PNNA classified ad program update

To date, 20 member newspapers have agreed to participate in the PNNA Classified Advertising Program. This is about half of the newspapers we need in the program before we begin to sell ads. We need this critical mass of members in the program to amass the numbers of readers that will be attractive to advertisers. Additionally, there is the issue of fairness because the programs and services funded through ad sales will, in general, benefit all PNNA members. For those who have not yet returned the participation agreement, please review the packet of information sent to you. PNNA needs your support of this important fundraiser so that PNNA can achieve its central purpose as stated in its mission statement: To be vital to the long-term success of our members by helping newspapers achieve excellence. The names of those newspapers who have enrolled are listed on the PNNA website. The list will be updated as each additional newspaper commits. For questions about the PNNA Classified Ad Network, contact Executive Director Jack Bates (1-888-344-7662), who will be happy to discuss details of the program and what would be required of your newspaper to participate. If all member newspapers agree to participate, PNNA will have the funds necessary to become a dynamic resource for its members and to add tremendous value to membership.

REMINDER: Newspaper Industry 
Compensation Survey due May 15

The deadline for the annual Inland Press Association Newspaper Industry Compensation Survey (NICS) is May 15. This is the most comprehensive and authoritative annual survey in our industry. NICS Excel survey files can be downloaded from the Inland website. Go to the Inland front page, look on the left side under Research, click on Newspaper Industry Compensation survey, click on NICS Reporting forms, click on Excel 5.0 Reporting Forms. The directions for completing the forms are in the NICS file. The cost of the survey is nominal. The current member pricing is: Circulation less than 30,000 – $110; Circulation 30,001-100,000 – $250; Circulation 100,000 and over – $475. There are a variety of additional NICS features, such a regional report, or a custom report, available for an extra charge. These reports focus on how your company compares with others of similar size and circulation. If you prefer to complete a hard copy of the NICS survey and did not receive a copy, contact Karla Zander and she will send you a replacement survey. Payment for the NICS survey can be by check or credit card. If you do not wish to send your credit card number electronically, Inland will bill you.

NEWS:

Judge orders freedom for long-imprisoned Wolf

Josh Wolf, the 24-year-old independent journalist who spent 7½ months in jail for defying a court order to give up his tape, was released April 3 from prison, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The local broadcast of Wolf's footage of a July 2005 protest attracted the attention of local and federal law enforcement agents who later served Wolf with a federal subpoena requiring his unpublished video footage and testimony. When he refused to comply he was charged with contempt of court and incarcerated. Wolf, who was named Northern California's 2006 journalist of the year by The Society of Professional Journalists, broke the record for the longest amount of time a reporter has spent in jail protecting his sources.

Tribune goes for $34 a share

With his winning bid April 2 for Tribune Co., real-estate investor Sam Zell would take charge of a company valued at $7.9 billion for an investment of as little as $315 million, the Los Angeles Times reported last month. With that, and with the help of an employee stock ownership plan, Zell would have the option of 40 percent of the new company’s stock. Meanwhile, this closes a 150-year era of Chandler family involvement in the company. The family’s 20 percent stake in the sale is worth about $1.6 billion, The Times said – less some $245 million in capital-gains taxes. Still interested in the Los Angeles Times alone is entertainment mogul David Geffen. Tribune earlier moved to sell two Connecticut newspapers to Gannett Co. “A fresh shot of new thinking is not going to hurt us,” Times Editor James O’Shea told staffers in a memo, “as long as we remain committed to what is really important, our coverage of the news.” 

Yahoo! news to feature international coverage
from McClatchy

Yahoo! News and The McClatchy Company announced that they will team up to offer international news coverage from a range of international geographic regions on Yahoo! News. The project, to be called “Trusted Voices,” will offer in-depth perspectives and coverage from McClatchy foreign correspondents based in select regions, including Iraq, the Middle East, China and Latin America. The coverage will include traditional news stories from McClatchy newspapers and will further tap the regional expertise of the correspondents through exclusive blog reports designed to guide readers in understanding the news from these regions. “Trusted Voices” is expected to launch early in the second quarter of 2007, and the scope of the program will be expanded on the basis of early experience. One of the program’s first initiatives will be the “Inside Iraq” blog written by native Iraqi staffers based in the McClatchy Baghdad bureau, which has been operating continuously since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Child Online Protection Act struck down

In an 84-page opinion issued last month in ACLU v. Gonzales, Senior Judge Lowell Reed, Jr., of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, struck down the Child Online Protection Act, issuing a permanent injunction against its enforcement. COPA provides criminal and civil penalties for businesses that transmit over the Internet sexually explicit materials and communications that are “harmful to minors” unless the business requires a credit card or other proof of adulthood. The case had already wound its way to the U.S. Supreme court twice on preliminary issues and was remanded for a trial on the merits. Recognizing that “protecting children from sexually explicit material on the Web” is a compelling interest, the Court nevertheless found that COPA was not narrowly tailored to further that interest; that the statute is not the least restrictive, most effective alternative in achieving that interest; and that the statute is impermissibly vague and overbroad. Reed concluded by observing that “perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection.”

Google, Utah may meet in court over Web ‘keywords’

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Google says a new state law that curbs keyword-triggered advertising is unconstitutional and probably will be challenged in court. Although the company didn’t promise to be the plaintiff, its spokesman pledged to work with other Internet companies to “educate officials in Utah about the numerous consequences” of the legislation. “This law hurts consumers, violates free speech, and is inconsistent with both established U.S. trademark law and our capitalist system,” Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said in an e-mail to The Salt Lake Tribune. Read the full article here.

Seattle Sunshine FOI Summit to be held May 11-12

The National Freedom of Information Coalition and the Washington Coalition for Open Government will conduct the Seattle Sunshine: 2007 FOI Summit May 11-12. James Neff, investigations editor at The Seattle Times will give the keynote address. Other summit highlights include a showing of “The U.S. v. John Lennon,” a rock documentary chronicling the FBI’s secret campaign against the outspoken Beatle, and panels on “Sports Secrecy,” “Election Transparency” and “Bridging the Red-Blue Divide.” For more information visit the NFOIC website.

The Oregonian starts regional news blog

The Oregonian recently created a website that melds newspaper websites from throughout Oregon and the Northwest “highlighting stories we hope you find interesting.” Read the blog here.

Postal Regulatory Commission reduces 
proposed increase for within-county mail, 
denies tub surcharge

The National Newspaper Association reports the Postal Regulatory Commission in February refused to recommend a 24.4 percent increase for within-county mail and instead cut the percentage increase to 18.3 percent. On the negative side, the commission accepted a proposal by Time-Warner, Inc. to create a more complex process for calculating rates-imposing charges upon periodicals according to the bundle and the sack. The new recommendation introduces hundreds of new possible rate calculations. The new rates are expected to go into effect in early May. However, the USPS governors can accept or reject the recommendation and will set the timing of the new rates. 

Newspaper’s real estate advertising 
bubble predicted to burst

ChicagoBusiness.com reports that its sister publication Advertising Age says the newspaper industry’s housing bubble is about to burst. “You’re talking about 11 straight years of growth, and that’s unrivaled by any other category,” said Charlie Diederich, vice-president of classified advertising for the Newspaper Association of America, who predicts the real-estate growth streak will end this year. Diederich argued that newspapers’ real-estate problems are cyclical and that annual growth will return once the comparisons are free of yearly totals inflated by speculative buying and heavily promoted developer closeouts. Jim Townsend, a principal at ad consultancy Classified Intelligence, said research has shown nearly 80 percent of home sellers start their searches online, not in the newspaper. He said the greatest threats to newspapers are seller-built websites and listings sites.

More newspapers switching to modular ad units

Media Life Magazine reports that more newspapers are switching to modular ads – eighth page, quarter page, half page and full page – and a rate card that is easy to decipher, which is good news for media buyers. Among the biggest complaints buyers have about newspapers, complicated rate cards are near the top of the list. With more media outlets chasing limited ad dollars, newspapers are a lot more anxious to make buying advertising easier. To read the rest of the MediaLife Magazine article about this change, click here.

Report: What to do about decline 
in single-copy sales?

Editor & Publisher reports that newspaper executives have been making strides in holding on to paid circulation. Although single-copy sales are still dragging down revenue, “single copy has been more of an issue than home delivery,” says Prudential Equity Research analyst Steven Barlow, citing the former category as the most likely culprit for overall sinking circulation numbers. The Newspaper Association of America released in late December a comprehensive study of single-copy sales. The research revealed that buyer behavior has become more erratic when it comes to purchasing papers at the newsstand. This means front-page design and hard-driving marketing tactics are even more necessary to ramp up sales, the study suggests. And of course, pricing remains as sensitive as ever. According to the report, 80 percent of those surveyed found the daily paper to be a “good value” at 50 cents. But when the cost creeps up to 75 cents only 16 percent said they would shell out an additional quarter. To read more about the findings, read the rest of the article here.

Newspapers hiring programmers 
for editorial staff find positive results

PBS.org reports that whenever journalist-programmer Adrian Holovaty speaks at a conference, newspaper executives approach him to ask, “Where can we find another person like you?” Unfortunately, not a lot of people combine journalism with computer programming to create projects like Holovaty’s ChicagoCrime.org , which feeds the city’s crime blotter into a searchable online database and onto Google Maps. Holovaty has repeatedly called on newspaper editors to hire programmers, and many of them are heeding his advice and considering ways of getting computer programmers onto their news staff and out of the trenches of tech support or doing work on web classifieds. Inspired by Holovaty’s comments at a convention, Dave Zeeck, executive editor for The News-Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., hired Aaron Ritchey as a “news programmer” who has helped streamline the work for reporters and page designers while also creating online databases and map mash-ups for readers. To read about more newspapers hiring programmers, click here.

Washington Post says small papers prosper 
with focus on very local news

The Washington Post reports that the good news about the newspaper businesses these days can be found at the industry’s littlest papers, which are doing well even as bigger papers are not. The average daily circulation of all U.S. newspapers has declined since 1987. The smallest papers, however – community weeklies and dailies with circulation of less than 50,000 – have been a bright spot in a darkened industry. As the Internet dramatically transforms the largest papers in the business, many small papers are weathering the decline with relative ease, and some are even prospering. The Post says this is because small papers face less competition from other media outlets, are insulated from ad slumps that have hammered big papers, employ smaller staffs of lower-salaried journalists and have a zealous devotion to local news, both in print and online, industry experts agree. Also, there is less competition on the Web for local news. Further, in survey after survey, local news and information often tops the list of what readers want. To read the full article, click here.

MySpace to offer news service

The New York Post reports that MySpace.com is set to launch its own news service that will allow users to comment on and rate stories that they post on their personal pages. MySpace’s news aggregator service is intended to keep users on the site instead of having them go to other places on the Web to get gossip, news and sports stories. The new venture is predicted to launch in the second quarter and is said to compete with news aggregation and sharing site Digg.com. It’s unclear whether MySpace News will have stories posted only by its members or if the company will post selected stories from its media partners.

ABC Board gives preliminary approval to allow audience data in ABC newspaper reports

The Audit Bureau of Circulations has provided preliminary approval to work with the Newspaper Association of America and Scarborough Research to begin incorporating audience estimates in ABC U.S. media reports. While still in development, the intent is for ABC to allow newspaper publishers the option to report in-market readership – print and online – in a combined net-audience figure, as well as overall website activity. ABC would verify this optional information, in addition to the requisite print circulation figures. The data is expected to be available in an online database, where advertisers could analyze audience and circulation information by market areas. If given final approval by the ABC board at its next meeting in July, newspaper publishers could begin reporting this optional information as early as the September 2007 six-month reporting period. Other board actions covered premium offers, subscriber rewards and discounts. The ABC board also modified the newspaper rule governing single-issue sales of back copies to specify that an issue is considered a back copy once the subsequent day’s newspaper is made available for sale. ABC also elected to its board Steven Rossi, executive vice president and chief operating officer of MediaNews Group Inc., as a newspaper director. He succeeds James W. Hopson, who recently retired as vice president for publishing at Lee Enterprises. For more visit ABC’s Virtual Pressroom here.

Report: Newspapers are the source 
from which other media draw

USA Today reports that a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism says no one should be glib about the uncertain future of newspapers – or assume that the transition to Web-based papers will be seamless. The annual State of the News Media report finds that most newspapers are ramping up their websites to stay relevant. But because online advertising lags in comparison to print, many newspapers can’t adequately staff their websites with reporters who gather news. In recent years, because of their own cutbacks, radio and television “has increasingly been relying on newspapers and wire services to do their newsgathering for them,” project director Tom Rosenstiel says. “Now, if newspapers have crossed a threshold and changed their mission, that’s going to echo to other media and to what the public knows.” Newspaper editors, he says, “have to make a case to their owners and Wall Street that to get from here (print) to there (the Web) they need to invest to establish a new brand. They need to convince them that newspapers are not a dying industry but an emerging one.” Newspapers “are the source from which other media draw,” Former Des Moines Register editor Geneva Overholser says. “When I was editor, I found our paper on news desks wherever I traveled across the state – radio, television, other dailies. The same is true nationally; news editors across the country look at The New York Times news budgets before putting together their front pages and newscasts.” To read more on the report click here.

Survey: Many Americans don't value or use the Web 

Reuters reports that a survey released last month finds that a little under one-third of U.S. households have no Internet access and do not plan to get it, with most of the holdouts seeing little use for it in their lives. Park Associates, a Dallas-based technology market research firm, said 29 percent of U.S. households, or 31 million homes, do not have Internet access and do not intend to subscribe to an Internet service over the next 12 months. The second annual National Technology Scan conducted by Park found the main reason potential customers say they do not subscribe to the Internet is because of the low value to their daily lives they perceive rather than concerns over cost. Forty-four percent of these households say they are not interested in anything on the Internet, vs. just 22 percent who say they cannot afford a computer or the cost of Internet service, the survey showed. The answer “I’m not sure how to use the Internet” came from 17 percent of participants who do not subscribe. The response “I do all my e-commerce shopping and YouTube-watching at work” was cited by 14 percent. Three percent said the Internet doesn’t reach their homes.

Klinenberg says local content shouldn't be a luxury

Eric Klinenberg (pictured), associate professor of sociology at New York University and author of “Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media,” recently wrote a guest column for The Seattle Times stating local content has become a luxury rather than a staple in newspapers. During the past five years, he traveled across the country asking questions of citizens, political officials and journalists and studied what happened to the media since the controversial Telecommunications Act of 1996, when Republicans and Democrats relaxed longstanding ownership limits and allow a small number of large corporations to dominate local markets. Read the findings in his column here.

PEOPLE:

Seattle Times adds three managing editor positions

With the remapping of The Seattle Times’ direction by incorporating more innovation, Executive Editor David Boardman recently announced the creation of three managing editor positions, “each with a different focus but sharing, with me, the charge of running the News Department.” They are:
- Kathy Best (pictured, left), managing editor/digital news and innovation, with specific responsibility for SeattleTimes.com. She is newly hired from The Baltimore Sun and “will be our liaison with the New Media Division and will focus on innovation and creativity throughout the newsroom.”
- Suki Dardarian (pictured right), managing editor/news coverage and enterprise. “She will oversee all of the reporting functions except sports. Local news, business, features and investigations will report to her. She will retain primary responsibility for enterprise and Sunday planning.”
- Mike Stanton (pictured, left), managing editor/news editing and presentation. “The news desk (including national/foreign), the photo department, news design and graphics, news IT [information technology] and sports will report to him. Mike will also be our point person on standards and accuracy.”

CALL TO READERS : Send stories to the editor Kristen Lowrey.

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