\n Newspaper Association of America: Industry News
\nBest-Selling Author Andrew Winston to Discuss the Value of Green for Newspapers
\nIn preparation for NAA's Nov. 19 webinar on the value of green, I recently chatted with best-selling author and environmental strategist, Andrew Winston.
He will give a 30-minute presentation during the webinar, which is free to all NAA members. Participants will be invited to ask questions during and after the presentation.
Winston, who has advised Boeing, Disney, DuPont, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Toyota and Wal-Mart, will describe the forces coming to bear on companies and why going green should be a strategic priority.
He will demonstrate the importance of environmental strategy in hard times, and explain how these leading companies are using environmental thinking to survive the downturn by getting lean. He also will explain how going green can keep employees engaged and help companies emerge from the downturn stronger than ever.
You can register for the webinar here.
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Enhancing the Newspaper-Retailer Partnership
\nWhile newspapers have historically been great partners for retailers, retailers and ad agencies are looking for newspapers to provide more accountability on what newspaper advertising delivers.
"This is the only medium with no accountability for delivery," Maryann Kiley, group activation director, for MediaVest, said during a free NAA webinar about retail-newspaper partnerships.
Most retailers, Kiley said, can't tell whether sales results point back to newspapers. Even if they run a coupon in the newspaper, they often don't change the number on the coupon so they can't tell which newspaper the sale came from, she said. Kiley suggested newspapers try to get a retailer to do one or two newspaper-only campaigns to show the value of newspaper advertising.
However, Kiley said, there is "serious and real concern" about recent circulation declines. Retailers, she said, wonder what is being done about it—are newspapers trying to grow their circulation or maintain it.
Agencies, she said, would like newspapers to move to a guaranteed circulation, like magazines, and offer CPM pricing. Then, she said, retailers would only pay for the audience they are getting.
Kiley offered some suggestions for newspapers looking to enhance their partnerships with retailers. They are:
--Many retailers are doing cause-related marketing for the holidays. Partner with them to provide free or discounted pages to support the cause, she said.
--While there is a lot of interest in digital preprints, few retailers understand them. Provide education on digital preprints without a sales pitch, she said.
--Help retailers understand that a digital ad having one message and one go-to (either a Web site or coupon to download), will give them better results.
If you missed the webinar, you can listen to it here later this week. Look under "November" for "Retail Newspaper Partnerships."
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A Closer Look at Paid-Content Solutions, Part 4
\nDerick Harris, founder of NewsNav, doesn't believe readers will pay for online news so he created a paid-content solution that is advertiser supported. Harris explained how NewsNav would work during a recent NAA webinar.
By categorizing news into different "pods," advertisers can sponsor specific online channels. For instance, a cinema could sponsor movie news and a bookstore could sponsor book news, said Harris, who has created 1,100 pods or categories for news.
Rather than changing customer behavior (by asking them to pay for online news), NewsNav changes the economics of online news by creating a new business model, Harris said.
And, by using Creative Commons licenses, newspapers in the NewsNav network can share their content with each other. The more publishers that join the network, he said, the higher the value of the network.
This model, he said, allows advertisers to follow their audiences online and target their demographics.
This webinar was part of a series of free webinars on paid-content solutions offered to NAA members. These webinars delve deeper into the technology and uses of the paid-content solutions featured in NAA's recently released Platforms for Monetizing Digital Content.
The next free webinar is Tuesday, Nov. 3, and will feature IBM. You can register here.
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Newspaper Content Valued Online and In Print
\nNewspaper Web sites attracted more than 74 million monthly unique visitors on average in the third quarter of 2009, according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America. That number represents more than one-third (38 percent) of all Internet users.
Newspaper Web site visitors generated more than 3.5 billion page views during the quarter, spending 2.7 billion minutes browsing the sites over more than 596 million total sessions.
Combine this news with the latest research from NAA’s recently released 2009 Circulation, Facts, Figures and Logic report which shows higher levels of subscribers retaining subscriptions, with subscriber \“churn\” falling dramatically to 31.8 percent in 2008, compared with 54.5 percent in 2000. This increase in retention comes despite the fact that many newspapers are raising their single-copy and home-delivery prices. The average seven-day, home-delivery weekday rate rose 8.6 percent while 32 percent of newspapers priced their daily edition at 75 cents at the end of 2008 (vs. just 2 percent in 2006).
\“Newspaper publishers continue to aggressively reinvent their business models, leveraging trusted brands to attract a growing and sophisticated audience in the digital space,\” said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. \“At the same time, industry executives have adopted smarter circulation strategies that are growing circulation revenues even though paid circulation numbers are lower. This places the focus where it belongs: retaining core readers who deliver maximum value to advertisers while harnessing digital platforms to broaden our medium’s audience and position us strongly for the future.\”
Jennifer Saba, Editor and Publisher senior editor, writes about this latest news here.
A Closer Look at Paid-Content Solutions, Part 3
\nWith more Web users visiting social networking sites than newspaper Web sites (17 percent vs. one-half of 1 percent), CircLabs has developed Circulate, which bridges social and traditional media.
Delivering news and social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook will increase user engagement with the news, said Jeff Vander Clute, president.
Circulate was incubated at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri with support from The Associated Press.
Here's how it works. Consumers sign up with their local newspaper for Circulate and then a thin purple Circulate bar will appear in their browser window at the top of every home page they visit. Consumers can click on the bar to expand it and reveal headlines with stories geared to their geographic location, interests and Web browsing behaviors, said Martin Langeveld, executive vice president and a former newspaper publisher.
Consumers can click on the headlines to get the full article and, if the content is not free, they will be prompted to pay. The bar also includes links to Twitter and Facebook, and the logo for the user's local newspaper, which when the user clicks on it, will take them to the paper's Web site. "Circulate is a way for the news to come to them," he said.
The content, Langeveld said, will initially be served out of the AP datebase but eventually will include other sources. In addition to the Web browser bar, CircLabs plans to build a smartphone application and offer e-mail notifications, Langeveld said.
No technical integration is required, said Langeveld, only one line of Java script is needed to get the program up and running. Circulate will send traffic to your site, he said, while showing consumers your brand name.
Circulate will be beta tested later this year. So far, 10 to 15 newspapers have signed up for beta testing, Langeveld said. CircLab is looking for a few more papers to participate. If you are interested contact Langeveld at martin@circlabs.com, or Vander Clute at jeff@circLabs.com
This webinar was part of a series of free webinars on paid-content solutions offered to NAA members. These webinars delve deeper into the technology and uses of the paid-content solutions featured in NAA's recently released Platforms for Monetizing Digital Content.
The next free webinar is Tuesday, Oct. 27, and will feature Microsoft. You can register here.
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A Closer Look at Paid-Content Solutions, Part 2
\nNewspaper publishers considering paid-content solutions for their Web sites were offered the second in a series of three free webinars from NAA. Today's webinar featured Haymaker from Mather Economics.
These webinars, free to NAA members, delve deeper into the technology and uses of the paid-content solutions featured in NAA's recently released Platforms for Monetizing Digital Content.
Mather Economics has been working with a number of newspaper companies, including Gannett Co., Lee Enterprises, Dow Jones and Media News Group, to develop a new pricing system for renewals of print subscriptions. About a year ago, Mather Economics developed Haymaker, a payment platform that handles multiple pricing formats simultaneously, including subscriptions and micropayments.
"Newspapers are content creation companies—the delivery channel is all that is changed," P. Mather "Matt" Lindsay, president of Mathers Economics, told webinar participants. There are six areas of content that Mather Economics thinks makes the most sense for newspapers to sell, he said. They are: sports, business, local news, arts/entertainment, special features and editorials. This is content that consumers can't get anywhere else, he said. Another area newspapers need to monetize, Lindsay said, is archives of past articles.
Payments can range from micropayments to multi-paper subscriptions to print and online bundles, he said, adding that Haymaker could offer different pricing depending on whether content is accessed on a personal computer or a mobile device. Haymaker also is able to capture customer data and page views for marketing purposes, Lindsay said.
The next free webinar is Tuesday, Oct. 13, from 2-3 pm EST and will feature CircLabs and Journalism Online. You can register here.
—Lisa Rabasca \n\n
Knight Commission Recognizes Importance of Local Journalism
\nIn its report, released today at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, recognizes the importance of local journalism to a democracy and the current plight of many media companies, especially those that produce journalism. The Commission calls for fostering more and better journalism through policies that encourage innovation, competition and market incentives.
Never before in history has there been so much opportunity for innovation in journalism, said Theodore B. Olson, former Solicitor General for the United States and co-chair of the Commission. "Never before has there been so many opportunities for ideas and creativity."
The Commission began meeting in June 2008 and its members included Robert W. Decherd, president and CEO of A.H. Belo Corp., and Mary E. Junck, chairman, president and CEO of Lee Enterprises Inc.
"This is a time of real change," Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said when he was presented a copy of the report at the Newseum. "The FCC is acutely aware of the dramatic changes affecting the media. The Internet is disrupting traditional journalism."
NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm participated in a panel discussion at the Newseum with former FCC chairs Michael Powell and Reed Hundt, NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller and John S. Carroll, former Los Angeles Times editor.
"In the medium term, what journalism needs is to continue to have the financial support that it requires on a scale that it can really serve a community," Sturm said, adding that local newspapers and broadcasters are "very important" to their communities. He referred to policies that are linked to a 1970s marketplace, saying policymakers have not yet realized it is a different market and those policies need to be revised.
It's not about preserving any one specific medium, said Schiller, but continuing to provide consumers with information how and when they want to receive it. "As the number of journalists declines," she said, "the concern is not only that there is less pressure to release government information but there are less professional journalists watching and that doesn't go unnoticed by those in power."
Carroll expressed concern about blurring the line between "people who find out what's going on (journalists) and people who recycle it (bloggers and talk show hosts)."
You can download the full report here. An archived copy of the Webcast is available at www.knightcomm.org and you can follow a public online discussion on Twitter by searching for #knightcomm.
--Lisa Rabasca \n\n