Fewer journalists: PRs, write the news yourself
July 23: Two newspaper giants are now showing some small hope on the financial front. But the net gains were made in large part by slashing thousands of journalism jobs in newsrooms across the nation. For PR pros who lost contacts and are trying to rebuild relationships with these decimated outlets, a strategy may be to think pitch second, make yourself indispensible to those left behind first.
The McClatchy Co. owns 29 daily newspapers, including the Miami Herald. On Tuesday, McClatchy reported net earnings of 30 cents a share for the second quarter of 2000. Analysts had thought McClatchy might lose $6.45 a share.
Shortly before that, the Gannett Co., which owns USA Today and is the country’s largest newspaper chain, also reported net earnings of 30 cents a share. In the second quarter of 2008, Gannett lost $10.03 a share.
Both companies experienced ad revenue losses of more than 25 percent during the quarter compared to one year ago. The improvements were driven by cost cutting, according to newspaper consultant Ken Doctor. “That's what was behind the "surprising" Gannett and McClatchy earnings this past week, not revenue growth” he blogged.
During the past year, McClatchy let go approximately one-third of its workforce; Gannett eliminated more than 3,000 jobs, announcing 1,400 cuts last week.
Relationships with journalists at those newspapers have been shuffled or eliminated. Opportunities to rebuild those connections won’t truly occur until the newspapers themselves have healed – not anytime soon – or non-traditional PR techniques are mixed with everyday tactics.
PR practitioner Sarah Evans has built a national reputation in part by running and creating two major online PR chats: VidProCo, a video chat where PR experts answer questions from peers; and #journchat, a top trending weekly live chat on Twitter between PR professionals, journalists and bloggers.
She notes that many of the newspapers where McClatchy and Gannett cut jobs are small dailies. With those newspapers, toss the old press release format out the door, she said. Instead, submissions should be written in newspaper story format, and send photos also. With drastically reduced staff, small newspapers are hurting for content.
“Editors have really appreciated press releases written like stories,” she said.
Evans is communications director at Elgin Community College in Elgin, Illinois. She was also in PR for five years with Advocate Health Care, the largest health care system in Illinois.
She said key to dealing with small dailies in this new environment is to submit items that have NOTHING to do with one’s job. Don’t think in terms of contacts lost, she said. Think about the local newspaper needing news now more than ever, and submit it. Thus when your pitch time comes, it may even be welcomed. “You want to become their go to resource,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll just be driving down the street, see something interesting, and take a quick photo and send it in.”
At larger dailies where jobs have been eliminated, Evans notes that newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and New York Times are creating hyper-local Web pages. Evans said she has had success approaching the Tribune through the TribLocal Web pages.
These Web pages have the potential to allow one to integrate one’s message both online and in print.
“You can tell your whole story there about stakeholder XYZ. I’m encouraged (by the Web editors) to post as much relevant information as possible,’’ Evans said. “Sometimes the material gets picked up elsewhere on the Web, and it may be considered for the print edition.”
--Michael Blankenheim
Saving the newspaper, one community at a time
July 17: Much as the old adage goes, “It takes a village to raise a child,” it takes a community to save a newspaper.
Like the rest of the country’s print media, the Gannett Company is struggling through rough times – papers have closed and merged, printing plants have been consolidated, and most recently, the company announced the layoffs of approximately 1,400 people company-wide. Despite these hardships, one small beacon of light casts some hope on the scheme of things: The Birmingham Eccentric outside Detroit is still printing after 131 years.
On May 31, five papers from Gannett’s Michigan-based Observer & Eccentric newspaper group were slated for closure. The Troy, West Bloomfield, Rochester and Southfield Eccentrics closed up shop on schedule, but the Birmingham Eccentric proved itself a survivor.
It all started when the bad news was announced in April. Faced with the demise of their community paper, the people of Birmingham quickly united and formed a committee dedicated to saving the paper. “When it was announced the paper would close, they (the community) galvanized into action in an amazing way. It was quite a sight to see,” said Birmingham editor Greg Kowalski in an e-mail interview.
Included in this diverse group are a number of the newspaper’s readers, the city manager, the mayor of Bloomfield Hills, the Bloomfield Township supervisor, and town councilman from surrounding communities. In addition, columnists, writers and photographers have offered their services for free, just because they wanted to help.
The committee’s efforts have included a Web site dedicated to generating new subscriptions, town meetings to rally support, and a trip to Gannett’s headquarters in Virginia for negotiations with David Hunke, who is also publisher of USA Today.
Despite having lost a day – the paper previously published twice a week but dropped to Sunday publication only – results of these efforts have been gratifying for the staff and community of Birmingham. Initially, Gannett officials wanted 3,000 new subscriptions generated by July 1. While that goal hasn’t been reached, the paper did add about 1,000 new subscribers in the past two months. Currently, the paper must obtain 5,000 new subscribers by Sept. 1 for it to survive. “I don’t know that we will reach that figure by that time, but as long as we can generate a steady stream of new subscribers, we will likely continue operating,” said Kowalski.
Alan Lenhoff is director of product development at the Detroit Media Partnership, which oversees the Eccentric’s business operations. Lenhoff, who has lived in Birmingham, said in a telephone interview that he respects the community’s dedication to its newspaper and its ability to accomplish tasks.
The Eccentric’s future remains unclear, however. Lenhoff noted that because two-thirds to three-fourths of newspaper revenue comes from advertising, increased ad revenue must also accompany the paper’s circulation growth. “We’re seeing some increase in advertising,” he said. “But is it something we can count on in the long haul?”
Perhaps the survival of the print newspaper depends on a community’s dedication to its continued existence. Kowalski said he has never heard of a community saving a newspaper in the same way. “It has boosted morale. It’s encouraging for everyone to see that a paper destined for extinction can come back.”
In his blog, Matt Friedman, co-founder of local public relations firm Tanner Friedman, calls it Birmingham’s second chance. “All residents who said they would miss their community newspaper must now agree to support it. It’s truly ‘use it or lose it.’”
How do we save the newspaper? The answer to this question is much sought after and the urgency grows with every newspaper’s passing. Media experts, bloggers and readers have suggested charging for online content and the American Press Institute recently laid out a five-point plan in May called the “Newspaper Economic Action Plan.” Among their suggestions were enforcing copyright laws, investing in new technologies and adapting to new devices that deliver digital content.
While in many communities, the local paper passes in silence, the value of the newspaper is apparent in Birmingham. “It is the oldest business in Birmingham,” said Kowalski. “Many people have been reading it throughout their lives. They cannot conceive of the town without the Eccentric.”
--Katrina M. Randall
TV job losses may be slowing
July 15: The bleeding of on-air TV news jobs by the recession may be slowing down, with TV journalists in 2009 apparently losing positions at about two-thirds the rate they did in 2008.
From January to June, on-air TV news experienced a net job loss of 401: 1,006 fewer TV journalists were working, while 605 entered new positions. If the rate continues, that’s a potential job loss of 800 for the year, compared to the approximately 1,200 jobs lost during 2008.
The numbers regarding local news anchors and reporters are from the Vocus Database, which lists major North American outlets and journalists. The database includes 2,082 local broadcast television stations in the United States and Canada and 9,086 television anchors and reporters.
Approximately 1,200 TV journalists lost their jobs in 2008, according to a survey of more than 300 TV news directors by the Radio-Television News Directors Association. Bob Papper, chairman of the Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations Department at Hofstra University, has conducted the survey for 15 years.
In an e-mail interview, Papper said, “Layoffs clearly continue, but the number of stations involved has slowed, and the numbers involved have dropped. Your figures back that up.” The Vocus Database shows 1,264 on-air TV journalists lost or left their jobs in 2008.
The economy was not the only reason for the decline in the number of working television journalists. Some voluntarily left the industry for other professions such as public relations. Others are waiting for non-compete clauses to end before they can work again, a phenomena occurring in good and bad economic times
Papper said for the rest of this year, “I think we'll see some weekend morning newscasts cut with some drop in personnel and/or redeployment.”
Local news, however, remains a critical part of the future of local stations, he said. “Until that changes, layoffs will be moderate, and I expect an increase in staffing again in 2010,” he said.
--Michael Blankenheim
Magazine revenue goes down yet again
July 10: There were 29.5 percent fewer magazine advertising pages sold in the second quarter of 2009 than in 2008, the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) announced late Friday.
That follows a 26 percent decline in the first quarter compared to the same period in 2008, while 2008 ended on a 17 percent drop compared to 2007’s last quarter. It appears magazines aren’t going to get thick, the indicator of a financially healthy magazine industry, any time soon.
Regarding the entire first half of the year, the PIB, which tracks the advertising pages and revenue of the magazine industry, showed there were 79,245.30 advertising pages sold so far in 2009, down 28 percent from first half of 2008.
Ellen Oppenheim, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Magazine Publishers of America, the parent group of the PIB, issued a statement with the revenue release. Like the previous three quarters, it was the recession impacting the magazine industry.
“The sectors most severely affected by the downturn – automotive, finance and retail – show the greatest declines in ad revenue and paging during the first half,” she said.
Concerning revenue, the drop in figures is smaller, but some magazine industry experts argue that advertising page counts are a better indicator of the industry’s health. Magazine rate-card-reported advertising revenue for the second half of 2009 closed at $9,095,979,740, a 21 percent drop compared to the first half of 2008.
A list of major magazines and their advertising revenue and pages for 2009 are here. Some of the major declines in advertising pages included Town & Country, down approximately 43 percent; Architectural Digest, 49.5 percent; and Business Week, nearly 37 percent.
Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research at TNS Media Intelligence, said in a telephone interview that he doesn’t believe advertising revenue for magazines, or the rest of the media, will improve this year.
And once the national economy improves, he said it would be four to six months before advertising spending, and thus media revenue, would show a significant increase. Advertising spending lags behind the economy by a number of months, he said.
“The carnage in the rearview mirror is pretty ugly, and the view down the road is murky,” he said.
--Michael Blankenheim
As the ad money dries up, the media is closing
July 8: The numbers are in, and 2009 has not been kind to the media so far. As advertising revenue continues to fall, the media struggles with sudden closures and cancelled launches. The troubles are reflected in the Vocus Media Database, which adds and removes major North American media outlets as launches and closures occur: television and radio shows dropped off the air, more magazines folded than launched, and many newspapers either shut their doors or went digital-only.
In broadcast TV, local productions were hit hardest by cancellations. Just 15 of the 123 cancelled news-based television shows between January and June were either national shows or those at network affiliates in large metro areas. The other 108 cancelled shows were in small media markets, quite often locally produced news, sports, talk or specialty shows.
Radio saw a higher percentage of national and major media market shows cancelled than television. But the majority of radio cancellations during the first half of 2009 were still locally produced affairs, which meant less local radio programming across the nation: of the 186 cancelled radio shows, 114 were in smaller media markets, 72 in major media markets or were national shows.
In the magazine business, the health of the industry is to some degree measured by comparing the number of launches with closures. There were 154 magazine launches in the first half of this year, compared to 556 magazines eliminated due to closings, which include consumer, business/news, and trade/industry magazines and newsletters.
Within consumer magazines, none of the launches involved a large brand name. Of the 154 launches, 84 were consumer magazines, many in the lifestyle or regional/city publication categories. There were also seven business magazines launched and 63 new trade/industry magazines.
The newspaper industry was hit by significant closings in the first half of 2009 (the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Baltimore Examiner and Seattle Post-Intelligencer all ceased publishing a print edition), but legions of daily newspapers haven’t folded. The vulnerability of the newspaper industry cannot be measured only by the number of shuttered papers, however. Newspapers across the country also closed 110 bureaus, according to the Vocus Database. Some of the bureaus were in Washington, D.C., but many were in areas close to the parent newspapers, a trend that would never have occurred during more robust times.
The last half of 2009 may not be much different. A financial analysis by Time magazine pointed to 10 major newspapers that could close by year’s end. Meanwhile, the number of ad pages sold by the entire magazine industry are expected to be available from the Magazine Publishers of America July 10. The magazine advertising revenue for early 2009 showed a 20 percent decline compared to first quarter 2008. Now, it’s clear that loss in revenue has impacted the media not only with a large loss in jobs, but in ever-decreasing numbers of media organizations.
--Michael Blankenheim
Parenting School Years, created earlier this year when Bonnier split Parenting magazine into two categories based on age group, announced that its circulation will climb from 500,000 to 550,000 in February 2010. Parenting vice president and group publisher Greg Schumann has been working to legitimize the Parenting School Years name, trying to eliminate the magazine’s free distribution in schools and doctor’s offices and beginning to sell the magazine on newsstands in Barnes & Noble.
July 24: While the rest of us are trying to weather the doldrums of summer with iced coffees and extra-strength antiperspirant, magazine staffers are breaking out the mistletoe and 
