US Newspaper Publishers Told, “Stop Whining, Start Winning”

Philip M. Stone April 6, 2006

Newspaper publishers who gathered in Chicago this week for the annual Newspaper Association of America (NAA) convention looking for consolation for their continuing circulation and advertising revenue losses got exactly the opposite from several speakers who basically told the gathering it was time they got their act together.

Publishers were lambasted for complaining too much about their problems and not doing enough to fix them, and by advertisers who complained that buying newspaper space was too difficult and antiquated, and trying to buy a cross platform package – web and print – was near impossible. And they were told time and time again to get off their backsides to get the word out to the advertising community that newspapers were still doing all right, thank you very much, and were a necessary part of any advertising mix.

All in all, a lot of straight talking those publishers needed to hear.

Jay R. Smith, president of Cox Newspapers and outgoing NAA president, set the tone in his opening speech telling delegates that the world has changed a great deal in the past few years but newspaper publishers are still conducting their business in the same old way, and were not adapting. Things are tough so publishers are whining, he basically said. What they need to start doing is winning -- to get a positive message out there that all is not doom and gloom in the newspaper world.

And publishers do have a few good things to talk about as the NAA released statistics showing that newspaper web sites saw 21% more unique visitors in 2005 than they did a year earlier and the number of page views jumped 43%.. That means that one in three US Internet users – 55 million users – each month visit a newspaper web site.

Even better, the young were attracted to the newspaper web sites with the web boosting readership by 9% for the 18 -24 year-olds and by 14% for the 25 – 34 year-olds.

Randy Bennett, a senior executive at the NAA, said the obvious – “people who are not necessarily engaged with the print product are increasingly using the newspaper Web site for news and information in their local markets.”

But that good news was soured by Andrew Swinand, executive vice president of advertising-buying agency Starcom Worldwide who went into a lot of detail on just how difficult it was to buy newspaper space when compared with other media.

He said it was nearly impossible to buy cross platform  -- print/web – advertising packages. The industry also needed a simple method that would allow advertising agencies to easily buy space across many newspaper webs sites, and he complained that the process for completing newspaper ad sales was less automated than other media (fax machines still used) and was more cumbersome (no guarantees of ad placement).

“Please, please, please make it easier to buy” he implored the publishers.

The NAA’s Audience Database Project also had some good news for publishers. In the top 50 markets  -- close to 65% of consumers with household incomes of $150,000 or more read newspapers during the week and on Sunday it goes up to 70%. So the powerful money demographics are still there for newspapers.

To emphasize that fact and show the advertising community just how strong a buy newspapers are, the NAA recently launched a $50 million ad program promoting the value of newspapers to advertisers.

"Our campaign takes a strong position with the media decision makers that newspaper media has the brand power, the content and the credibility to serve print and online advertisers more effectively and efficiently than other media choices," said NAA Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer John Kimball when the campaign launched last month.  "We're exploding the myth that newspapers are old school or static, and we are doing that with a combination of cold, hard facts from independent studies and edgy creative executions that speak to today's media buyers."

That advertising campaign was designed by the Martin Agency.  Earl Cox, its ceo and chief strategy officer, told the publishers at the convention, “ If the industry wants the advertising community to believe that it is a vibrant media choice, it needs to believe in itself. It needs to get its swagger back."

That job is made that much more difficult  given the fact that many media buyers these days are under 30 years of age. Their attention is planted firmly on the Internet, and newspapers have to work twice as hard to get the word across that their influential readers are worth more than many of those unique Internet visitors.

A sample ad to promote newspapers: "What kind of person is just as interested in jewelry ads as political news?"

Answer: "Somebody with an anniversary next week."

Don’t know why a jewelry ad next to a political story on the Internet wouldn’t work just as well, but at least they’re trying!

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