“NAA” Items

Driving Web to Print

At the 2002 IFRA Asia Conference in Bangkok (held March 20–22, 2002), I presented findings from a research project close to my heart—one that explored how newspapers could actually increase print subscriptions using their websites. Yes, increase. At the time, this idea ran counter to the conventional wisdom that digital only eroded print. [This is is a summary from my presentation slides.]

The project was a collaboration between my consultancy, Finberg-Gentry, and a number of forward-thinking circulation and online leaders across the industry. Our research included:

  • Over 100 site reviews
  • 290 responses from circulation managers
  • And dozens of in-depth interviews with media professionals

We asked a simple but often overlooked question: What if the web could help sell the newspaper?

What we found was encouraging—and revealing.

Some newspapers were already leveraging their digital platforms to drive subscriptions, but these successes had something in common: cooperation. When online and circulation teams worked together, when they shared goals and data, the results followed.

Unfortunately, that kind of collaboration was rare. Too often, subscription links were hidden “below the fold.” Technology systems didn’t talk to each other. Customer data wasn’t shared. And the user experience—especially for signing up or managing delivery—was clunky at best.

We identified several key challenges:

  • Most newspapers didn’t have an integrated system for online and print circulation.

  • Subscription buttons were buried or mislabeled—making it hard for users to take action.

  • Only 15% of papers offered web-exclusive pricing.

  • Many didn’t even allow basic customer service functions—like stopping or holding delivery—online.

But there were bright spots.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune used contests to generate over 6,000 subscription orders a year. The Poughkeepsie Journal tracked retention of web-generated subscriptions and found they performed just as well—if not better—than other channels. The Houston Chronicle developed a user-friendly online service center that set a new standard for self-service.

What all these examples showed was that technology and strategy must go hand-in-hand. We couldn’t just slap a “Subscribe” link on a site and hope it worked. We needed to design digital experiences that respected what users had come to expect—speed, convenience, clarity—and we needed to do it without forgetting the power and value of the printed product.

In the end, my presentation message was simple: web and print aren’t rivals—they’re partners. But partnership requires intent. It requires shared ownership. And, perhaps most importantly, it requires that we stop thinking in silos.

The opportunity for newspapers to increase their audiences across platforms is still very real. But it’s up to us to build the systems, culture, and customer experiences to make it happen. The full report is available on this site.

A Blueprint for Building Online Services, 1995

Where to start? That was the question many newspaper publishers were asking in 1995. At least when it came to creating a digital / electronic version of the print newspaper.   The Newspaper Association of America’s [NAA] New Media Department published what they labeled as the first in a “series of executive strategy reports” to help companies get “on-line.”

From the opening section:

Where to start in choosing an electronic newspaper publishing platform depends in large measure on the company’s broader goals. With that in mind, and in deference to the non-wired, there are several valid goals that may propel news operations into interactive media.

The report was titled “Opportunities in Anarchy: A blueprint for building online services”. It is an interesting look at recent history.  There are examples from some of the newspaper digital pioneers. And there is a list of newspapers that were on the World Wide Web as of May 25, 1095. The list fit on a single page.  It was authored by Melinda Gipson and overseen by NAA New Media Department Director Randy Bennett.

Leveraging Web Sites for Newspaper Ad Sales

In 2005, the Newspaper Association of America [NAA] asked the Digital Futurist Consultancy to undertake a research and communication project to help newspaper companies better leverage their digital sites [the Web] to sell more advertising in their analog editions — the print product. The project was done by Howard Finberg and Leah Gentry, industry associates and friends from way back. Leah was a digital pioneer at the LA Times while I was working in Phoenix.

Here’s a taste of what we wrote for the NAA magazine, Presstime, about the project:

“Leveraging Your Web Site for Ad Sales,” a new NAA report, highlights ways newspapers can make better use of their Web sites to attract and service advertisers.

The report, produced for the Association by The Digital Futurist Consultancy, www.digitalfuturist.com, examines whether newspapers are using their sites to promote print advertising, to share their marketing and pricing data, and to provide customer service to new and existing advertisers. The report’s findings include:

  • 55 percent of the sites reviewed have an area for marketing the print edition.That still leaves lots of sites without any marketing information for potential advertisers.
  • 60 percent provide visitors with advertising rates and information about deadlines, terms and ad sizes.
  • Less than 10 percent provide a self-service area for advertisers. The report defines self-service as the ability to schedule and upload an advertisement.

We were proud of the report and saddened by the missed opportunities.

To read the full report just follow this link to the PDF.

Come Together: Defining the Complementary Roles of Print and Online

In 2001 I worked with the Newspaper Association of America’s circulation federation to develop a report on how print and online departments could work together to further the sales of subscriptions.  Working with me on the project was my consulting partner at that time, Leah Gentry.

From the report’s opening:

… the NAA Circulation Federation began looking at how consumers use print and online news sources and how their choices affect our business. We began looking at the challenges and opportunities both media would encounter as this new consumer channel developed.

Here’s what we wrote for the introduction to the report, which runs 72 pages.

Newspaper marketing executives confront more challenges and opportunities as the media landscape evolves at an ever-increasing pace. No longer can our audiences be solely identified as newspaper readership; online also is becoming an important path for customers to access news and information. As our customers select from an increasing number of routes to us, we conversely enjoy expanded opportunities for marketing to them through multiple routes and for using each platform to strengthen its siblings.

When we wrote the report, pay walls and online subscriptions were just a glimmer on the digital horizon.

The report is too large to load here, so I’ve put in my SlideShare account.

Helping the Newspaper Industry See into the Future

Randy Bennett, a friend and industry colleague for more than 20 years, ran an interesting project at the Newspaper Association of America during his time as a vice president.  Randy created the Horizon Watching initiative, with the hopes of being a ‘early warning’ system for newspaper executives.

Task-force participants, including newspaper executives and NAA associate members, set out to help publishers understand the external strategic forces that will shape the future of their industry.

I was delighted to serve on the committee. It was an interesting group to work with and I loved looking at the future.  I’m not sure the group got a chance to make the impact that I hoped would be possible. Presstime, the NAA publication, wrote about the project about a year after it started.

Changing indicators mean different things in different markets. “There is no right answer,” said Howard Finberg, director of technology and information strategies at Central Newspapers Inc. in Phoenix. The important point, from the task-force perspective, is to grapple with the indicators and create a process for dealing with their business consequences.

I did argue this point as well, often in various meetings:

“We’re trying to challenge the industry to think differently,” Finberg explained, adding, “We have no right to survive.”

Pagination: Implementation & Human Factors

One of my roles as Assistant Managing Editor of The Arizona Republic involved steering Phoenix Newspapers [PNI] into its next generation of pagination, the electronic design and production of newspaper pages.  In early March, 1993, the Newspaper Association of America held a Prespress Technology Symposium in Phoenix, AZ. I gave two speeches at that conference, one on how The Republic implemented its system.

If you were to create an adage about the installation of a pagination system it might go something like this:

Installing a pagination system is much like building a ship while already at sea – it is possible, but be prepared to get wet.

The second speech involved the human factors in pagination:

A design department using pagination can be one of two things:

  •  A creative department using a specialized electronic tool
  • A service or production department using new tools but following the direction of the paper’s editors

A design department using pagination can’t be both.

This is the fundamental linchpin of any discussion about the human factors of pagination. How to manage the people doing the work.

 

PRESSTIME magazine April 2009 cover story asking 10 experts to reinvent the core print product

Ten Experts Reinvent the Core Print Product, April 2009

The April 2009 cover story in PRESSTIME, the magazine of the Newspaper Association of America, asked 10 experts — inside and outside the industry — to write a mission statement for today’s core print product, say what they would keep if they were starting a print newspaper from scratch, and predict what that product would look like in two, five and 10 years. The piece was written by Mary Lynn F. Jones.

The guest list: Ken Doctor of Content Bridges and Outsell Inc.; Mario R. Garcia of Garcia Media; Juan Antonio Giner of INNOVATION in Pamplona, Spain; Charlotte H. Hall of the Orlando Sentinel and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors; Alan Jacobson of Brass Tacks Design; Ted Leonsis of Lincoln Holdings LLC and vice chairman emeritus of AOL; Tim J. McGuire of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University; Alan D. Mutter, the blogger behind Reflections of a Newsosaur; Kenneth A. Paulson of the Newseum; and Howard Weaver, formerly vice president of news for The McClatchy Co.

The story opens by noting that despite the repeated death knells, print still generated the overwhelming majority of newspaper company revenue. Paulson defined the print newspaper’s job as one that should

“accurately reflect what is going on in the community, meet readers’ needs for news and information and act as a watchdog on government”

Mutter argued that the framing itself was wrong:

Even though the newspaper generates 90 percent of a typical publisher’s sales, it is a mistake to think of it as the “core product.” The true core products of a newspaper company are its abilities to produce compelling content, build large audiences, sell advertising and make a profit.

On cutting sections and publication days, Doctor coined a term and a warning:

I call it “dayscrapping,” and it needs to be done judiciously. … Let’s not, above all, fool ourselves. Cutting back the core product doesn’t strengthen it. It may be a necessary evil, but pitching a less-is-more approach to readers won’t fool them.

Hall described the relationship between the two platforms in an image that stuck: print “stops the clock once a day,” and

One is the flowing river, changing constantly; the other is the rock on the shore, fixed and solid.

The predictions varied widely. Garcia expected compact and A4 formats inspired by magazines and books; Paulson expected smaller papers, higher single-copy prices and more reliance on circulation revenue; Hall declined to predict past two years. Jacobson was the most blunt:

In less than a year, there will be very few seven-day-a-week newspapers. In less than five years, newspapers will print for Sunday only. In less than 10 years, no newspapers will be printed.

The article notes that an expanded version of the report, including a podcast, was available at www.naa.org/presstime.

Editor & Publisher column from Nexpo 2002 advising newspaper CEOs to take stock of their digital infrastructure

Dancing To That Old Nexpo Beat

A column for Editor & Publisher, published June 24, 2002, timed to the Newspaper Association of America‘s big equipment and technology show, Nexpo, then under way in Orlando, Fla. The piece argues that the trade-show season is the right moment for a newspaper to take stock of its digital infrastructure — and that the review should not be left to the production and technical managers who happen to be walking the show floor.

It is important that the CEO be directly involved in these discussions. The CEO needs to bring all departments into the discussions, not just the production or technical managers who made it to Nexpo this week.

The column lays out a midyear technology review in four steps. Assess: each manager prepares a brief report on how well the department’s systems are working — including the smaller ones that “just hum along in the background” — and on how successfully employees actually use them, distinguishing technical problems from human ones such as lack of training.

Does the technology help employees do their jobs as effectively as possible? Does the technology work all the time (99.5% uptime)?

Review: go over projects already under way, led by the information-technology director in partnership with each department manager, and not as a finger-pointing exercise. Theorize: look two to five years out at revenue trends, readership trends (including interactive products such as the Web site), demographic trends — the column uses Spanish-language publishing and billing as an example — and technology trends, asking whether broadband, high-definition TV, or TabletPCs will change how advertisers reach customers and how readers get news. Plan and Coordinate: sort the resulting needs into short-term, midterm, and long-term buckets of 12 to 18 months, 18 to 24 months, and 36 to 60 months.

The closing advice is about the show itself: departments attending Nexpo should compare notes while they are still there.

Don’t wait until you get back in the office. Better yet, drag your colleagues to booths that have the technology that is important to your department. Make Nexpo a company event.

The column’s tagline reads: “Finberg, managing director of Finberg-Gentry, the Digital Futurist Consultancy, has worked in newsroom, information-technology, interactive-media, and corporate-strategy roles for several leading papers.”

Editor & Publisher column page on newspaper technology trade shows, November 2001

Our Trade Shows Need New Tricks

A column I wrote for Editor & Publisher‘s technical section, published November 19, 2001, arguing that the Internet had drained some of the excitement out of newspaper technology trade shows such as the Newspaper Association of America‘s Nexpo and Ifra‘s Expo 2001 in Geneva.

The piece notes that while attendance had been hurt by industry belt-tightening, the deeper change was elsewhere:

I decided the Internet was the culprit. It has stolen the thunder of new-product rollouts that used to rumble through the aisles of convention halls.

The column looks at three activities — product demonstrations, industry trends, and peer experiences — and how each had already moved online. Product specifications and FAQs were posted on company Web sites, some with interactive demonstrations. Trend-spotting, once assembled from bits of vendor conversation, had become overwhelming:

Those digital pieces of information have turned into large balls of string, almost too large to unravel.

And e-mail and discussion forums had replaced some of the after-hours “peer get-together” sessions where attendees once got “the skinny” on which systems worked and which ones didn’t.

Rather than declaring trade shows finished, the column offers suggestions for vendors: more formal industry discussions on the showroom floor, more direct acknowledgment that no single vendor can supply every solution, more dialog with customers and noncustomers about shared business challenges, and more vision.

None of what I suggest should take away from the experience of “kicking the tires” on the software and hardware being shown at various expos.

The column ran with a note identifying me as managing director of Finbereg-Gentry, the Digital Futurist.

Tearsheet of the September 17, 2001 E&P Technical column headlined "Circulation link remains rusty" about the convergence gap between print and online subscription systems

Circulation-Web Link Remains Rusty, 2001

A column I wrote for E&P Technical, published September 17, 2001, under the headline “Circulation link remains rusty” and the deck “The great convergence gap: Few connect online and print subscription systems.” The argument: while the industry’s convergence conversation was focused on sharing editorial resources across print, broadcast, and online, a bigger opportunity was being ignored — connecting newspaper subscriber-circulation systems to online e-commerce systems.

And while that’s a great thing, I think there is an even better convergence opportunity that’s being overlooked: linking newspaper-subscriber-circulation systems with online e-commerce systems.

The column drew on a then-newly released report from the Newspaper Association of America‘s Circulation Federation, “Come Together: Defining the Complementary Marketing Roles of Print and Online.” As the column disclosed, Finberg-Gentry, the Digital Futurist Consultancy, were consultants to the NAA on the project. A survey of 290 circulation managers supplied the central number:

Only 7% of those responding said their online and print subscriptions systems are electronically linked together. That leaves a whopping 93% “unconverged.”

What newspapers used instead was described as “a kludge of systems” — e-mail to the circulation or online department, sometimes printed out and retyped into the circulation system by customer-service agents. The column singled out one practice as the worst case:

The worst example is the kind of site that requires online customers to write down the customer-service telephone number, move away from their computers, and phone the newspaper to request subscriptions

The disconnect held across all circulation size categories, from the smallest papers to the largest. The column identified a twofold dilemma: little internal demand for a fully integrated customer-service solution (papers “can’t measure what they are missing,” making ROI hard to build), and the fact that most circulation-management systems were “home-grown” and would take resources to upgrade or replace.

The underlying problem was framed as a difference in premise between the two kinds of systems:

Many circulation systems are built on the premise of “delivery-list management”; Web e-commerce systems are built on the idea of “customer management

The recommendation was for circulation managers to build complete customer-management systems — tracking, for example, who is a subscriber and a frequent user of classified ads, or who has requested information from the Web site and is a Sunday-only subscriber — to support loyalty programs and upselling. The column also called for better communication between newspapers and their technology suppliers, arguing vendors needed to re-engineer away from legacy technology and toward the Internet as their platform.

Scanned pages of The Digital Edge's December 2000 article "Just Learning to Walk," with the Digital Futurist Consultancy website from that year

Learning to Walk: 2000 Look Back at Five Years Online

In December 2000, The Digital Edge, the online publication of the Newspaper Association of America‘s New Media Federation, marked the fifth anniversary of newspapers on the Web by asking seven veterans of the industry’s digital efforts to reflect on what they’d learned. The article, “Just Learning to Walk,” was written by Rob Runett, NAA Manager of Electronic Media Analysis. I was one of the seven, described in the piece as:

Howard I. Finberg, former vice president of Central Newspapers‘ CNI Ventures and CNI’s director of technology and information strategies. (He’s now sharing his wisdom as director of Tempe, Ariz.-based Digital Futurist Consultancy).

The others were Lisa DeSisto of boston.com, Todd Engdahl of DenverPost.com, John Granatino of Belo Interactive, Chris Jennewein of KnightRidder.com, Joe Michaud of MaineToday.com and Chris Morrill of the Hartford Courant’s ctnow.com.

Runett’s framing was that five years is nothing in the life of a medium, but felt like several lifetimes to the people who lived it. The questions ranged from proudest moment to biggest regret, and the answers were candid in a way industry panels rarely are.

My toughest hurdle was not technology. It was classified advertising:

The hardest challenge or hurdle we faced was getting the classified department to understand that that the company needed to move quickly or we’ll lose in the online marketplace. This was early in the development of the site [azcentral.com] and all we really knew was that our readers/customers wanted classifieds. And they wanted them for free, something that went to the opposite of the teachings at classified managers school. We didn’t have a business model, just a business “gut feeling” in 1996.

On business models, I argued that it was far too early to declare winners — and that interactive media was something genuinely new, not simply print extended:

Heck, we aren’t even walking yet and you want us to declare a college major?

Interactive, a.k.a. online, media truly is a new form of communication; it is less of an extension of our existing businesses or business models. Hey, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from our forefathers. Interactive media should share the best traits of its “parents” and then move out of the house quickly.

Asked what I would undo, I picked the pace of the Web build-out at azcentral — and the pull of an easier revenue stream:

I resisted the temptation and probably should have moved quicker to have the team build out more Web features and spent fewer resources on AOL. But AOL was sending us money every month.

The “most important lesson in two lines or less” question produced the best writing in the piece. Morrill: “The user comes first. The user comes first. The user comes first.” Engdahl: “This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.” Jennewein reminded everyone that traffic, advertising and low costs are Business 101, “but many of us lost sight of this during the dot-com boom.” I failed to follow the rules:

The basics, however, still matter: Quality. Accuracy. Fairness. Fun. Service. To do less is to fail the customer. I have also learned that I probably could never sum up in “two lines or less.”

The same December issue carried a column by New Media Federation President Gordon Borrell, vice president/new media at Landmark Communications, titled “Recommit or Pull the Plug.” Borrell noted that the Arizona Republic had cut 28 new-media positions in November and that Tribune Interactive had terminated 24 online positions in October — and listed me among those on the conference speaking circuit who had found themselves jobless since early summer. He quoted me on how I read the shakeout:

During the next year, the strong will get stronger; the weak will struggle. Those companies that recognize that the Internet is a new medium and not an extension of existing print models will do the best… What dot-com and traditional media businesses need to do is roll up their sleeves and get to work. No one said it would be easy — that’s why they call it work.

Borrell closed his column by agreeing: the 1990s were the years of experimentation and innovation, and what lay ahead was the real work.

Scanned along with these pages is a snapshot of the Digital Futurist Consultancy site as it existed in December 2000 — the biography, the scouting reports from DRUPA and the Jupiter conference, the Arizona Republic “learning journey,” and the 2020 Southwest Republic prototype done for the American Press Institute. Also included is the NAA press release announcing that year’s Digital Edge Awards, which named me the New Media Federation’s New Media Pioneer for 2000.

Reading these predictions now is instructive. DeSisto’s five-year forecast for boston.com included being on Palms, on cell phones and streaming headlines to LCD screens on taxicab roofs — and, she added, the Red Sox winning the World Series. She was right about the Red Sox in 2004, and right about the phones, though not in the way anyone in 2000 expected. Jennewein predicted that newspapers would dominate the local Internet space “with the specter of competition from dot-com startups long dissipated.” That one didn’t age as well.

What holds up, I think, is the thing I kept insisting on: that this was a new medium, not an extension of print. Twenty-five years later, that argument is still being relitigated in newsrooms — and the industry is still, in some important ways, just learning to walk. For others, they have been stopped in their tracks.

Title slide reading "Back to the future" from a July 1996 NAA marketing and technology meeting presentation in Chicago

Back to the Future: A 1996 Presentation to NAA Marketing

In July 1996 I presented “Back to the future” at an NAA marketing and technology business meeting in Chicago. At the time I was Senior Editor / Information Technologies at Phoenix Newspapers

The argument started with the bad news:

We can’t get there from here
Unless we change the way we think about our business

That change meant seeing the difference between publishing as an industry and publishing as an activity. Publishers love the industry — and the presses — “Just like the railroad owners loved trains.” But people love the activity. My historical example wasn’t computers at all: in the late 1800s a more affordable printing press gave even the smallest towns competing newspapers.

The heart of the talk was a scorecard, rating newspapers against seven digital consumer needs — knowledge, interaction, networking, sensory experience, ubiquity, aggregation and customization. The tally: two advantages, three neutrals, two disadvantages.

I also warned against the era’s favorite word:

Don’t “repurpose” content
Repurpose our role

And about the delivery debate: “It isn’t about dead trees OR live wires.” Forget online, forget the Web, forget about the wires — focus on information value.

Two outside voices made the point better than I could. Mark Hauptschein, director of strategy and business development at Ameritech:

“The old way of throwing advertising – spraying and praying – will weaken over time. Marketing will become a form of content.”

And Eric Berg, Price Waterhouse director of technology:

“In the late 1990s, getting access to information will no longer be an issue. The real issue will be avoiding information. We’re going to need new technology which will enable us to filter, sort and extract the information which is relevant to us.”

The process section covered the questions we were all avoiding — what is news, what are the jobs, what kind of organization — plus the return of the 24-hour newsroom and a caveat I still like: going from hot type to cold type is evolutionary; going digital is revolutionary. Make sure the paradigm really shifts.

There was good news, too. No new technology has yet replaced an older one, and information providers have always found a way, from newsbooks to newsletters to newspapers. I closed with Darwin — survival belongs to the most adaptable — and with people:

Give them information
Give them tools
Give them training
Give them room