Monthly Archives: October 2010

A ‘Little’ Good News for Newspapers?

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There’s good news, and there’s bad news.  Which do you want first.  Take your medicine up front?  Ok here is the bad news.  The circulation of the top 25 newspapers is down again according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.  The good news, please – it’s not down as much as last year.  Our long nightmare is over…not quite yet.

Two papers, The Wall Street Journal and The Dallas Morning News were both up slightly.  The totals for the top 25 papers are here. My paper of choice in Southern California, The Los Angeles Times was down 8% and it’s Tribune sister The Chicago Tribune  was down 4%.

What does this mean for the newspaper industry – continued tough times.  There does not appear to be any upward tides that will carry them back to their glory days.  Aging demographics of their subscribers, the loss of classified revenues, and the growth of digital advertising are working their charms against them.

The key factor running against newspapers is the fact that they are no longer the monopoly for news and advertising in their markets.  They are still incredibly useful to their audiences, but the high margins of the past will never return.  They are adding services including some very robust digital advertising programs, but not at the same margins.

In my conversations with my old associates at newspapers I find they are soldiering on as best they can, and introducing a number of innovative ways to increase their revenues.  There are many great successes, but just not enough to make the hole smaller in their revenue buckets.  Like many businesses in this new digital age newspapers are finding the going tough, but there are still many tough people working there.  I’m betting that they will find some answers.  If they were racehorses I might take out a bet on a race for sport, but I would not buy the horse.  Time to find a new track to run on.  Let’s see what that Dallas Morning News nag did to run ahead of the rest of pack.  We know the WSJ was juiced by Rupert, so no looking there.

Codex Rule!

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Books Still Rule

I love articles that highlight the transition we are all undergoing to this new digital age.  Heck, my consulting work is now based on this trend.  My peers, mainly aging ‘boomers’ are coping as best they can in mastering ‘the Google.’  In the NYT yesterday we got a look of retro sorts regarding textbooks at colleges.

“In a Digital Age, Students Still Cling to Paper Textbooks” showed that even our offspring are not ‘going quietly into that good night’ of digital conversion.  Last year we saw the first of the colleges, now a trend, who issue iPods, MacBooks, and now iPads to their incoming students.  This is to afford better and faster communications between students and their profs.  No more printed syllabuses, and office hours are facilitated with instant email access from anywhere the student is, to anywhere their prof is.  Office hours are now changing for all of us.

The surprising thing is that the article points out that many students are still hanging on to their printed textbooks over digital versions loaded onto their new computers and iPads.  The trend was that everything would be electronic, but that appears not to be the case.  Many just prefer to have something they can mark up, take notes in, and keep for future use when off in their careers.

The National Association of College Stores show that digital books make up just 3 percent of textbook sales, though they expect that to grow to 15 percent within a couple of years.  Why so low?  Johnathon Piskor from North Carolina says – “I believe that the codex (book) is one of mankind’s best inventions.  This is going to be an uphill battle for the ebook sellers if that is the prevailing attitude.

I have tried both using Kindle.  I love pleasure books in digital form, but most of my business books I still buy in print form.  Just like the students, I need to mark them up for future reference in my practice.  Nice to know we still have options.  Codex rule!  Analogs Rule! Now back to my book.

What Comes First?

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Yesterday, I came across what appears to be a feature on Huffington Post that I had not seen before – The Greatest Person of the Day.  The header says that this will be an ongoing feature, and based on the first, I would welcome seeing it.  We need good news, and this highlights something very appropriate to our times.

Gene Epstein is a 71-year-old philanthropist who has started a Philadelphia based venture called “Hire Just One.”  Gene will donate $1,000 to charity every time a small business in the country hires an unemployed person.  For now his limit is a total of $250,000, but perhaps others might join in so the ceiling could go hire.

Gene sees that the economy can’t get stronger until more people have jobs.  Right now hiring has been slow because companies don’t feel the absolute need to hire in the face of low or uncertain demand.  This is the ultimate which came first, the chicken or the egg?

My advice to my clients is to get on with business and set your path to growth now.  Start hiring and building your teams now for the growth you project in the future.  All of our past economic downturns have shown us that the winners at the end of the recession were those who took action.  They became the new market winners with larger market shares they took from their more reticent competition.

I salute Gene Epstein for his big heart and basic knowledge of economics and marketing.  He is one among us who really knows what comes first. I’ll be checking out Huffington Post and other sites for more good news on those helping to make a difference.

A Crazy Day for a Crazy World

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There are days when you wake up and things seem a little different.  This is one of those days.  My early turn at my Google Reader account was like a bucket of cold water.  Were there signs of the apocalypse ahead, were the crazies running the asylum?  Hard to tell, but something was not right.  Among the signs:

  1. The military -  now signing up openly gay recruits
  2. The U.S. Army -  escorting senior Taliban officials to secret meetings
  3. Talk of prosecutions of financial execs in the mortgage fiasco and subsequent foreclosures docs mess
  4. England – cutting their military and navy to reduce costs
  5. The Tribune Company – asking for the resignation of their CEO after the frat house scandal of the past several weeks had become news
  6. The NFL – passing out record fines for ‘hard hits’ sending a message to the players to lighten up

What a day, and it’s not even noon here in California.  What gives with all this news?  It seems that there is stress and anxiety in every point in our lives, magnifying the impact of every possible change taking place in society and the economy.

I think everything we are seeing in business has a direct correlation to today’s tea signs.  My clients are all feeling the same kinds of anxiety and stress with the current business environment.  Incredible change and uncertainty abound and they are looking for signs of which way to turn in navigating the future.

My advice – read the signs and make a plan.  It’s amazing how few businesses have adapted their plans to whats going on, other than cutting expenses.  Create your new plan and move forward.  Uncertainty for some, is also opportunity time for those with a plan to take advantage of the uncertainty.

Uncertainty is your enemy – it breeds inaction.  Action is your friend.  In these uncertain times we need all the friends we can have.  And to my friends in the NFL – lighten up, but don’t spare the hankies.

Thank You Mrs. Cleaver!

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The following article was my first.  I’m in a nostalgic mood today with heavy rains hitting sunny Southern California.  It’s also gloomy due to the recent deaths of a couple of people who meant a lot to me as I was maturing – Mrs. Cleaver – June Billingsley, and Tom Bosley, Richy’s dad from Happy Days.  This article was inspired by Bill Bryson who really captured the spirit of the 50′s when he grew up.  I can really relate.  Enjoy!

Growing up in Long Beach in the 50’s I can relate to Bill Bryson’s story in The Thunderbolt Kid. Life was good and simple, especially for a young boy to learning the mysteries life of growing up. My first job was as a carrier boy for the local Long Beach Press-Telegram. My afternoons, and Sunday mornings were spent delivery the wafer thin paper to a couple hundred homes in my neighborhood. The paper covered all things Long Beach, a modest sized town where the biggest annual event was the Iowa day picnic each summer in Recreation Park.

In Junior high school I graduated to being a carrier boy for the Los Angeles Times, a big step up, but it was mornings. That gig didn’t last long, too cold in the mornings for a California boy, and it didn’t mesh with my advanced junior high school studies and athletics schedule, or so I told my dad. That ended my newspaper career, until 1979 when I went to work for Harte-Hanks and managed an advertising sales force for many years, in numerous states including Texas, where my now 29-year-old son claims birth rights (actually Newport Beach, CA) for the benefit of his young Texas-born wife.

A while after my 11 year stint at Harte-Hanks I went to work for The Orange County Register and lead their 31 community papers and TMC products in a pitched battle with our arch rival Los Angles Times for bragging rights in total circulation in Orange County. The battle didn’t last long, the Times pulling back with a year, conceding the local-local market to The Register, they would cover regional, state, national and international. Each had their own sphere, and that offered readers a real choice – of local coverage or international coverage.

In today’s times there seems to be little choice, and little coverage. Reporters will grind out stories to meet their budgets and the ‘news hole’ will shrink. Stories will run across more editions, kind of internal ‘wire copy’. It will fill the pages, but not the mind. Newspaper circulation will continue to drop, as will advertising revenues. It is a real downward spiral. Valiant experiments are taking place in many locations, but few are really making a difference.

Our newly ‘tight’ economy will make it even harder for newspapers to prosper or for readers to get the news they want, or even viable advertising with good local choices. Newspapers will get smaller, and less relavant. It seems like old time to me again, but instead of looking at a very skinny Press-Telegram I am seeing our dear grey lady of LA just as skinny. No more a thud on the driveway in the morning, now just a ‘floater’ more likely to land on the roof when toss. Everything old is new again.

“You’re Ugly and Your Mother Dresses You Funny” Ouch!

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After watching several debates over the last several days I found myself at wits end. I know that I had seen this somewhere before – scenes from the movie “Mean Girls”, or was it from my college days when the humor was vicious and you had to fend off the verbal abuse from your fraternity brothers.  Ouch, and there it was again.  I had better treatment in my early Army days.  That’s enough to make even a drill instructor blush.

I found a recent article that I had saved because it struck a responsive chord.  The article in Advertising Age by Meredith Vaughn, President of Vladimir Jones, a Colorado Springs, CO. agency.  Her article “You’re Ugly and Your Mother Dresses You Funny” really gets to the heart of the issue – we are all acting in an uncivil manner.  I’d swear I had just been accused of the most heinous crimes sometimes.  I saw it first in the political realm, but like Meredith I am seeing it more and more in the business arena as well.

Symptoms?  How about an endless stream of invectives when something goes wrong.  I’ve also been seeing it when working with various groups of industry suppliers who are quick to run down the competition in the most vile terms.  A lot of this comes back to me through our mutual clients, and they are getting pretty fed up with it as well.

I guess ‘fed up with it’ is now the key operative word.  The economy is not good for most, the political arena is just jammed with commercials that accuse their opponent of doing anything and everything wrong, twelve times over.  I think we are due a ‘time out’ while we come up with some new ways of dealing with our stress.

Meredith has a few solutions of her own – and I suggest you click here to see them.  Well worth you small investment there.  Meredith deals with this at her business Valdimir Jones where one of their favorite sayings is “A pretty fair way to judge someone is by how they treat people who can’t do them any good.”  I wish I’d said that.  Sounds like a good place to work – and perhaps a good company to work with.

You Get What You Need

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“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is the title of a song I was reintroduced to by Glee last year.  It became my ‘new again’ anthem for making things happen when circumstances aren’t in your favor.  In today’s economy and jobs environment there is more than enough pain to go around for everyone.  The counter line to the title is…”but you’ll always get what you need!”  That is what we got last night when the first miner was lifted out and was watched by an estimated 1 billion via television.

I do not watch car chases on tv – my last was when OJ was fleeing in the white Bronco.  I’ve sworn them off since then.  However, I’m always on alert for a great teachable moment, and we got one with the success of the mine disaster.  This time we got a happy ending, and there is enough rejoicing to go around for everyone.  But back to that teachable moment – we learned again, that cool heads and great planning can work, if everyone pulls together.

In this event we saw the planning of the Chilean engineers and government who plowed ahead.  We saw worldwide help and assistance from the U.S, and other governments who played a hand in the success, and when success was at hand they backed away and graciously allowed the Chileans to celebrate alone on the stage.

We needed some good news, and we got it, and some great lessons as well.  Plan, execute, and repeat.  Stay at it, persevere.  When success happens let the right people who really made it happen get the limelight.  We need that now, and we got what we needed!

A Little Economic Fear Got You Down?

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I reviewed some articles over the weekend that I had collected in the last several days and a couple of them seemed to be representative of a common theme – fear and uncertainty.  I’m hot on both of these because it colors the speech of my clients.  What’s going on out there?  When are things going to get better?

In her article on October 1 in the NYT Maureen Dowd’s article “Onward Christian Moguls” she describes a large motivation seminar she had attended and …”the thousands of people mired in the new Age of Anxiety turned hopeful eyes to the parade of Professor Harold Hills, waiting for that one elusive diamond of advice that could change their lives.”  Not likely anytime soon.  I loved the phrase describing our anxious state in both the political and economic world.  A quick search showed that the term has been used many times describing all sorts of tough transitional periods.  I guess that’s where we find ourselves now, and the term is so appropriate.

In Newsweek an article “Is Rhetoric Hurting the Economic Recovery?” in The Street section.  They postulate that the discord and confusion over the control of the message in Washington is also a root cause of a similar anxiety, one that holds everyone back.  The lack of a consensus on which direction to head and the stern language from the administration is deemed to be holding back the business community from hiring and investing in other growth strategies.

Now, back to my clients.  They are all looking for a better sense of certainty of what the immediate future looks like.  To a person they are looking for good news.  The truth is that there is little ‘good news’ on the horizon.  So what to do – forge ahead.  My experience in the marketing field in the last several down periods is that my clients who went big when others went small – won big.  Essentially they took the market share away from the others, and managed to hold it long after things turned upwards.  History has great lessons for all of us.  Mark that in your notebooks – and go big!

‘A Good Thing’ for Newspapers

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I was happy to read recently that my friends in the newspaper media were offering some special deals to help drive sales.  More accurately the Newspaper National Network, an agency owned by 25 major newspaper chains and the Newspaper Association of America have offered a guarantee of results or they will rebate a percentage back if the results don’t meet the specified targets.  There are a number of criteria to be met, and this only applies to national marketers that sell package goods like health and beauty aid, food, and beverages.

As a newspaper guy this is nice to see, especially since newspapers have lost so much ground to other media and the poor economy.  This is a real chance for the newspapers to prove that they can still deliver results.  Once the only game in town, they have become more of an afterthought.  They are more valuable than that.

The good news here is that they are really trying to compete, and trying to come up with new ideas.  Great ideas were the hallmark of the industry years ago, and I had a few that actually drove additional revenue to my papers.  Now, more than ever they need bold ideas to help grow again.  A thick paper with lots of offerings and values will bring subscriber growth.  My papers are less than half the size they were in the 90’s, and bring in less than half the revenue – ouch.

I’ll be watching to see how this works out, and even a little success will show that the national brands can still use newspapers in their mix – and that’s a good thing!

Animal House Meets The Tribune Co. – Party On!

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I’m a newspaper guy at heart.  I found the rush of the daily news cycle, printing and delivering to the doorstep by 5AM to be a real rush.  However, I got another rush this morning when I read the article in the NYT – “At Flagging Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture.” Wow, I thought they were just playing out a bad hand that poor timing and a weak economy had dealt them, but these guys are something else.

I have had strong relationships with the LA Times, both in competing with them when I was at The OC Register, managing their 31 weekly papers, and later as a business partner when The Times was my media partner in an outdoor advertising company servicing local governments.  I was never impressed with their ‘get up a go,” but they were professional and exuded class.

Now the picture is straight out of Animal House or Old School with Will Ferrell.  It sounds like a lot of fraternity pranks, rude and obnoxious humor and overt sexual misconduct.  I had no idea, and I’m in the industry.  We all knew that Sam Zell made a bad bet, and used employee funds in creating an ESOP to fund his purchase.  It was also bad timing, as were so many other purchases including McClatchy buying Knight-Ridder, and Freedom selling out to payoff family owners who watned to cash out.

No, the big crime is that they have a bunch of clowns in charge.  It’s not just the economy that has hurt them it’s their own inept actions, or inactions that have killed them.  The ultimate bad tag on them is that they are underperforming the industry.  Previous leadership under the Chandler family was very staid and proper, and usually late to the party for the most part.  The new group started the party when they walked in the door, but forgot about the business part.

It’s a sad day for the industry, but there is a great lesson underneath all of their ‘stuff.’  The lesson is that culture trumps all.  They had it at one time, and they lost it.  They will not succeed again until they build a new, functional and professional culture.  We have spoken in the past about Michael Eisner coming in as the new head of the company at the behest of the major debt holder.  I laughed a little about it then, warmed up after some thought, and am know ready to say – Michael, please come!

Michael rescued a declining Disney when they couldn’t get over Walt’s death and couldn’t make decisions.  Eisner turned heads with how fast he could make decisions and he built a new culture, and Disney prospered.  He needs to do the same thing again at the Tribune Co.   That would be worth the price of admission – even at today’s inflated prices at Disneyland.  Hey where can a guy cash in a bunch of old E-Tickets, I want to be there when the fireworks goes off and Sam Zell streaks down Main Street, Will Ferrell style, in all of his naked glory – Old School style.