In the past two years, the News & Record has replaced its editor, ad director, digital manager, production director, business manager and No. 2 circulation manager. Soon, it will replace its publisher. That is almost a complete turnover in the newspaper’s leadership team. (I was one of those who left.)
And now it’s an opportunity. With so many relatively new faces on board, the opportunity is to remake the company so that it truly embraces its audience and community in all of its possibilities.
Currently, the newspaper — the print edition — went through a redesign aimed, best I can tell, at reducing newsprint. (They haven’t actually said why they did it.) They broke apart the Sports/Life section on Monday and Tuesday, but didn’t add space or content. They eliminated most of the Op-Ed pages, but added back a weekly TV book. (I haven’t figured out the TV book addition; before it was killed four years ago, it never made money.)
The website was redesigned within the last year, and I admit that I don’t visit it often. It’s format isn’t helpful or easy to navigate. Besides, most of the time if there is something I’m interested in, I find a link on a social network or via a Google Alert and go directly to the story. And, as a newspaper subscriber, I see the news in the paper. There needs to be something particularly good and fresh to send me to the website.
Normally, I would argue that Berkshire Hathaway should find a publisher with local ties, someone who knows the community and the business. Bringing in someone new who doesn’t know Greensboro from Greenville usually results in missteps. But these aren’t normal times.
I hope the new publisher has the charge to remake the business. She — and I think having its first female publisher would be good for the paper — need only to look at the years of declining readership and ask herself, what are we doing to be where the community is?
Warren Buffett has said that the future of his newspapers is strong local coverage. Got it. I know the news staff and know they are smart, hard-working professionals. But their numbers have been slashed over the years. (Yes, I did much of that myself.) They need more help. Please give the Orange County Register philosophy a try. Invest in the newsroom. Create content that has power and relevance.
Wrestle with the truth that most people don’t want what you’re producing. It’s a conundrum, for sure. Local government is a newspaper’s bread and butter, but most people don’t care consistently about what local government does. For instance, the paper has been filled with election information recently, as it should be, but how many people are going to use that information Tuesday? I doubt the percentage of registered voters who go to the polls will get out of the teens. So you must be able to do the sort of public interest journalism vital to democracy AND include content vital to the readership.
Adopt a true digital first philosophy. This is a community that understands digital. We were blogging early. We gave the Google project a shot. We have a large college-student presence. We’re fertile ground. But digital content is not just shoveling. It’s not just finding viral link bait to attract traffic. It’s inviting the community to participate with you. It is examining why a Greensboro Politics Facebook Page can get 100+ comments on a post — and figuring out how you can be that relevant and compelling. It’s using video to tell stories. It’s making mobile easy and seamless. Want a model? Try the Atlantic.
And digital content isn’t a paywall, unless the content behind that paywall is compelling and different.
Yes, this will cost money. But the paper has been focused on monthly and quarterly results for years, and while it has helped a little, that attention hasn’t helped enough. A short attention span means that these things won’t get done. The paper will continue to lose circulation and advertising. The community Buffett wants to serve will be worse for it.
Buffett himself has said that the profits from all of his newspapers won’t make a dime’s worth of difference to Berkshire Hathaway. To me, that makes this a good opportunity for Berkshire Hathaway to become an industry pioneer. Do some things dramatically differently. I know many of the leaders at the paper. They want a vibrant, well-read paper. They are ready to do different things digitally. Bring in a publisher who will lead them there.
Listen to the charge from Buffett himself: “Wherever there is a pervasive sense of community, a paper that serves the special informational needs of that community will remain indispensable to a significant portion of its residents.”
Given the numbers, it is getting difficult to argue the paper is indispensable to most people younger than 60. Now is the opportunity to fix that.
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I have worked in the News and Record mailroom since 1989. The changes in the paper since that time are too numerous to mention. Your ideas make a lot of sense and should be given great consideration. The life of the newspaper (and my job) is at stake
“Buffett himself has said that the profits from all of his newspapers won’t make a dime’s worth of difference to Berkshire Hathaway.” Yes, but Buffett is not running his newspapers. The people who are make crystal clear that everyone has to make their budget. Period. There is no leeway and no room for experimentation, and I have not hear there is any appetite for tolerating a below-budget profit in the name of innovation. But I’m with you, it would be a good thing to see.
I know. I fully expect the organization to respond to this as it’s responded to my other blog post. Still, hope springs eternal.
I’m told — I don’t know how reliably — that the TV book is making money, at least for now, because there was some pent-up demand among small, local advertisers who had seen People & Places and the Record sections disappear and couldn’t afford to advertise in what was left. And, yeah, there are a lot of ads in it. I hope they and more are still there in six months or a year — and that if the section is profitable, it could perhaps underwrite some of what you’re calling for here without violating BH’s oh-so-sacred profit goals.
I don’t expect that. I am, after all, the guy in the sh*t-colored glasses. But one can hope.
Lex hit a very important point above, John. If local advertisers can’t afford to advertise in anything other than a couple of “community sections” and the TV guide, then the paper has a huge ad-rate problem. How can a community paper be a community paper if its advertisers can’t afford to be in the main section, except for a little 1×2 or something similarly ineffective, size-wise? Those big national ROP accounts are, largely, gone. Why hold on to an outdated rate structure? Cut your rate, make local advertisers your main target and then make it hard for them to say “no.” Expand ad services to include digital media services, which can be done in a market that size.
And finally, to your point, though I know the company won’t do it because it’s capital intensive, diversify and invest in products. I spoke to a group from Southern Pines’ Sister City in Northern Ireland on Friday about how The Pilot has weathered the financial stress the last seven years. Answer: diversity of portfolio. Make money different ways.
Will be interesting to see how it goes.
As Digital Sales Manager of the WS Journal, we are working very closely with the revamping of the News and Record. I can say that BH Media is very dedicated to a digital first philosophy going into 2014. Look for the N&R to follow the same path that the Journal has with more digital content. There are digital media services that we will be rolling out in waves over the next year. They both brought back TV book but surprisingly, it has made quite a bit of money for the Journal and I would expect similar results in Greensboro. You are correct in terms of BH Media not being too concerned with “budgets” like other places have been in the past. Of course they want to make money…but they are more concerned with turning a world of print into the next best news source for local news. So far so good.
Speaking of the under-60 cohort’s limited appetite for public-interest journalism: Over the past eight years audiences for the nightly news on ABC, CBS and NBC have fallen an average of 18 percent. The PBS NewsHour? 48 percent.
Details: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/z-on-tv-blog/bal-pbs-newshour-huge-audience-loss-20131018,0,7349879.story
Desmond: No offense, man, but I’ll believe it when I see it. So far I’ve seen BH fire some talented journalists — the very people you want on your payroll if you really are going digital-first — for no obviously good reason. (The current joke is that while Warren Buffett might love newspapers, he hates newspaper people.) And I’ve seen it put up a website at the N&R that was bloody awful. So I hope y’all work like you’ve got something to prove, because, believe me, you do.