Well, OK, Orange County Register publisher Terry Horne didn’t say that exactly, but pretty close:
Horne believes the combination of offerings will fill gaps for both readers and advertisers. The subscription-based Register will include premium content targeted at a mostly older readership. Free community weeklies go to a broader base with a hyper-local focus. OCregister.com will provide free content to a younger audience. Local advertisers will have a similar choice to get their message out on any or all of these platforms.
The strategy is in response to what he calls the perfect storm: advertising revenue is down 14 percent; newsprint price increases have added $5 million to annual costs with more price hikes on the way; and paid circulation continues to decline, down 3 percent in the six months ended Sept. 30.
Horne implemented a series of changes last month to address the immediate crisis, including 25 layoffs, consolidation of the stand-alone business section into the main news section, elimination of the stock tables, the end of Business Monday and a new system dividing local news into six separate geographic zones.
“We’re trying to create a newspaper to serve Orange County given the economic challenges that we face today,” Horne said.
Nothing like this has been announced in the High Desert — or, if it has, no one is telling me — but I could certainly imagine something like this working here. The other day, Peter was just commenting that it seems like our online audience and our print audience overlap, but are, for the most part, very different.
If I were publisher — and that’s as funny to me as it no doubt is to you — I might have Star-like papers in Adelanto, Apple Valley, Barstow, Hesperia, Oak Hills, Victorville and maybe one or two other areas. There would be no Daily Press news staff. Every day, an editor in Victorville would grab the day’s stories from each of the outlying regions, and stick it in a (slimmed down) Press-Dispatch, but the focus at each of the bureaus would be the weekly free publications, which would run longer stories of local interest that might (or might not) matter to anyone else in the High Desert. Online, a similar structure would exist, with the Press-Dispatch site working like HighDesert.com does now, and just serve as a portal to all the individual sites, showing new stories as they appear.
Readers would win, because they would have their choice of daily regional coverage (for a modest fee) or free weekly coverage of exclusively local information. Advertisers would have a choice of reaching either a general audience or a very narrow, very specific one. (It’s probable that different advertisers are interested in residents in Apple Valley than are interested in Adelanto residents, for instance.)
I’m sure there are problems with this model: I don’t have access to all the information about costs or long-term contracts or what have you. Still, I bet the OCR plan works to a large degree. We shall see.
Peter put together this slideshow of the lunar eclipse last night. Neat stuff.
I think the ghost moon you see in some photos is a reflection of the lens on the camera’s mirror. Or something. He’s the award-winning photographer, not me.
From an e-mail with the ominous title “Application status.”
This is to inform you that your application for admission to the (full-time Master of Science program or part-time Master of Science program; Master of Arts program; Doctor of Philosophy) the Graduate School of Journalism is complete for review. You will receive a decision from the Committee on Admission by April 1, 2008.
Five weeks and five days to go.
I missed this when it first came out, but it echoes something I’ve been saying for a while now: The newspaper “business” is actually several businesses in one, and keeping them all lashed together, like some three-legged-race gone horribly awry, doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Most newspapers don’t have a core competency. They have several. They are much closer to vertical monopolies than they are to point solution providers. They are not just news gatherers and reporters and editors. They are printing companies. They are distribution companies. They are ad sales companies. They are direct marketing companies. They are digital media companies. Many are good at all of these functions. Digital competition and audience fragmentation are fracturing the business models that have built these great, vertically integrated companies. While they are clearly not sustainable as they are, they might be quite sustainable in horizontal pieces. Here is my thinking:
* Local news and news editing. Newspapers are generally pretty good at local news and news editing. The problem is, they can only leverage that capability in their print newspapers and on their Web sites, and the two together are not likely to be able to pay the bills required to run great newsrooms. OK. Why not spin them out as news companies, continue to have them providing news to the print and Web precuts, but permit them to service any number of other businesses, from newsletters to specialty weeklies to global news services? Let them free to do what they do best and to develop new and diverse customer bases.
* Distribution. Newspaper companies are one of only a few companies that pass virtually every home in their markets once a day and have the capacity to deliver physical products. Many newspapers have had success converting their distributors into alternative distribution networks, delivering everything from magazines to marketer samples to other print news products. Let these folks free to find the best ways to pay for the trunks, cars, drivers and gasoline.
* Ad sales and direct marketing. Newspaper companies are generally the leading sellers of advertising in their markets. Why sell just for the newspaper? Why not sell for other local media? Why not sell for national media to local advertisers? Why not become local marketing solutions companies, since most local markets have very few ad agencies that have expertise beyond creative and strategy? Let sales sell, and let them fill up their quiver with lots of other media and marketing solutions.
* Printing. Printing is very expensive, and getting more so. The commercial printing business is growing fast, and many newspapers run commercial printing as a sidelight, to help defray the capital investments in printing and plant and the expenses to run them. Why not make commercial printing the primary role of the operations and make the newspaper just another client? Let the printers print for everyone.
* Digital. Most newspaper companies have local Web sites and digital teams. While they help the newspaper “go online,� many of the things they do go well beyond the normal role of the local newspaper, whether it be in Web site design, email newsletters, qualified lead generation, search marketing, and much much more. How about letting the digital folks free to build the best digital businesses possible, and just have them license the news feeds and leverage the sales company, if they so desire.
Is disaggregating a newspaper company much easier said than done? Certainly. Is doing it probably one of the keys to survival for many newspaper companies? I think so. What do you think?
(Source.)
