"Effective
lobbying, legal help, strong professional
leadership, alert staff and broad-based
membership..."
"ONA does an excellent job!" - Member response
to an ONA strategic planning survey
At a time when most newspapers are cutting pages and losing circulation, there's at least one Ohio man with high hopes for his print product.
The Toledo Blade celebrated 175 years of publication at the annual Ohio Newspaper Association convention, and President and General Manager Joe Zerbey thinks the paper has a long life ahead.
"We're going for another 175," he said.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland gave the opening address of the convention, congratulating the paper and awarding its employees with a commemorative plaque.
Representatives from Ohio’s Statehouse, including Sen. Mark Wagoner from Toledo, joined the reception to offer their congratulations as well.
“When you talk about Toledo, the Blade is the pinnacle of strength in the community,” said Wagoner, who started his career as a paperboy for the Blade in third grade. “Erected in 1835, the Blade predates the city itself.”
Guests mingled and snacked on hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. A piano player set the mood with his electric keyboard near the bar.
Those attending the convention received a decorative paperweight commemorating the Blade's 175th year and copies of Frank Brady's “The Publisher”, a biography of Paul Block who purchased the Blade in 1926 and was publisher until his death in 1941.
"I'm really proud of our newsroom," Zerbey said. He was quick to acknowledge the hard work of the newsroom staff, especially the Blade’s executive editor, Kurt Franck, who has taken an interest in the business side of the paper.
“I think it’s important for the top editor of the newspaper to know what’s going on in the business,” Franck said. “All of our business models are changing, so we have to know what’s going on.”
Even so, Franck said “having a newspaper around for 175 years is quite an achievement.”
In recent years, Zerbey said his staff has been working to find new ways to reach more readers. A new partnership with the University of Toledo delivers the paper electronically to every student's university e-mail for $1 in student fees each year.
"Lots of people say the Web is killing papers, but that's nonsense," Zerbey said. "The Web is a complement to the print product."
Brian Kelly addresses newspaper industry turnaround
Brian Kelly, head football coach at the University of Notre Dame, gives the keynote address at the 2010 ONA convention.
Photo by Jessica Kanalas
By Cody Francis
Brian Kelly knows how to turn a program around.
In his 19 seasons as a college football head coach, Kelly has posted a 171-57-2 record.
At the time Kelly was hired as the head coach of Central Michigan University, the Chippewas had only won more than three games once in four years. In Kelly’s second season at CMU, he led them to a 6-5 record, the team’s first winning season in seven years. After the Chippewas finished 9-4 in his third season as coach, Kelly left for the University of Cincinnati.
In his second season with the Bearcats, Kelly took the team to the top of the Big East, helping Cincinnati win their first-ever outright conference title. After going to two BCS games and posting a 34-6 record with Cincinnati, Kelly left for Notre Dame.
With all the problems Kelly has faced as a football coach, it might be tough to find an issue that would intimidate him.
As the keynote speaker at the Ohio Newspaper Association Convention held Feb. 11 in Columbus, Kelly found one. In the first five minutes of his speech at the convention, Kelly expressed his concern for the situation newspapers currently find themselves in.
“I don’t know if there’s a more complex set of issues out there that face any one organization than the set of issues that faces you right now,” he said. “When I get a chance to talk to different groups, I try to associate them with things I have done in my career, which is turn around programs, bring them back. For me, I don’t know that I’ve ever dealt with the complexities that you have to deal with right now.”
Kelly pointed out the emergence of the Amazon Kindle, the iPad and other digital media newspapers must compete with to make money. He stressed the importance of not worrying about competing with such things right now, but to make a plan for the future to adapt to the changing media scene. He compared the issues to ones he faced going into his first year as the head coach of Cincinnati.
“There’s a lot of questioning about things that are happening right now, but I don’t think that’s pertinent,” he said. “I think what’s pertinent is what is the future going to look like and your ability to paint that picture. That’s what I had to do at the University of Cincinnati three years ago. We didn’t think about what the problems were, we thought about where the future was going to be.”
Throughout his speech, Kelly said leaders in the newspaper industry must take chances to make progress.
“I think great leaders, once in a while, have to be courageous. They’ve got to be able to step out on that limb and say ‘this is where we’re going, this is the picture that we’re going to paint,’” he said. “Listen, if we want to do this, if we want to be successful, then we have to change the way we think around here.”
Listen to Kelly's full address to convention attendees:
Panel tackles pricing for online content
By Jackie Valley
Jim Shine, left, publisher of the Lima News, and Joe Gallo, executive vice president and corporate chief information officer of The Dispatch Printing Co., discuss pricing online content during the 2010 ONA convention.
Photo by Jessica Kanalas
Sixty percent of newspapers polled in a study said they are considering making readers pay for their news online.
Their biggest motivation? They want to capture new revenue opportunities and preserve their print circulation, according to research conducted by the American Press Institute and ITZBelden.
“As you can see, we’re at the beginning of a pendulum swing,” said Drew Davis, president of the American Press Institute, referring to the shift away from free access to online news into a “period of experimentation.”
During research, API identified five doctrines for newspapers dealing with online content:
True value: Establish true value for the content.
Fair use: Capture revenue from content that travels with rights.
Fair share: Negotiate for more money from online news aggregators.
Digital development: Create platforms for e-commerce and data sharing.
Consumer centric: Refocus on readers and users.
Davis cited a recent news study in the Baltimore area as evidence for the necessity of fair share. The study revealed that 95 percent of everything passed on as “news” in the Baltimore area through broadcast stations, online news sites and social networks began in the newsroom of The Baltimore Sun.
“News really does begin in the newsrooms of the print industry,” he said, adding that it’s crucial for newspaper to negotiate licensing fees for their content.
Late last spring, The Lima News decided to make the leap to paid online content, which publisher Jim Shine called a “true learning experience.”
The Lima News decided to require users to pay for local news online -- sports coverage, breaking news and general community news and features. Other content available online, such as obituaries, calendars and national news, remained free.
Seven-day subscribers of the print newspaper have free access. Others must pay set fees, such as $4.95 a month, for online access.
Shine said The Lima News organized an aggressive campaign to spread the word about the coming fees. But as the launch date neared, few people had registered to pay for access.
That changed Aug. 17 when The Lima News blocked access to its local news.
“Not surprisingly, the phone started to ring,” Shine said. “Until the day comes when they can’t have access, people aren’t going to listen.”
After the first week of blocked access, 250 people had registered to pay for the local news content online.
“It was a little disappointing,” Shine admitted. “I didn’t expect to get thousands, but I thought we’d do a little better than 250.”
Since then, those numbers have picked up with The Lima News averaging about four non-subscribers registering to pay for access and about 10 paid, seven-day subscribers registering for access each day.
The “very slow, steady growth” has resulted in about 940 non-subscribers paying for access and about 4,500 seven-day subscribers registering for online access so far, Shine said.
Now, Shine said The Lima News’ goal for 2010 is to increase its online page views again. After the switch to paid content, the page views declined about 28 percent.
“It’s a little nasty, and you have to have a thick skin,” said Shine about the move to paid content online. “We had some very upset people, and they don’t hesitate to call or e-mail you.”
Joe Gallo, executive vice president and corporate chief information officer of The Dispatch Printing Co., said The Columbus Dispatch has been rolling out a registration model for its Web site.
“The beauty of the Internet is we don’t need to do this in the dark,” he said. “We incrementally implement pay walls and tests.”
Gallo suggested newspapers get analytics about their content before making decisions about paid content on their sites.
For example, The Columbus Dispatch originally thought it had a stronghold on Ohio State University coverage. But after looking at analytics, The Columbus Dispatch realized it has deeper, unique coverage of state politics and the Columbus Blue Jackets.
“Get analytics to move forward with very sound risks,” he said.
Weekly newspapers share troubles, solutions
By Kristine Gill
ONA members trade ideas and discuss best practices during a roundtable session at the ONA's 2010 convention. Pictured in the center is Ken Douthit, whose term as ONA president ended at the convention.
Photo by Jessica Kanalas
Editors from community newspapers around Ohio sat down to discuss common issues facing their publications during a round table session. Groups gathered at tables labeled “The Internet”, “Web Sites”, “Social Networking” and “News Coverage/ The Economy”, which allowed for participants to share best practices in a more intimate setting.
At the news coverage table, editors from such papers as The Jackson Telegram, Chagrin Valley Times and the Willard Times-Junction discussed the common issues facing their communities.
"It was a hard year," said Carol McIntire, editor of the Carrollton Free Press Standard. "But it wasn't as bad as it could have been."
The group spent a few minutes discussing the state of school levies in their respective coverage areas, concluding that while not all readers try to understand the importance of those levies, it is still important to report them.
"Local school levies have always been a part of our local coverage," said David Lange, editor of the Chagrin Valley Times. "It's a big concern, and in terms of our news coverage, we need to reflect that."
The biggest issue facing all communities has been the economy and editors at these papers have worked hard to ensure their audiences are getting the type of coverage they expect.
More editors gathered to discuss how social media and the Internet have played key roles in complimenting newspaper coverage, especially in community papers.
ThisWeek Community Newspapers is a group of 24 weekly papers in the Columbus area. Each paper will be required to start a Twitter account in the coming weeks. The papers have about five active accounts now, with about 3,300 followers. With the new mandate to start and manage a Twitter account, that number is expected to grow.
"We tweet meeting times for city council and things like that," Gail Martineau of ThisWeek said. "We tweet links to stories, what we're working on, what time meetings are, breaking news. We use it for crowd sourcing."
Martineau said each publication will be expected to Tweet five times a day, and thinks the new requirements will grow an online audience for ThisWeek’s publications.
Butler stresses importance of online content control, introduces AP tool
By Cody Francis
Kate Butler, vice president of newspaper markets for The Associated Press, speaks during the 2010 ONA convention.
Photo by Jessica Kanalas
Kate Butler, vice president of newspaper markets for the Associated Press, addressed a growing problem for her company and news companies at the Ohio Newspaper Association Convention Feb. 11: the unauthorized use of original materials.
Butler said with the new ways consumers are gathering news, it is hard for companies like the AP to track who is using its materials.
“Content is often used in ways that we have not authorized,” she said. “This siphons off readers and traffic, and the potential advertising revenue that we would receive had we had that traffic.”
Butler pointed out the main reason consumers are gathering news from unauthorized sources is because of the reliance on search engines.
She said research has shown online news consumption has actually grown 2.7 percent in the past year, but the time spent per visitor on each site has declined 1.8 percent. The same research also shows that 44 percent of online news consumers use Google to scan news headlines rather than scanning headlines on news Web sites.
“Google and Google news have increasing power over this universe and that’s a concern to us,” Butler said. “The main reason is that for as many as 40 million consumers in the U.S., they are using search as their remote control for news rather than remaining loyal to legitimate source. So while you used to have people bookmark news sites, your sites, and go back to them, now people tend to go to a search engine, type in a topic and use that as a way to get to a site.”
As an example, in the four weeks following Michael Jackson’s death, 7.1 percent of people searched Jackson on Google, which was the leading Web site where people went to find out about the pop star. CNN.com was the only credible news Web site ranked in the top 10, ranking tenth with 15 percent of traffic. The LA Times was next, ranking 20th.
“We certainly believe by leveraging the power of the cooperative we can build new models for how authoritative digital content is delivered and consumed,” Butler said. “It’s very important, on the one hand, to protect our content, but, on the other hand, to go where the audience wants us to be — where they’re consuming content.”
The AP has launched a campaign to deal with the problem, which will include a program called the AP news registry, which enables the content producer to track where and when content is used.
“It’s like a letter in an envelope,” Butler explained. “The address will say where content came from and the two line says who it’s from and where.”
To learn more about the registry and more solutions to problems regarding unauthorized use, visit ap.org/newsregistry.
NPR's Ari Shapiro discusses reporting for Justice Department
By Jackie Valley
National Pubic Radio’s Ari Shapiro received a new introduction at the Ohio Newspaper Association conference: White House correspondent.
The justice correspondent for NPR’s news magazines recently learned he will join two co-workers covering the Obama administration -- a new chapter in his distinguished radio career.
“I walk down the streets and see more ear buds than ever before,” Shapiro said in a telephone interview. “NPR’s challenge is to get in those ear buds.”
Radio, formerly the source for the news of the moment, is now more influenced by consumer choice in the wake of the Internet, Shapiro said.
“One of the ways the Internet is changing journalism is it’s putting much more control in the hands of consumers,” he said. NPR followers can go online to hear podcasts about specific news topics, such as education and the Justice Department.
Even so, the Internet hasn’t changed a key ingredient of good journalism -- developing and maintaining relationships with sources. Shapiro, who couldn’t attend the conference because of snowfall in Washington, D.C., spoke via telephone about an experience dealing with Justice Department sources.
After the Justice Department accidentally let NPR in on a conference call, the department’s communications director called Shapiro to delete the recording. Caught up in the moment, Shapiro agreed to delete the recording -- much to the chagrin of his editor.
Shapiro called the communications director back, hoping to parlay his benevolence into an exclusive with the new attorney general. He thought his plan worked: He was headed to Baghdad and set to interview the attorney general.
The interview happened, but not in time. The Justice Department had given the exclusive to the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”
“It is hard to overstate the visceral reaction I had when that e-mail showed up in my inbox,” Shapiro said.
Despite the setback, Shapiro said the experience taught him a lesson.
“In my experience, covering the Justice Department has been a series of learning from mistakes,” Shapiro said.
He expects the same to be true when he begins his new assignment at the White House in a few weeks.
Detroit Media shares background of print model changes at Free Press and News
By Kristine Gill
Janet Hasson, left, and Rich Harshbarger, at podium, discuss the Detroit newspapers' circulation model that combines e-editions, home delivery and newsstand sales in a unique way.
Photo by Jessica Kanalas
Last year, Detroit's two newspapers took a huge gamble, changing their distribution model drastically. This year, two representatives from their marketing and audience development departments updated Ohio Newspaper Association conference attendees on the status of that change.
The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, managed by the Detroit Media Partnership, went from daily home delivery of their papers, to delivering them just three days a week. On Thursday, Friday and Sunday, subscribers receive the paper at their doorstep. Every other day of the week, subscribers can access the electronic edition of the paper, or purchase a copy of the printed product at newsstands.
Why did they do it?
"Frankly, because we had to," said Janet Hasson, senior vice president for audience development and strategy at the Detroit Media Partnership, who cited financial difficulties. "We knew we had to act and act quickly. No one was going to come to the rescue of Detroit."
Rich Harshbarger, vice president of consumer marketing, emphasized the planning and audience analysis that went into the decision.
"This was a messy process for us," he said. "But it's one that we still stand by and one that has been very successful."
Harshbarger said sales reps met with existing ad clients to talk about their feelings on the distribution model change. Their input helped Harshbarger and others make key decisions affecting the change.
"It was originally what we called a two plus five plan," Harshbarger explained. "After talking to advertisers, we went to three days of home delivery."
Harshbarger said his team also met with readers.
"We conducted hundreds of interviews," he said. "We went to their homes, coffee shops, workshops. People were relieved almost to talk about the elephant in the room."
Once they decided on a model, they implemented it and waited for the results, which have been surprisingly positive.
"We estimated we would lose at least 50,000 subscribers because of the change," Hasson said. "But we've only lost 23,000 due to model change."
Hasson also said online readership has increased and they have not lost advertising dollars due to the change.
Aside from the drastic change in the distribution model, the partnership also worked to create a multimedia advertising campaign. They hired a local singer/ songwriter to compose a track for a commercial they aired in movie theaters and through iTunes.
They purchased spots on digital billboards, partnered with the local TV station and such businesses as Speedway, Panera and Caribou Coffee with promotions such as buy a donut, get a paper for a penny.
Overall, Hasson and Harshbarger agree their work is far from done, but that the decision to change was a good fit for them.
"Readers can adapt to anything," Hasson said. "The challenge is keeping up with all the different formats."
Panel talks about outsourcing delivery, consolidation and insourcing print jobs
By Cody Francis
Tom Voigt, vice president and general manager of the Bryan Times Publishing Co., talks about cutting all carriers and using the post office to deliver his company's newspapers.
Photo by Jessica Kanalas
In Tom Voigt’s 40 years in the newspaper business, he said he had never come close to laying off as many people as he had to lay off in 2009.
Voigt, vice president and general manager of The Bryan Publishing Co., spoke Feb. 11 as part of a panel of three innovators in cost-saving at the Ohio Newspaper Association Convention in Columbus. He was joined by Monica Nieporte, publisher of the Athens Messenger and regional vice president of ACM Ohio, and Joe McKinnon, vice president of operations for Cox Ohio Media Group.
Voigt started off the panel and focused on his work with the Northwest Signal in Napoleon, Ohio. He said the six-day daily newspaper was cut down to a five-day daily after being forced to cut the Friday issue. It also cut all carriers and went to a post office delivery system.
Voigt said there were many questions about the reliability of delivering with the post office, but the venture has been a success so far.
“What happens if the post office is off Saturday? Where’s the backup at 3 a.m. in the morning? Can we really count on two people delivering to 11 post offices in the dead of the night in rain, sleet or snow? Well the answer is yes, yes and yes,” he said.
In the first month after the changes were implemented, Voigt said his newspaper’s bottom line improved 111 percent. The second and third months saw improvements of 146 and 59 percent respectively.
He said the most critical part of the newspaper’s success and keeping his subscribers happy was his complete and total honesty throughout the endeavor.
“We announced all changes to our readers immediately,” Voigt said. “We told them significant changes would take place Oct. 1. We told them in a letter on the front page. We were totally honest. We reminded them we had gone from four new car dealers to one new car dealer and other stores had closed.”
Nieporte faced an issue of consolidation. Her three dailies, two bi-weeklies, two weeklies and four shoppers were spread throughout Southeast Ohio. She started to treat the facility in Athens, where the papers are printed, as a main production facility because all papers were circulated within an hour range of Athens.
“The first thing that we did is we thought what we had to do at the local level,” she said. “What has to be done in that local community? Local stories, local sales, some local customer service on the circulation side. Aside from that, almost everything else could be done out of Athens.”
Nieporte then rearranged her graphics department. She cut the number of employees from 15 graphic artists to eight; those remaining did all graphics for all 11 papers. They also use the graphic artists only when they are needed instead of having them work traditional, eight-hour shifts. Nieporte said the changes in the graphics department cut costs by 35 percent.
Overall, Nieporte reports $200,000 in savings from her 11 newspapers.
McKinnon followed Voigt and Nieporte’s discussions with his own success story about insourcing.
In 1997, McKinnon was responsible for process design of Cox Ohio’s $91 million Print Technology Center (PTC) in Franklin, Ohio.
The printing plant began printing the Dayton Daily News in 1999 and was approached in 2001 by the New York Times to print its Sunday advance sections.
McKinnon was operating three different production facilities within a 40-mile radius in 2003: the Springfield News-Sun, Butler County Printing, which printed for Middletown, Hamilton and a group of weeklies, and the PTC.
In 2004, as the Daily News’ circulation continued to dwindle, McKinnon said the plant brought in the Springfield paper and all the products Butler County Printing was responsible for, and began “aggressively” selling press time. They also contracted with the New York Times about printing its daily.
“By 2004, we were running several dailies, several weeklies and then we started to realize we could do this,” McKinnon said. “We had the automation to do it, we could be very competitive in the marketplace if we started going out there and selling our press.”
The PTC now prints five dailies and 39 weeklies, as well as some commercial print and direct mail publications.
“To give you an idea of the growth and where we went, in 1999, when we built the PTC, in one week we had 19 different press runs,” McKinnon said. “… Last week, we started the machine up 132 times.”
Cohen says there's no single solution to reaching new audiences
By Jackie Valley
Barbara Cohen speaks about emerging new audience strategies at the 2010 ONA Convention.
Photo by Jessica Kanalas
Before offering advice, Barbara Cohen admitted she doesn’t have the perfect solution to reaching new audiences. In fact, no one does.
“I don’t have the silver-bullet answer,” said the founder and president of Chicago-based Kannon Consulting. “My clients don’t have the silver-bullet answer. It’s really all about trial and error in the markets.”
Even so, Cohen said newspapers should go beyond the standard 18- to 34-year-old mindset when thinking about audiences.
“It makes me crazy when people just talk about age -- 18- to 34-year-olds,” she said. “That is not a life stage. There are 18-year-olds in college. There are 34-year-olds with three kids.”
Instead, Cohen said there are three better ways to segment life stages, which can then be sorted by upper-income, middle-income and lower-income statuses:
Young -- Singles and couples younger than 45 who have no children at home.
Family -- All people who have children living at home.
Mature -- All people who are 45 and older and have no children living at home.
Although life stage segmentation is not the best gauge, Cohen said it’s a good place to start when thinking about audiences. Data is readily available, and it’s easy to communicate from the newsroom to advertising.
But audience data shouldn’t just be a collection of numbers.
“At a minimum, if you think about geography, go to the neighborhood,” Cohen said. “Drive around. Walk around.”
And before making final decisions, Cohen said challenge your data sources to “make decisions on facts, not fantasies.”
“Don’t rely just on what you think,” she said. “It’s always shocking what data can show.”
Cohen said she’s tired of hearing newspapers say they need to completely revamp their content to fit emerging audiences. She argues the newspaper industry needs to look at more than content, such as convenience, branding and depth.
“If we keep beating ourselves up to say we have to have something unique, we’ll be beating ourselves up for a long time,” she said.
The question that plagues Cohen at night is “What will it take to be successful?”
Cohen thinks the answer lies in two underinvested capabilities: consumer marketing and collecting data.
“Let’s go back to good old consumer marketing,” she said. “And ask the question, ‘Who?’”
Bulletin Staff
Content for this special Convention Edition of the ONA Bulletin was provided by students from Kent State University's School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Susan Kirkman Zake, KSU instructor and student media advisor
Cody Francis
Kristine Gill
Jessica Kanalas
Jackie Valley
The slideshow to the left displays all photos taken by the KSU staff in a single presentation.
