Spin Control, WSJ, NYT, McClatchy

Wall Street Journal print circulation is flat, online growing

According to Editor & Publisher, the Wall Street Journal is set to announce next week that its Monday through Friday average daily circulation for the last six months has remained constant.  Even though they have failed to increase their circulation figures, they have remained constant when most other papers are reporting sliding figures.

The WSJ did manage to increase its individually paid circulation by 2.4%, meanwhile other-paid (which includes employee, hotel, Newspapers in Education and third-party copies) circulation declined by 16%.  Online subscription has increased by 7.4% from one year ago.  In addition, visitors to WSJ.com increased by 137% this year.

Despite downturn, newspapers still profitable

According to PaidContent, although ad revenue is down 19 percent and interest expenses on $2.1 billion of debt, newspaper companies are still profitable.   

McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt believes that ad revenue declines are cyclical and newspapers will not go out of business.

PaidContent’s Lauren Rich Fine offers this advice, “For an industry that well understands it serves the greater good, come to terms with lower margins. And then go private!”

Arthur Sulzberger: New York Times willing to evolve

On Wednesday, October 22, chairman and publisher of The New York Times Company, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. made a speech at theWebbyConnect conference about transformations at the New York Times.

“Our 21st-century news cycle, with its trials and tribulations, feels even more immediate because of our access.  It is reasonable to ask: Do we need all this news and information? Do we want all this news and information? Can we tolerate all this news and information?,” Sulzberger asked.

He believes that in this day and age people are looking more towards trusted and pragmatic voices.  He also advocates an effort to reject “the increasingly frenzied ‘apocalypse now, tomorrow, and forever’ talk.  Quality content matters…trustworthy voices are more important than they have ever been.”

Earnings Call: Gannett Expects More Declines On The Print Side, But Digital Growth Looks Stronger

from paidContent.org by David Kaplan

[In progress] Things are so bad in the newspaper industry and the economy at large, Gannett (NYSE: GCI) is suspending the monthly revenue reports, said Gracia Martore, the company’s CFO, during the morning earnings call. After highlighting the pain afflicting newspapers from the dismal housing market and global financial crisis, Gannett CEO Craig Dubow said that the challenges will only accelerate the company’s drive to build up its digital business.

For example, apart from the poor Q3 showing—as reported earlier, net income plunged 32 percent to $158 million ($0.69 per share) and revs slid 8.9 percent to $1.64 billion—Dubow noted that while the wider shifts in the newspaper business, as well as the wider economic problems pushed real estate and employee classified ads down for most of its segments. That said, as it has been for most newspaper companies, digital has remained a bright spot. After pointing out that the Q3 digital segment brought in $77.5 million in revenues, compared to just $17.1 million the year before, broadcasting’s online revenue was up 15 percent. Considering the slowdown in online ads, the double-digit growth is either a testament to how much focus the company has applied its web extensions or how far behind it was last year. Perhaps a bit of both.

Asked about trends on the print side during the Q&A, Dubow said there hasn’t been much change—in other words, more and more declines. As for details about particular categories, auto ad spend, retail, packaged goods and telecom have been down significantly, with autos in the double digits.More to come

Topix quietly builds momentum in small towns

The lament of newspapers has become familiar by now: With readers moving online, the once community-binding dailies are falling apart, losing both the readers and their advertisers. That’s especially true for small town papers. (Ed: false statement) But a growing site called Topix is picking up the slack, self-reportedly having reached over one hundred million pageviews a month.

Topix has come a long way since its inception. Originally conceived as a news aggregator consolidating thousands of sources for local audiences, it shifted its focus several years ago to include the users, allowing citizen journalism, commenting, forum discussions and polls. That’s when it began to grow in earnest, as people in small communities began to find their local news portals on Topix and participate.

When I first talked to CEO Chris Tolles earlier this year, several newer startups like Outside.in were getting heavy press. Tolles noted the difference between Outside.in’s slick interface and the more dated look of Topix without concern, suggesting that his company gets little attention in Silicon Valley because it serves a middle American audience with different tastes. “How do we get people to do one thing in mass numbers?” he asked, pointing out the simplicity of the commenting system to answer the question.

At that time, about six months back, Topix was getting a staggering 120,000 comments per day on its forums and articles, but the growth has continued; most recently, it was receiving an additional 30,000 daily comments…

Topix may have an early mover advantage on a large segment of the population, but it is also challenged to sell its userbase, who are distributed countrywide in towns of 5,000 to 50,000 people. Tolles points out that Manhattan advertisers feel little confidence in placing ads for a user group they don’t understand, especially as the results of a campaign may not be clear. “The future of advertising online is an understanding that the effects are somewhat unmeasurable,” Tolles opines, although conceding that advertisers have yet to come to terms with that idea.

It might also be hard to prove to anyone but close partners that Topix is really experiencing high growth. The company told me their internal Google Analytics numbers showed 115 million pageviews in September, split among 15 million unique visitors — nearly a four-fold increase since the 3.9 million uniques it logged in September 2006. But while one measurement firm, ComScore, says that Topix is the third largest newspaper site online, another, Compete, shows it on a plateau of around 5 million uniques.

Newspapers Saw Worst Online Ad Revenues Ever, Changing Slowly

Newspapers Saw Worst Online Ad Revenues Ever in Q2

from ClickZ News Blog

Despite lifelines from Yahoo and quadrantOne, the newspaper industry is gasping for air as its online ad revenues continue to sink. It’s worse than ever. Second quarter revenues actually contracted for the first time, following disappointing Q1 growth of less than 10 percent.

In Q2, online ad revenues were around $777 million, down from $804 million in Q1 2008, amounting to a -2.4 percent change.

Now, in addition to battling steeper-than-ever declines in print classifieds revenues, newspapers must contend with a severe drop in Web ad dollars – the only hope the industry has had for counteracting print ad decreases.

With ad budgets steadily tightening, I think it’s safe to say we can expect the waters to get even choppier for newspapers. Hopefully they can hang on without the need for desperate measures. 

US: Is linking to outside news sites the future?

from editorsweblog

News providers have recently begun linking to outside news sites on their web editions, this marks a significant shift in attitude towards recommending rival sites as alternative sources of information. 

An example of the changing attitude towards linking to other sites is on the recently launched site, the Political Browser by The Washington Post.  The new section of their site aims to provide readers with the best in political news coverage – even if that means linking to stories by rival newspapers.  This move, according to executive editor at the Post, Jim Brady, will allow their site to become the front door to political coverage.

Time Inc. Preps ‘Two-Year’ Plan To Get Through Rough Economy; Newsweek Tries To ‘Reimagine’ Itself

from paidContent.org by David Kaplan

With Time Inc.’s print ad revenues trending downward and digital growth likely to miss the company’s expected 53 percent gains, chairman and CEO Ann Moore is working on a two-year plan designed to manage the magazine unit through the downturn, TimesOnline reports. Moore doesn’t reveal too many details about the strategy, saying she “doesn’t know” if there will be layoffs.

– Blame the bankers: Moore does try to bat away rumors about a possible sale of the UK-based IPC division, which houses titles such as NME, Country Life, InStyle and its Southern lifestyle titles, Moore responds: “Where did you hear that from? I know, wishful thinking from bankers hoping for a mandate.” Later on in the interview, she defends Time Inc. as a “cash cow” for Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). Specifically, Moore points to Time Inc.’s $907 million profit last year, which represents 13 percent of the parent company’s content businesses. So where does all the negative talk around magazine companies come from? She feels that “investors were too focused on trying to find double-digit growth,” adding:  “I hope that the lesson from this crisis is that we have less bankers, and return to the basics with more people who actually make things.” Given that alcohol sales tend to do better in a downturn, Moore says she’s considering bringing IPC’sDecanter mag and website to the U.S.

– Newsweek tries to modernize (again): The weight of a long history can be a bit of a drag on magazine redesigns, which more often than not, really just try to tweak the margins. Mediaweek, citing unidentified sources, says that Newsweek execs are trying to “reimagine” the 75-year-old mag as if it were having its debut today. Last year, the news mag completed what was then considered a major overhaul, with fewer, but more dramatic photos and longer articles by a range of outside contributors. So while it seeks to change course on the print side, Newsweek hasn’t forgotten about the importance of its online end. Last week, the Washington Post Co title hired Pamela Raley, a former online ad sales exec at Hearst and Disney, to the new post of chief revenue officer. Her main focus will involve wringing more revenue out of Newsweek’s online operations…

Opinion: Newspapers fail to build on their strengths

Ed: Another writing focused view of the newspaper industries that ignores the economic strengths and weaknesses of the newspaper business. 

Posted by Lauren Drablier on October 7, 2008 at 1:57 PM

In a recent speech, former of the editor of The Age, Michael Gawenda, gave his opinions about the newspaper industry.  Gawenda believes that changes taking place in the news industry are causing more problems and they are failing to “produce newspapers that attract the sort of fierce and life-long loyalty they once attracted.”

Gawenda believes that “it is a failure of imagination and commitment, a result of a lack of experience and knowledge and love of newspapers” that is causing content, readership and revenue to decline.  

He went on to stress the importance of change in the industry, “but for real change, courage is needed, and vision and risk-taking and, above all, a commitment to newspapers and journalism that, frankly, I do not see at the moment.”

Another problem that Gawenda focused on was the fact that many newspapers do not have control over their websites and as a result “all the talk of newsroom integration is rendered meaningless.”

He went on to comment “one of the great mistakes newspapers have made in recent years is that they have tried to address their weaknesses rather than build on their strengths. So we have shorter stories, bigger headlines, more graphics, more bells and whistles, more tricked up, overblown pages, more and more pages that are meant to look visually rich but, in the main, look desperate and garish“

Gawenda also believes that “newspapers need to get smaller, clearer in their focus and that “most of the lifestyle sections should migrate to online.”

“Newspapers must not become what The Independent in Britain has become: in the phrase used by its present editor, a viewspaper. The Internet is awash with commentary.  This is not to say that newspapers should abandon commentary and analysis. But commentary should really be just another form of reporting: tell me something I have not thought about. That can be done only by people who know more about a given subject than I know. Too many columnists actually know less than their readers.”

Finally, Gawenda stressed that stories should be well written and compelling, “well edited and with headlines that are smart and, if possible, entertaining but, please, no lousy puns, which it seems to me have become the standard newspaper headline in some places.

Newsroom revamp and redesign for Tampa Tribune

US: Newsroom revamp and redesign for Tampa Tribune

Following a raft of job cuts at the long-standing regional newspaper, the Editor, Janet Coats, has announced that the Tampa Tribune will be undergoing a redesign and newsroom revamp and merge for Tribune, WFLA-Ch. 8 and TBO.com.

For the newsroom, the focus will be web-first and a new plan to work as one newsroom for the newspaper and its stable mates. Editor Coats said. “It’s kind of a return to a lot of newsroom structures we tried in the ’90s, but didn’t put a lot of energy into. It’s a different way of looking at the data we gather.”

The new Tribune/WFLA/TBO.com newsroom has been separated into several subject areas: data, deadline, watchdog journalism, personal journalism and grassroots. When a story breaks, staffers from the deadline area work to gather material for the Web site first, while the other teams will develop plans for their own stories.

Coats’ wants the focus to be on delivering information to consumers in whatever form they may need it.

Few details are available on the newspaper redesign, which is due to launch Monday. Essentially, however, the newspaper will be slimming down its weekday edition and expanding its Sunday newspaper, where Coats feels readers have more time to enjoy a newspaper.