspaper.  Sort of like the first piece of luggage is free and each additional piece costs.

It’s just one example as we take our weekly look at what newspapers are up to as they try to improve their bottom line (apart from mass firings):

• The Teamsters union at the Philadelphia newspapers has voted to forgo a $25-a-week pay raise scheduled for September 1. The reason why was put in very human terms by John Laigaie, president of Local 628, “We want to keep our jobs. We want to retire out of here. I’m too old to look for another job.”

• Also at the Philadelphia newspapers the Inquirer has announced that from now on only breaking news will appear on the web site first, and all other copy that is taken from the newspaper will appear in print first before it makes it to the web site. That policy flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says the new business model for newspapers depends on all news going immediately to the web site. But the Inquirer editor takes the view that since print still produces the overwhelming revenue flow then it is the print edition that should be first with its main sales ingredient – news.

• McClatchy, owner of 30 newspapers, has frozen wages across the group for 12 months starting September 1. This follows on from culls, selling property, consolidating printing operations and downsizing the news hole. At the flagship Sacramento Bee publisher Cheryl Dell explained, “We have avoided taking this step as long as possible.”

• Is the destiny of small circulation daily newspapers to become all local and if so will they then need the services of news agencies?  The Post Register of Idaho Falls, Idaho (circulation around 26,000) pays $114,000 a year for AP services and the publisher has cancelled, effective in two years, saying his assessment is “the worst value for anything we purchase, since we use so little of what we’re paying for.” The publisher says he wants a cafeteria or a la carte approach to news – pay only for what is used. “We want to receive about a quarter of what we now get from the AP and pay about half of our current fee.”

• Downsizing is still the name of the game. Tribune newspapers are busily reducing the editorial news hole to 50% from 60% -- the Baltimore Sun, for instance, next week will become a three-section newspaper – News, Features, and Sports. The separate business section and its Maryland state and regional news section will be wrapped into the News section. 

• Newspapers big and small are seeking to provide additional advertising opportunities. The August 10 edition of the New York Times Magazine, for instance, had a cover wrap for a bank extending less than half-way across the magazine’s cover.

• A daily newspaper is usually defined as one that publishes at least six times a week, but that may need reviewing with the trend of some six-day publications dropping to five days, getting rid of the non-profitable Monday edition. Leading that charge is GateHouse Media that owns 97 daily newspapers with a paid circulation of more than 800,000, and 291 weekly newspapers – delivered up to three times a week -- with paid circulation near 700,000. Financial analysts say its shares are basically worthless. The most recent Monday cut comes from its McPherson, Kansas Sentinel. “With skyrocketing newsprint and fuel prices, the writing was on the wall that we were going to have to do something drastic to keep our expenses in line,” said Publisher Gary Mehl. “To cut one publishing day has been one of the most difficult decisions of my 43-year career at The Sentinel.” But Gatehouse is not alone. The Dispatch in Lexington, North Carolina, (circulation 10,200) owned by the New York Times Company, is making a similar non-Monday move. The newspaper has also outsourced its printing to another Times Company newspaper, and it is narrowing its web width.

• Whenever things get tight for a PM newspaper publishers always look at whether it is better to switch to an AM – that happened a lot in the US in the 1980s and 90s – and that type of switch still continues. In the UK the Northampton Chronicle and Echo are switching to become AMs. The newspapers will close their Web printing operation and outsource.

• And it’s not just newspapers cutting back, so are their trade organizations.  The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) cut staff by about 40%, basically those who were part of the association’s technology and production staff. It also announced it will no longer compile statistics on newsprint usage with an E.W. Scripps subsidiary taking on that chore. And to show that production and technology is no longer where it really used to be for American newspapers that are now concentrating on digital, the NAA has ended its annual Nexpo trade show that features such heavy equipment as presses and the like. That annual show used to be so large 20 years ago that only America’s then largest convention facilities could handle the space requirements. In more recent years hotel exhibition halls have sufficed. Now the NAA says Nexpo and the NAA Marketing Conference are both being ditched, replaced by NAA mediaXchange that focuses far more on digital offerings.

Another end to an era.