NewsInc. Logo March 2, 1998, Vol. 10, No. 5

SMALL PAPERS ALPHABET SOUP: 3 CS (ADD SPICE, STIR WELL)

Cooking up ways a publisher can cater to its customers' needs

When the call came in late January, asking me to be the keynote speaker at the New Zealand Community Newspaper Association last week, I had to say no. My hectic schedule just couldn't afford the time it would take to fly down and back to the land Down Under.

The organization then proposed a novel alternative: Would I be willing to give a presentation about suburban newspapers via videoconference? That way I could remain in my beloved (if quite wet) San Francisco. The opportunity to try out a new toy was irresistible; I agreed.

The Kiwis had asked me to address the topic of the viability of suburban newspapers. I'm bullish on any papers whose circulation is smaller than 25,000, but I had three warnings. I call these the "three Cs of newspapers":

  • Community: The publisher of a smaller paper knows the community like the back of his or her hand. Whether the competitor is a big metro, an ad agency specializing in direct mail, radio, TV, cable or on-line, the local publisher has a big advantage: relationships.

    In the journalistic arena, nobody knows the city council, the county supervisors or the water board better than the community newspaper. Readers always want the news of the school district, and the small publisher is frequently the only place to get that kind of information.

    In the advertising arena, nobody knows the local retail landscape the way a community does. Big papers talk about dividing their sales staffs into geographic and vertical market teams; the smaller publisher knows the pulse of the retail community off the top of his or her head.

    In the circulation arena, the community newspaper has the edge with its database of subscribers and nonsubscribers, offering the opportunity to deliver ROP advertising, inserts or direct mail.

  • Clustering: The trend toward bringing groups of titles together under one administrative umbrella is gaining momentum in the United States, and it's one I hope New Zealanders are considering. Whether it is merely sharing administrative ("back office") services, or more ambitiously combining production, a clustered group of papers provides a great many efficiencies that a stand-alone title just doesn't have.

    Companies ranging from Gannett Co. Inc. (at its White Plains, N.Y., operation) to Thomson Newspapers (now at virtually all of its sites) to MediaNews Group (its California clusters are becoming legendary) are practicing clustering to great advantage. Many publishers are now folding large groups of weeklies into their clusters, making them even more efficient. (With more than 100 titles, suburban Boston's Community Newspaper Co. is a leading example of how to make weeklies more efficient.)

  • Computers. As a longtime technologist, it's not surprising to find me recommending even greater reliance on computers. In the smaller newspaper environment, many editorial workflow issues can be handled in nondigital ways (i.e., someone shouts, "Where's that story?"). Here, to make the paper more efficient, computer dollars can be pointed toward systems based on client/server or a web browser, that allow for Internet access and that have full-page output.

    Advertising systems can be made more sprightly with client/server (or, again, web browser) systems, and outside ad salespeople can be made more efficient with sales force automation tools. Database marketing is a clear winner, once again by using the smaller paper's intimate knowledge of the community. Data warehousing can make a paper more profitable and raise subscriber retention.

    And last, on-line is not the purview of just the big papers. A small paper that can build a niche for itself on the World-Wide Web can become and stay profitable through not only banner and classified advertising, but also by becoming a facilitator of transactions between consumers and retailers.

    There's every reason to be bullish on community newspapers – provided, of course, that a publisher is willing to take a look at the bigger picture, and to realize that small towns can't mean small minds.

    – David M. Cole

    Inside ...

    From NEWSINC., March 2, 1998, Copyright © 1998, The Cole Group. All Rights Reserved.

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