PNNA Annual Meeting wrap-up

During the recent PNNA annual meeting held in Portland, your board of directors instructed staff to peruse two major efforts on behalf of the membership. These are: to bring the Newspaper Next daylong program to the northwest area, so that members can benefit from attending this outstanding American Press Institute session, and to invite all member newspapers to participate in a PNNA area-wide classified advertising program designed to provide needed funds to support the PNNA mission.

Several years ago the directors of PNNA commissioned a study to determine the path upon which PNNA should embark to fulfill the vision of a dynamic, indispensable association. The key initiative agreed upon was to become “The members’ indispensable resource for products/services, networking and innovative professional development.” While the dedication to this commitment has been strong, the necessary funding source was lacking. 

At the annual meeting, the board of directors approved a classified advertising program that would provide the funding needed to propel the association toward accomplishing the goals set by those who drafted the mission statement for PNNA. In the near future a mailing will be sent to all member newspaper publishers outlining the details of the classified ad program and soliciting each newspaper’s participation. Hopefully all will agree that this is a painless way to fund the future development of the association by adding tremendous value to membership.

Left, Frank Blethen, publisher and CEO, The Seattle Times, and Mike Shepard, publisher, Yakima Herald-Republic, Yakima, Washington.

Left, Jodie DeJonge, AP chief of bureau for Washington state and Idaho; Diane Natt, widow of Ted Natt; John Trumbo, Ted Natt Award recipient and reporter, Tri-City Herald, Tri-Cities, Washington.

Left, Larry Duthie, publisher, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin; Rowland Thompson, executive director, Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington.

PNNA board member and officer updates

Left, outgoing PNNA President Dennis Waller, publisher, The Chronicle, Centralia, Washington, and incoming PNNA president Bob Blethen, VP Corporate Marketing, The Seattle Times.

The election of officers and directors, who will lead PNNA in the coming year, was held during the annual meeting of members at the Benson Hotel in Portland.

Officers are: Bob Blethen, The Seattle Times, President; Heidi Wright, The Herald and News, Klamath Falls, Vice President; Stephanie Pressly, Idaho Press-Tribune, Nampa, Treasurer; and Rowland Thompson, Allied Daily Newspapers, Secretary.

Directors are: Tony Baker, The Register-Guard, Eugene; Bob Blethen, The Seattle Times; Stacey Cowles, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane; Cheryl Dell, The News Tribune, Tacoma; Bob Hale, Juneau Empire; Brent Lowe, Newspaper Agency Corporation, Salt Lake City; Mi-Ai Parrish, Idaho Statesman, Boise; Stephanie Pressly, Idaho Press-Tribune, Nampa; Mike Sexton, Anchorage Daily News; Jim Thompson, Coeur d’Alene Press; Dennis Waller, The Chronicle, Centralia; Tom Whitehouse, The Oregonian, Portland; Rick Weaver, Bozeman Daily Chronicle; Rufus Woods, The Wenatchee World; and Heidi Wright, The Herald-News, Klamath Falls.

Newspaper Next presentation

Attendees at the PNNA annual meeting heard about the Newspaper Next project. Newspaper Next: The Transformation Project is now being presented to newspaper audiences across the country with excellent reviews. Full details on the project can be found at www.newspapernext.org. Arrangements have been made to present the program on Feb. 16, 2007, at the University of Washington in Seattle. Save this date and watch for further details as arrangements are finalized. To learn more about the project and read the presentation from the PNNA meeting, go to the PNNA website under “Extras” or click here.

Notice: Fraudulent classifieds

According to the National Newspaper Association, newspaper classified managers are being alerted by Genworth Financial Services , a Richmond, Va., company, that fraudulent classifieds are being placed in the company’s name by an identity thief. Dan Erhard, assistant vice president of GFS Inc., said the ad offers debt consolidation and easy credit approval, with a toll-free response phone number. Responders are referred to a call center where sufficient personal financial data can be harvested in the process of an “application” to enable fraudulent transactions. One insertion order provided to a Mississippi weekly asks responders to phone 888-875-0696. That number is now a non-working number. Erhard reports most of the scams originate in Canada. Law enforcement shuts them down, but they soon move to another locale and start up again. Classified departments with questionable insertion orders from GFS may verify authenticity by phoning Erhard at 804-662-2773.

Applications available for second class 
of Knight Fellows

The nation’s first Teaching Newspaper, a tuition-free, stipend-paid master’s degree program in community journalism, is recruiting its second class. Chris Waddle, director of the Knight Foundation-supported course of study at The Anniston Star in Alabama, said the graduate program is accepting applications for eight fellowships in the 2007-08 school year. The University of Alabama offers the program. This year’s class, six Knight Fellows, began their studies at The Star in August and will complete degree requirements in August 2007. The Knight Foundation grant and the University pay each student’s tuition and provide each a monthly stipend. The new graduate program is offered by the University in addition to its regular master’s degree in journalism at the Tuscaloosa campus. Prospective students can go to www.comj.ua.edu to learn more about the program. For more information, contact Chris Waddle, director, Knight Community Journalism Fellows, at cwaddle@ua.edu.

NEWS:

Herald-Republic, Olympian among few papers not reporting decline in circulation

Yakima Herald-Republic reports that it has defied a national trend as its weekday circulation numbers have remained steady over the past year. The Herald-Republic’s weekday circulation was 37,112 as of Sept. 30, a 0.01 percent increase, according to preliminary figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. “The numbers may not seem big, but holding our own is a big accomplishment,” said publisher Michael Shepard, who credited school distribution, strong single-copy sales efforts and an emphasis on local news coverage for the steady numbers. The Herald-Republic was one of only two newspapers statewide in Washington that didn’t report weekday declines. The other was The Olympian, with a weekday circulation of 32,833, an increase of 0.08 percent.

Yahoo partners with 176 newspapers

A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country announced a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology. The consortium includes MediaNews Group, Hearst, Belo, E. W. Scripps, the Journal Register Company, Lee Enterprises and Cox Enterprises. The group owns newspapers in 38 states, among them major metropolitan dailies including the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oakland Tribune and The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, with a combined daily circulation of 12 million. In the first phase of the deal, the newspaper companies will begin posting their employment classified ads on Yahoo’s classified jobs site, HotJobs, and start using HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads. The long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, according to one senior executive at a participating newspaper company, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimized for searching and indexing by Yahoo. The deal could help position the company as a partner for traditional media companies, an effective counterpunch to a deal its archrival, Google, signed with 50 papers a few weeks ago including The Orange County Register, The Sacramento Bee and The Fresno Bee, and could help it capture a larger portion of the fragmented local advertising market.

'Meta-tagging' tool helps newspapers compete 
with GoogleNews

Editorsweblog reported recently on how securing your content from pure-Internet news aggregators such as Google and Yahoo could mean partnerships with other pure-Internet news aggregators. Last week, “Meta-tagging” specialist Inform.com officially announced a partnership with six American mainstream publishers that will make scanning the Web for specific news infinitely easier for users while also keeping users on newspaper websites. Inform, which describes itself as being “in the business of organizing, or structuring, massive amounts of unstructured data,” will be physically present on partner websites in the form of a box that leads the reader deeper into subjects related to the article they are reading. This is possible through “meta-tagging,” which, as described by Inform, “systematically tags and scores each component of (an) article, identifying every topic, industry, organization, person, place and product mentioned throughout the entire article.” To learn more about this service, read the rest of the article here.

Gannett introduces 'the newsroom of the future'

Jim Romenesko of the Poynter Institute posted a memo online from Gannett CEO Craig Dubow regarding Gannett’s new “Information Center,” which is “being launched now in some locations around the company, and plans are being made to broaden that rollout across Gannett.” The Information Center, as described by Dubow, is a way to gather and disseminate news and information across all platforms, 24/7. He also called The Center “the newsroom of the future.” Plans for the Information Center have been developed in Gannett’s Newspaper Division over the past several months. Pilot projects took place in 11 locations, three were full-scale implementations of an Information Center while other sites tested different aspects of information gathering such as crowd sourcing and multimedia. Read more about Gannett’s Information Center here.

More than an industry at stake

On Sunday, Boston.com ran a story about the status of the newspaper industry and discussed the trend across the country of “aspiring press moguls” expressing interested in buying newspapers. The story notes that “though most newspapers today are owned by publicly traded corporations, that’s a relatively recent development. Fifty years ago, almost all of the nation’s newspapers were privately owned, in many cases by the families that had founded them. It was in the 1960s that newspapers started going public and newspapers had always been profitable, but according to longtime industry analyst John Morton, it was in the 1970s and '80s that advances in technology began to make newspapers more lucrative and changed the nature of the business. Read the entire article here.

Washington Post to ‘shrink newsroom,’ increase readership

Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. plans to shrink the newsroom, tighten up the paper’s news space, crack down on story length and implement other initiatives that he hopes will build readership of both the printed paper and the website while reducing newsroom costs. Editor & Publisher posted a memo to staffers Nov. 15. Downie announced both general and specific changes such as moving reporters and editors within and among staffs in order to counteract circulation declines. For more information on the Washington Post changes, read the Editor & Publisher article here.

Reuters invests in blog syndication firm

MediaPost reports that Reuters last week began offering publishers news and commentary from almost 3,000 blogs via a new partnership with social media firm Pluck. Reuters also invested $7 million in the company, which runs the BlogBurst syndication service. “Pluck represents the next evolution in finding interesting information sources for our clients,” said Reuters President Chris Ahearn. “The mainstream media can embrace the fact that a variety of blogs out there have compelling information that people can read.” BlogBurst, the syndication service run by Pluck, includes some 2,800 partner blogs on topics ranging from travel to technology and style to politics. BlogBurst pays authors when their blogs are syndicated by publishers. Pluck’s other publisher clients include The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and Austin American-Statesman.

College papers deliver

While the mainstream press struggles, corporations and advertisers latch onto profitable campus publications. The Baltimore Sun reports about 76 percent of the nation’s 6 million full-time college undergraduates read their campus papers at least occasionally. One of the most notable examples of the trend occurred in late summer, when a subsidiary of MTV, one of the country’s best-known youth brands and part of the Viacom entertainment empire, purchased College Publisher, a company that runs websites for about 450 college papers. “There’s no more local paper than a campus paper,” said Dina Pradel, general manager of Y2M, which founded College Publisher in 1999. She said that while large urban newspapers are trying to woo younger readers, college papers have a ready-made audience of adherents, willing to read news about their immediate environment, and to be tempted by ads targeted to their tastes. The typical campus audience they cater to, she said, is “a very attractive demographic,” a group whose members will spend $1 million or more in buying things and services over a lifetime. While in college, many students will be making major first-time purchasing decisions - cars, insurance, electronics - a market advertisers dearly covet.

Wall Street Journal to slim down, 
add color and photos

The New York Post reports that Dow Jones plans to unveil a slimmed-down version of The Wall Street Journal in December, with more color and photographs to entice readers. The new broadsheet, which debuts on newsstands Jan. 2, will eliminate roughly one column in width while adding visual elements such as color and photographs, said Robert Christie, a Journal spokesman. Dow Jones is seeking ways to reduce publishing costs while increasing revenue from advertising sales at both its print and online editions. As part of the redesign, The Journal began running a single advertisement on its front page in September. The New York Times is among other newspapers reducing its width to save on newsprint costs. Dow Jones had said that reducing the size of The Journal and eliminating some stock quotes and market data would save the company $18 million a year.

Journalism's future: A 'panorama of possibilities'

Journalism will survive only if it adapts to the times, writes Geneva Overholser in a new report titled “On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for Change.” The report was released by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “The story of American journalism is undergoing a dramatic rewrite,” says Overholser, a nationally known reporter and editor who formerly worked for The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Des Moines Register before joining the faculty of the Missouri School of Journalism. The Overholser report, a project of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, in partnership with the Annenberg Public Policy Center, is the result of more than a year’s worth of research and interviews. The project grew out of a June 2005 conference in Philadelphia that brought together 40 journalists, scholars and news executives to discuss the role of the press in a democracy and what might be done to enhance it. Download the report for free here.

Record number of journalists killed in 2006

The Editors Weblog reported in October that 75 journalists have been killed so far this year, making 2006 the most deadly year since the World Association of Newspapers began keeping records of journalist murders in 1997. Twenty-six of the deaths occurred in Iraq, where journalists continue to be targeted and murdered. The death toll compares with 58 killed in 2005, 72 killed in 2004, 53 killed in 2003, 46 killed in 2002, 60 killed in 2001, 53 killed in 2000, 70 killed in 1999, 28 in 1998, and 26 in 1997. Details of all the cases can be found on the WAN website at www.wan-press.org.

Traditional skills most important in online newsrooms

Poynter Online’s E-Media Tidbits column featured in October a study by The Online News Association of job skills needed in online newsrooms. C. Max Magee conducted the research almost a year ago during his master’s degree studies at the Medill School of Journalism. More than 400 people working in online news, from big companies to blogs, filled out the survey. Managers were asked about skills they were looking for in a job candidate; content producers were asked what skills they use most in their job. Some of the key findings stated that the most important skills/qualities in online newsrooms are not related to technology or the Web; rather they are things like attention to detail, news judgment, grammar and style, multitasking skills, communication skills and ability to work under time pressure. To read more and download the report visit the Online News Association website.

University journalism challenge explores 
how to attract younger readers

DePaul University students offered a variety of ideas – ranging from downloadable news columns to prepaid cards that would activate newsboxes and vending machines – at a day-long conference with top Chicago journalists Oct. 24. The DePaul Journalism Challenge Symposium, “Rewriting the American Newspaper,” brought together scores of DePaul communications students with many of Chicago’s top editors – including Christine Ledbetter of the Chicago Sun-Times. Together the participants debated how the news media is adjusting to a rapidly evolving and splintering market for news. The event, funded by a grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation, was held at DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus Student Center. As part of the program, DePaul communication students competed to come up with creative new ideas for helping newspapers attract younger readers. The symposium included presentations by the three finalist teams in addition to the expert commentary. For more information and to read the press release click here.

'Hyperlocal hero' Rob Curley is helping 
to change the media landscape

Rob Curley, the former head of new media at the Naples (Fla.) Daily News and self-proclaimed “Internet punk” is quickly making his mark on the changing media landscape. Fastcompany.com recently profiled the 35-year-old entrepreneur who is now vice president of product development for The Washington Post. “Most people still think of a newspaper Web site as a digital version of what went on the press last night, but that’s a small part of what we do,” Curley says. “I want a site to be so cool and important to people that they talk about it the way you talk about having a great park where you live. It’s a local amenity.” Randy Bennett, vice president of audience and new business development at the Newspaper Association of America, calls Curley “an icon in the industry.”

Craigslist founder says newspapers need 
to 'reinvent themselves as community services'

The founder of the online community Craigslist.org discussed citizen journalism and his opinions on problems facing the news media when he spoke to several dozen University of Texas journalism students in October. Craig Newmark said a crucial issue for the news industry today is a loss of trust from the public because a lot of traditional media don’t have the courage to “speak truth to power.” News media should get citizens more involved in their work, he said. Newmark has long been interested in citizen journalism. Newspapers need to “reinvent themselves as community services,” he said. Newmark said Craigslist prides itself on community involvement. “People can see that we’re honestly committed to our community,” Newmark said of Craigslist. “This culture of trust is really important.” The 54-year-old entrepreneur spoke to students via a video screen for a class focusing on technology and innovation in media. The class chose Newmark because of the business impacts of Craigslist and Newmark’s advocacy of journalism issues, said Mark Dewey, the class lecturer.

Opinion: Divorcing the daily paper

Charlottesville, N.C.’s online paper The Hook recently featured an essay by Mariane Matera, who cancelled her daily newspaper subscription after 37 years. Her reasoning for cancelling and theories why others are doing the same are relevant in understanding circulation decline. Read the essay here.

PEOPLE:

Daily Herald in Utah names Dennis publisher

Longtime newspaper executive Craig B. Dennis was named publisher of the Daily Herald and its 11 affiliated weekly newspapers and specialty publications Tuesday. He succeeds Albert J. Manzi, who resigned in July. Dennis, 51, has 26 years of newspaper management experience, including 17 as a publisher. Dennis leaves a position as associate publisher and director of sales for Nevada County Publishing Co., which publishes The Union, a daily newspaper in Grass Valley, Calif.. He was previously president and publisher of the Auburn Journal in California and senior publisher of Gold Country Media in the Sacramento region. He was publisher of the Community News Group, a subsidiary of the Seattle Times Co., and publisher and divisional manager of the former Whidbey Press Inc. in Oak Harbor, Wash. He was also owner, publisher and editor of the Chinook Observer, a weekly newspaper in Long Beach, Wash. He is an economics graduate of Stanford University and received his MBA from the University of Washington. Dennis is a member of the board of directors of Suburban Newspapers of America and chairman of the Internet and communications committee. He is a past president of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association, where he chaired committees for advertising sales and the annual better newspaper contest.

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