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News this week from NJPA
May 29 Multimedia for Newspaper
Websites June 5 Rescheduled
from May 8 June 12 News
Writing Workshop June
12 Leadership TODAY: New Rules for Challenging Times June 17 NJ
Press Foundation's Golf Outing
This week! The New Jersey Legislative Correspondents Club is carrying on its century-old tradition of poking fun at this year’s headlines and the folks who make them. We would like you to join us! In order to give everyone ample time to visit with their colleagues before the show, the Club has once again arranged for an extended cocktail reception which will include an open bar, carving & pasta stations. Dessert and coffee will be served at 8 pm in the ballroom, followed by the show. Our aim is to provide everyone with “extended networking time” and less time restricted to your tables. Date: Wednesday, May 14
Cablevision Announces Deal to Buy Newsday Under the deal, Cablevision would own about 97 percent while Tribune would retain about 3 percent and ownership of real estate assets. “Newsday is one of the great names in the
history of American journalism, and it is both an honor and privilege to return
Newsday back to Long Island-based ownership after nearly 40 years,” said Charles
Dolan, Cablevision’s founder and chairman. “We admire Newsday’s strong editorial
voice and reputation for quality as well as its leadership in print and online
journalism. We are committed to maintaining Newsday’s journalistic integrity and
important position in the marketplace.” Dennis Grabhorn, president of Local 406, which
represents many Newsday employees, took a cautious approach the word of the
deal. For the rest of the article: http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bznews0512x,0,7341028.story
MinnPost: Nonprofit News Site Reaches Six
Months The notion that the nonprofit/philanthropic
sector could pick up some of the slack from shrinking newspaper newsrooms has
been in the air for several years now. Edmonds: Overall, how is MinnPost doing six
months on? Edmonds: You told me you need a second round of
start-up donations, comparable to the first of $1.5 million, to get to
sustainability. Assuming you are successful, is MinnPost unique to the state and
the opportunity created by the travails of the dailies? Or do you think it would
be a sustainable model elsewhere? For the rest of the article: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=123&aid=142940
Read the Fine Print: Smaller Newspapers
Still Thriving Amid all the dire talk of falling revenues at big newspaper publishers, some good news gets lost: Many smaller operations are doing quite nicely – even during an economic downturn. Above all, smaller newspapers are benefiting from their still-unchallenged ability to deliver local audiences for local advertisers. There’s no question that small-town daily newspapers are faring better than most regional and national papers, which tend to dominate the headlines. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, comparing October 2006-March 2007 to the same six-month period a year earlier, the total Sunday circulation of newspapers with circulations less than 20,000 was down a modest 2.7% compared to 4.6% for newspapers overall, and an average decline of 7% at 12 leading metro dailies, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Boston Globe. In some cases, small-town papers are actually enjoying circulation growth. … That’s not the only place that smaller newspapers seem to be defying gravity: Many are also enjoying revenue growth, said Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell, Inc. “Small dailies and weeklies have done better, both in advertising and retaining their circulation. They’re not growing greatly, but they have been up a little bit, versus the big city dailies, which have been sharply down.” So what’s behind their continuing success? Above all, they’ve had more time to adapt to the Internet, says Doctor. Many smaller markets still lag behind big metro areas in broadband penetration… More importantly, however, small markets present more barriers to entry to online competitors than big metro areas. … Small-market newspapers also benefit from the conservative approach of many local advertisers, which have not hurried to move their ad dollars online as quickly as big national brands. This gap will close eventually, too, but Doctor said small-market newspapers may actually benefit from the shift – provided they retain their positions as essential local news sources, while moving to embrace online capabilities that work to their advantage. … With their local primacy, small-market newspapers are also capturing more national ad dollars online – especially from national businesses with a local presence, like big-box retailers and other national chains. Shawn Riegsecker, the CEO of Centro, an online platform that allows national advertisers to execute campaigns across many local newspaper sites, says: “Brands are especially mindful of being associated with the best content, and the best content has traditionally resided in newspapers.” For the rest of the article: http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=82250&Nid=42518&p=356351
Newspaper Survival Tactics: Context and
Substance Newspapers and the substantive journalism that has long been their hallmark are fighting for survival – and they might just be able to help each other. Newspapers can reinforce their own value online by reinventing and delivering more of the contextual analysis and in-depth reporting that’s all too scarce in the slapdash interactive marketplace. It is a race against newspapers’ plummeting subscription and advertising dollars, and consumers’ diminished expectations for pithy information. There are no quick fixes. Newspapers are making a valiant effort to embrace change and utilize the advantages of online existence to provide richer, deeper coverage. Trading their economically ineffective physical plants and tangible paper is unavoidable and disruptive. … … Even as their online transformation continues, newspapers can reintroduce their distinctive, substantive reporting and information management for a new age. Helping consumers to fall in love with words and analytical thinking is a worthy challenge – given that the domination of interactive mobility will thrive more on images. Make real reporting and enterprising analysis king; eliminate all the redundant minutiae. Make it cool being intellectual and thought-provoking. The key logistical challenge will be re-acclimating editorial, production, advertising and other business personnel. The key strategic challenge will be creating a must-see destination of intellectually engaging content that matches target readers with advertisers. Elevating news content above commodity status by creating value with meaningful context and analysis does not have to be an exercise in futility. It can be a unique refuge from the bombardment of quick-fix news – and a boon to advertisers willing to pay a premium for association. … The reality check begins with making editorial decisions based on reader relevance. … * Make consumer-centric contextual information mobile and universal. It has to play on portable phone-sized screens and be reliably manageable anywhere in their world. … * Get over demographic hangups. The current political year has rendered encouraging evidence that younger consumers are passionate participants in critical matters. This momentum can be used to introduce dynamic ways to serve useable news. * It’s about quality, not quantity. Journalists who push the news envelope with much-needed context and challenging insights must be treated as valuable assets. … * Select a particular focus and vertical special-interest categories, and hit them hard. Being all things to all people on the Web is not nearly as effective as becoming a must-read for consumers and advertisers who share the same interests. * The only way to reclaim lost turf is to reinvent it and to do it better. The success of Craigslist has come at the expense of newspapers that virtually forfeited their crucial classified ad business. * Monetize the community connections to become hyper local before they permanently slip away. … * Avoid becoming an aggregator of headlines and story snippets – that’s not journalism. For the rest of the article: http://blogs.mediapost.com/on_media/?p=168
As Markets Emerge, Newspapers Find Growth While gloom haunts the newspaper industry in the United States and Europe, business could hardly be better in much of the developing world. New newspapers – some backed by governments, others by business moguls and international conglomerates – are springing up from Rwanda to Tajikistan, attracting readers and advertising dollars. In many of these markets, increasing literacy rates dovetail with growing disposable income to create millions of new daily readers. Some Western media companies are forging partnerships and trying their hand at start-up companies as well. Reading a newspaper is something to aspire to, instead of a throwback to a bygone era as it is perceived in much of the West, said executives in India, one of the fastest growing newspaper markets. “Anyone who can read or write is still looked at with a bit of awe” in many markets in India, said Rajesh Kalra, a veteran journalist who is now chief editor of IndiaTimes, the Internet arm of Times Group, which publishes The Times of India. … When people first learn how to read, they want to let people know, Kalra said, and “the first thing you want to do is be seen to be reading a newspaper.” The literacy rate in India hovers at about 61 percent, according to Unesco, but the number of literate youths is above 76 percent, signaling that education is improving. … “We do see a big potential in emerging markets,” said John Ridding, chief executive of The Financial Times, which is based in London. “There is strong and growing demand from these markets for strong industry and business analysis.” In April, The Financial Times launched a Middle East edition from Abu Dhabi, which Ridding hopes will increase the paper’s circulation “substantially” from the several thousand readers it currently has in the area. In India, The Financial Times sees “big opportunities for expansion” and is working on an “exciting project,” about which he would not elaborate. Several sources in India who did not want to be named say the Financial Times is in advanced talks with the Indian media conglomerate Network 18 to produce a new daily business paper. In China, The Financial Times is about to start a monthly Chinese language magazine called RUI, which in Mandarin Chinese means “intelligence.” The magazine, aimed at the upper-middle-class Chinese consumer, will carry a mix of lifestyle and money-management articles. … The proliferation of newspapers does not mean that journalism is necessarily flourishing. In some of these new or fast-growing markets, absolute freedom of the press is untested, and unbiased news coverage is unfamiliar. In others, editors and journalists are openly mixing advertising and editorial content. Some founders do not even bother to pay lip service to the idea of spreading truth, uncovering injustice and comforting the afflicted. … Tajikstan’s Three in One, for example, plans to carry crosswords, television schedules and questions and answers on medical problems. “Such a product is much in demand in our society,” Akbarali Sattorov, its founder, told a local news agency. For the rest of the article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/11/technology/PAPERS.php
‘Business Elite’ Prove to Be Voracious
Consumers For the rest of the article: http://www.brandweek.com/bw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003801443&imw=Y
Recession Got You Down? Marketers Want to
Help Don’t worry. Be happy. “Americans by nature are a very optimistic
bunch of people,” said Mr. Beavis, who happens to be a native Australian. Carat
found, he said, that while consumers aren’t Pollyanna-ish about the nation’s
state of affairs, they are looking for more hope and optimism. And indeed, some messaging does appear to be
taking [that] approach, with ads from Harley-Davidson, Best Buy, Chevrolet and
JetBlue among them. Even presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama touts change
and hope in his messaging. Andy Bateman, CEO of Interbrand, New York, said
he hasn’t seen a return to optimism among Americans and believes advertisers who
try to counteract how badly we feel are opportunistic. Comparing Barack Obama’s
hope message to other brands’, he said, isn’t a fair contrast. For the rest of the article: http://adage.com/article?article_id=126979
TV Upfront’s Bonfire: Ringing Five Alarms The upfront is here – because we smell the
smoke of number-crunching laptops. For the rest of the article: http://blogs.mediapost.com/tv_watch/?p=944
So What IS Microsoft’s Strategy for Search?
The reason the media has been obsessing over the Microsoft-Yahoo acquisition story for the past three months is simple: tech writers and ad industry scribes, whose grim task in life is to inject some spark into what is usually a stupefyingly dull stream of self-serving product announcements, were finally gifted with a hot story brimming with titanic egos, knuckle-whitening timetables, unconscionable blunders, and apoplectic shareholders. … What a relief from the invisible anonymity we search types usually wallow in! But while the Microsoft-Yahoo drama provided terrific entertainment for us all, it’s just a gaudy sideshow, because Yahoo’s fate is irrelevant both to the future of search and Microsoft’s future role in the search ecosystem. Microsoft admitted as much when it acknowledged that Yahoo was always just a means to an end – not a strategy but a simple building block in a long-term strategy. So what is Microsoft’s search strategy? … $44.6 billion goes a long way, and a quick survey of the market caps of some mature tech companies reveals the kind of value you can get for what Microsoft would have paid for Yahoo. For example, if Microsoft is shopping for users, clicks, traffic, and transaction fees, it could simply buy eBay ($39.4 billion), or even Amazon ($30.2 billion). If it wants to be in front of 53 million wireless users, it could snap up distressed telecom carrier Sprint/Nextel ($25 billion). A more diversified strategy might include snapping up every promising Web 2.0 company or third-tier search engine in Silicon Valley. Of course, Microsoft doesn’t make acquisitions willy-nilly; … anything that Microsoft does will be part of a long-term plan for dominating a multiplatform world where users increasingly access and share information through a slew of devices that haven’t even been invented yet. Lose a brief battle, win a long war. For the rest of the article: http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=785
Press Release: INMA is changing its name to reflect the evolution of its member newspapers and lead the newspaper industry toward its multi-media future. Effective immediately, the International Newspaper Marketing Association will become the International Newsmedia Marketing Association. The INMA Board of Directors voted unanimously May 6 for the name change after more than a year of internal discussions about a name that fully reflects the breadth of media owned and operated by newspaper companies. INMA President Ed Efchak made the announcement May 9 at the 78th Annual INMA World Congress in Beverly Hills. For the rest of the article: http://www.inma.org/PressRelease.cfm?prID=113
Doug Frambes, Sports Writer for The
Courier-Post and The Retrospect On May 2, The Retrospect and the town of Collingswood, lost a true gem. Doug Frambes, 83, passed away at a Cinnaminson nursing home after a struggle with cancer. The Retrospect newspaper readers best know Doug from his “Scrapbook of South Jersey Sports” column that he penned for many years. His weekly writings and unique style rekindled the glory days of Collingswood athletics and kept alive the athletic heroes and characters of the past. It was because of his dedication to and genuine love of Collingswood sports that many younger readers know who those people were. Doug’s childhood seemed to have been straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Through his columns, we were regaled with stories of his days pitching on the sandlot in Collingswood’s Knight Park, shooting the breeze with his buddies at the railroad crossing at Collings and Atlantic Avenues and listening in awe to baseball, football and boxing on the radio in his pop’s repair shop. He shared with us his first trip to Connie Mack Stadium, his meeting with his childhood hero Ty Cobb, and the Haddon Avenue shenanigans that Collingswood High students carried out against arch rival Camden High School on nights before their big football contests. It seems hard to believe in this day and age of cable TV and the Internet, that there was once a time when high school football was the big ticket in town and ten thousand-plus fans would pack Collingswood Stadium or fill dozens of train cars to travel to Atlantic City to cheer on the Blue and Gold. Through his column each week, Doug returned to his heyday, and took all of us along for the trip. Doug grew up, literally, in the center of the action in Collingswood. His parents’ house on Collings Avenue was the location was perfect for a young boy with an insatiable appetite for sports. Just down the road was Knight Park and Collingswood High, where Doug spent most of his days. Baseball was his game; he pitched for the Panthers. Later, he pitched for Rutgers-Camden and also for Woodlynne in the Camden County semi-pro league. Collingswood sports ran in his blood and because of that, it was only natural that he was one of the founding members of the Collingswood Athletic Hall of Fame. Doug’s columns were often written in a way that juxtaposed sporting events to events in history and in his life, adding a unique flavor to the tale. As we read Doug’s columns, we not only learned about the pitches, punts, passes and plays, but we also learned about the world at that time and Doug’s place in it. Private First Class Douglas W. Frambes left his beloved Collingswood for basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in July, 1943. He then served in the European Theater and, in 1945, played a part in world history at the Roer River where the Ninth Army produced the largest and most concentrated artillery barrage in history. After V.E. Day, he was stationed in Austria. Upon his discharge from the army, Doug earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Rutgers and began his teaching and coaching career at Riverside High School, where he passed along his two passions, history and sports, to his students. He was a history teacher for 27 years and basketball and baseball coach for eleven. It was at Riverside that he met his former wife, Rosa. Among his many coaching accomplishments were two South Jersey championships, four league championships and two selections of coach of the year. As a coach, Doug was inducted into the South Jersey Basketball Hall of Fame, Riverside High School Hall of Fame, Collingswood High School Athletic Hall of Fame, South Jersey Baseball Hall of Fame, NJSIAA Coaching Hall of Fame and his final induction, The Camden County Sports Hall of Fame last fall. In 1981, he retired as the head of the history department at Riverside and began a career as a sportswriter. Doug’s writing career took his love of sports and desire to teach to the newspaper medium, where he shared his wisdom with countless readers over the past two and a half decades. Doug honed his skills at the Courier Post, where he covered high school and professional baseball and wrote a Sunday column entitled ‘A Page from the Past.’ After his stint with the Courier, Doug was approached by Ken Roberts to continue his column for The Retrospect, which he eagerly accepted. He diligently pored over stat books, as he chewed his cigars, accurately recounting in great detail the nuances of long-ago contests, and wove them into entertaining stories. As a result of his dedication and talent, Doug earned just about every South Jersey sports writing honor there was. His friends often kidded that since he had earned all the awards there were, new ones were now being created for him. It was small wonder that his days of teaching readers about days of old earned him the moniker of ‘The Old Perfesser.’ In addition to his sports columns, Doug authored three books: A History of South Jersey Football, Hail Panthers – Here They Come, and Collingswood Centennial. A memorial service was held for Doug on Thursday, May 8. Doug leaves behind no family, but a great number of friends. We will all miss the quiet, unassuming man with the gravelly voice and yellow socks who never seemed to utter an unkind remark and who always greeted you with a smile and left with an “all right, folksies!”
Hidlay Named Publisher of Courier News and
Home News Tribune William C. “Skip” Hidlay has been named president and publisher of the Courier News, the Home News Tribune, mycentraljersey.com and centraljerseymoms.com – the two Web sites published by the newspapers. The announcement was made on May 6 by Thomas M.
Donovan, president and publisher of the Asbury Park Press and vice president of
the East Newspaper Group of Gannett Co. Inc., owner of the Asbury Park Press,
Courier News and Home News Tribune. Hidlay, 49, and his wife, Valerie, and have five children and will celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary later this year.
Barna Named Editor of the Gloucester County Times John Barna, who began working at the Gloucester County Times in 1978 and has tackled a wide range of newsroom assignments, has been named the newspaper’s editor, effective immediately. Publisher Frank Gargano made the announcement last week at a staff meeting. Barna, 50, a West Deptford Township resident, replaces Gary Grossman, who left the Times to become publisher of the Sunbury, Pa. Daily Item. “We’re fortunate at the Times to have someone with John’s ability working for us,” Gargano says. “He brings 30 years experience to the position. John knows Gloucester County as well as anyone, and he understands the newspaper’s mission and what we must do to succeed. “I feel strongly John is the right person at the right time to lead us forward. The staff sees in him a leader who came up through the ranks, as a reporter and desk man, by hard work. I’m confident John will help us become a better newspaper.” Barna said, “I’m humbled to follow such editors as Gary Grossman and Bill Long, both of whom made sure that coverage of Gloucester County was the paper’s first priority. “Our news coverage, which competitors have attempted to duplicate without success, will keep its Gloucester County-first focus. We will continue what Gary and Bill developed because of the talent on this staff – news and sports reporters, photographers and editors who genuinely care about the community.” After a brief stint as a stringer at the Burlington County Times, Barna came to the Times in 1978. Of his 30 years in newspapers, 24 have been spent at the Times. He also was editor of South Jersey Newspaper Co.’s other papers –Today’s Sunbeam from 1992 to 1996 and Bridgeton Evening News from 1996 to 1998. Barna is a 1975 graduate of Paul VI High School in Haddon Township and a 1979 graduate of Rutgers University in Camden. He was editor of his college newspaper, The Gleaner. Married for nearly 30 years, he met his wife, Nancy (Agar), when she worked in the art department at the Times. They have three children.
Send us news about your newspaper for NJPA Notes and InPrint. Please email the information to Catherine Langley at clangley@njpa.org. Photos welcome!
ABC News Opens “Digital Bureaus” on College
Campuses ABC News is launching a new initiative to tap college students as newsgatherers and potential recruits. Dubbed ABC News on Campus, the program will establish “digital bureaus” at five of the country’s top journalism and communications schools. The participating schools are: The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University; the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University; the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill College of Journalism and Mass Communications; and the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism. Students, selected and vetted by professors and ABC News, will have the chance to produce content for all the ABC News platforms and work with mentors from the network. In each bureau, one student will be hired as “bureau chief” – and unlike many news internships, participating students will be paid. John Green, executive producer for special projects and development for ABC News and the man who spearheaded the project, says that at first, most of the submissions will be directed towards ABCNews.com and NewsNow. However, content from the students could appear on any of the network’s programs. … Green says that while they are “very, very enthusiastic” about the program, they don’t want to apply too much pressure early on. “We don’t want them to feel as though they have to go in there and create content and know everything they would know if they were full time working professionals,” says Green. “They are college students, and we are mentors to them.” For the rest of the article: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6558490.html?industryid=47168
Research Brief: A recent release of a new social media benchmark study of more than 6,000 women by BlogHer, in conjunction with Compass Partners, shows that 36.2 million women actively participate in the blogsophere every week, with 15.1 million publishing and 21.1 million reading and commenting. 68% of this BlogHer community is concentrated in the 25 to 41 age group (the GenXr’s), compared to 42% for the general blogging population. Together, the Millennials and the Matures account for only about 10% of this community. Two thirds have completed college, and 46% earn over $75,000 compared to only 25% of the general community. … The blogging rates are highest among Millennials and GenX “digital natives,” says the report, and Online media participation rates decline with increasing age. Additional highlights from the study: Women are so passionate about blogging, says the report, that large percentages said they would give something up to keep the blogs they read and/or write:
Time shift from traditional media is accelerating in the general Internet population:
In addition:
For the rest of the article: http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1702 ___________ If you are an member of the New Jersey Press
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