“Newspapers” Items

Attracting and Retaining Readers, 1986

For as long as I was in the newspaper industry, I’ve heard the refrain “we need to attract new and retain our current readers.”

Mostly, in the “olden days” that meant a new promotion or some kind of circulation push [cut the prices and retain them when the full-cost renewal hits].

The American Press Institute held a seminar in November 1986 and invited 21 editors, publishers, circulation directors and other executives to focus on:

• Meeting the needs of a changing newspaper audience.
• Increasing household penetration.
• Reader retention.
• Fresh methods for marketing and promoting the newspaper.

While the report on the conference focus on aspects of the newspaper industry that are revenue driven — advertising and circulation– there was some discussion about improving the overall editorial product.  From the section titled “Relating to Readers,” Chris Anderson, editor of the Orange Country Register urged an upgrade of the quality of content:

“Quality sells newspapers. But it doesn’t come easily, and it doesn’t come free.” It is increasingly apparent, he said, that newspapers must make long-­term investments in editorial content that arc not immediately cost-­justifiable – but will have long-term benefit. He listed these as primary ingredients in a newspaper’s quality: 

  1. We are specific to our own set of readers. We “belong” to them.
  2. There are things for lots of different readers. Our readership is a coalition of special-interest groups
  3. We make things easy to find and to read. Consistency and packaging arc especially important. 
  4. A good newspaper is compelling and personal. “Readers have no obligation to take the rubber band off. It’s easier to watch TV.”
  5. We involve our readers, and help them tell their stories.
  6. Professionalism is painstaking attention to detail.

There was one page on the potential of computers, at least when it comes to circulation, to help newspapers understand their market and where their subscribers live.

The booklet about the conference has recommendations are well past their “sell by” date. The marketplace has upended advertising and circulation revenue streams. And that left many newspaper readers, or the remaining newspaper readers, high and dry.

Front Pages from the Kennedy Assassination

The United Press International published a collection of front pages from the four days following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Sixty years later it is remarkable look at American journalism and the power of the front page. And it is also a reminder of how many newspapers have been lost [closed, merged] since that time.  The magazine’s publisher wrote this about the collection:

FOUR DAYS IN NOVEMBER
The responsibility of the American Newspaper to give its readers accurate, swift, and in this case, tragic and appalling news, was never met with greatwr skill and devotion than on the four days of November 22, 23, 24, and 25, 1963.

Despite the awesome pressure of meeting deadlines under such sorrowful conditions, millions of words poured from reporters’ typewriters, thousands of copy editors checked stories they never wanted to see. In the so-called “back shops” of newspapers, large medium and small, linotype operators punched keys which rec­orded for all to read a story which even the typesetters could hardly believe. Pressmen assembled plates which should never have been needed, and pushed the button which triggered the high whine of a high-speed press.

Deliverers delivered newspapers to newsboys and news merchants who sold them to readers who didn’t want to believe the headlines they saw were true.

Other items are listed here.

Looking to the Future: 1986 to 2001

In the past, journalism conventions serving management and editors, such as the Associated Press Managing Editors conference, were major events.  Hundreds of participants, dozens of panels and speeches.  So important that the APME published what the called the “Red Book.”  This was a record of the proceedings so those who could not attend would learn what was discussed.

In 1987, the Red Book reported on a panel held in Cincinnati, OH, on “Newspapers After 2001.”  The panel was tasked to look ahead 15 years.  Among the participants:

  • James K. Batten, president, Knight-Ridder, Inc.
  • Louis D. Boccardi, president and general manager, The Associated Press
  • John J. Curley, president and chief executive officer. Gannett Newspapers
  • Katherine W. Fanning, editor, Christian Science Monitor
  • Jeff Greenfield, media critic and columnist, ABC
  • James Hoge, president, New York Daily News
  • C.K. McClatchy, president, McClatchy Newspapers
  • Burl Osborne, president, Dallas Morning News
  • Eugene C. Patterson, chairman and chief executive officer, Times Publishing Company, St. Petersburg, Fla.
  • William O. Taylor, chairman and chief executive officer. Boston Globe
  • Chris Urban, Urban and Associates 

Reading over this edited transcript of the discussion, I was struck how little the panel got right. In fact, I think most of them missed the speeding “technology bus” that was about to crash into their newsprint based business and scatter their profits and employees to the wind. There was discussion about the declining readership — one panelist suggest the industry encourage literacy — and the fragmented advertising market. There were a couple of notable mentions of technology.  Here’s one from Kay Fanning:

We’re being increasingly bombarded by trivia and through the progress of technology it will get worse and worse. With all the world coming to our back door in terms of satellite communications and transportation, the link-up of the global stock market, all aspects of computer networking, newspapers will need a content that offers the citizen a pathway through this hail of trivia. That content will require more substance, more quality, offer more understanding rather than just a lot of information. I believe in the simple bromide of the better mousetrap. If we have a quality that is relevant to the citizens and to the public interest we can easily raise the numbers from 40 to 60 percent. 

I did like the comments from John Curley about improving the visuals of newspapers to make them more appealing:

Presentation is part of it too. Color, graphics, and our ability to do more in that area will be important. I don’t mean to pick on the Cincinnati Inquirer, since we own it, but in yesterday’s paper we went 11 pages in the Life Section without a graphic or photo. and a lot of the contents suggested that there could have been some there. I don’t think that is atypical of most newspapers, and it’s a weakness in a lot of our newspapers too.

Curley was the first editor of USA Today, hence he knew about color and graphics. USA Today was launched four years earlier, in 1982. in 1988, the American Press Institute had a major design seminar looking at the future of newspapers. It was called Design 2000.  Details are elsewhere on this site.  Lots of graphics and color in those prototype newspapers.

TV News’ Future

Also at the convention was Lawrence Grossman, president of NBC News. He gave a talk on “Television News After 2001.” He was sort right when he said:

My thesis is that if you look 15 years ahead to the year 2001, it will be much like what we see now in television news, just as when you look back to 1970, television news was basically like what you’re seeing now.

But take that out a few more years and he was very, very wrong.  He got a few things right.  It was an interesting read.

Social Contract with Readers, 1978

The American Society of Newspaper Editors asked Ruth Clark to look at the issues between readers and editors.  She refers to this as the “new social contract.” The study, done in 1978, discussed one of the most important issues, behavior influences and “the changing relationship between readers and their newspapers.”  From the summary:

We know very little about the subtle forces that seem to be weakening the emotional ties of many readers, making newspapers less wanted, less needed or, in extreme cases, resented. Analyzing the chemistry of individual relations is difficult enough; explaining group attitudes is even more challenging.

The present pilot study is an attempt, nevertheless, to provide some preliminary insights into what might be called “The New Social Contract between Newspaper Editors and Readers.” It is an effort to deepen our understanding of findings that have been emerging from major reader surveys of the Newspaper Readership Project.  As a by-product, it is also a demonstration of techniques that editors can use  to establish a direct dialogue with readers and non-readers as part of a continuing search for new ways to increase newspaper reading.

The work was commissioned by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and funded by the Readership Council. It was carried out by Yankelovich, Skelly and White, Inc., under the direction of Ruth Clark.

More that 120 regular readers, occasional readers, and non-readers were interview­ed in informal focus group sessions in 12 different daily newspaper markets, both competitive and non-competitive, chain and non-chain. As a special feature, editors not only observed all the sessions but participated part of the time. 

Being Part of the News

While in journalism school at San Francisco State University, I was stringer for United Press International. UPI was the second largest wire service in the U.S. during the 1970s.  It was a tradition that one of the college newspaper editors would be a UPI stringer and so I was.  A former SFSU graduate worked as a reporter at UPI and he would often call and ask for a bit of “string” for national stories.  String was just another way of saying comments from around the country that could be woven into a large round-up story.

One such story that not only did I provide string but provide a quote that was in the story involved the firing of Lt. Gen. Lewis B Hershey in 1969.  Hershey was the head of the selective service  system, the draft, and a hated official during the Vietnam war. 

Here’s my quote:

“It’s great that Hershey as a personality is finally getting out,” said Howard Finberg, 20, a student at San Francisco State College. “But the system is still wrong, and that’s what needs to be corrected.”

The image is the wire service teletype copy that was set to newspapers and other subscribers of the UPI national wire. 

This was an interesting period to be a journalist and cover the Vietnam war era turmoil on your own campus.

Michael Bloomberg on Newspapers

Michael Bloomberg, president and founder of Bloomberg Financial Markets gave a keynote speech at the International Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 1997.  His speech was about the future of electronic devices and he spent a lot of time talking about newspapers and whether there’s an electronic solution that would make consumers give up on print. [That’s why I’m posting his speech]. An excerpt:

And if we are going to build consumer products, if our businesses are going to grow and let electronic devices replace newspapers they are going to have to provide the same functionality. Now another answer to the problem would be don’t let radio and television become the substitute for newspapers. But find some way to make newspapers more valuable, more economic. And if you think about it, it is a very easy thing to do. Right now we go and we chop down an awful lot of trees in Canada, we haul them to the mill, we grind them up into paper, we put ink on it, we deliver it to the comer newspaper stand or the newspaper boy or girl throws it on your doorstep. You read it once and you throw it away. It is a phenomenally inefficient thing screaming for a technological solution.

Bloomberg also so the coming of streaming television:

No matter how many times people tell you that broadcast is here to stay, the feet of the matter is it is not here to stay. It is so compelling to be able to get what you want, when you want it, independent of everybody else that we are going to give you video on demand no matter what it costs and no matter who’s axe gets gored and people will try to protect their industries. They will try to protect their jobs, but the feet of the matter is, if you look at the public, the public has the interest in getting a movie they go to Blockbuster, they want to see it when they want to see it. The public even goes to the comer movie theater to see it when they want to see it. The public wants to be able to jump over commercials, which is going to be a very big problem. Who is going to pay for all of this? The public wants to be able to stop that football game for two minutes when the phone rings or when the diaper needs changing. And we are going to have to deliver those kinds of products, those facilities, those attributes for television.

His speech had some good visionary moments.

Visual Editing. A New Textbook

In early 1990, Bruce Itule and I published: “Visual Editing. A graphic guide for journlists”.  This textbook was aimed at editors at newspapers who handled various elements — photos, illustrations and informational graphics. It also tied all those elements together with chapters on newspaper design. It also include some history and a section on ethics.  It was a great learning opportunity and I believe it helped become a better editor and manager. The Visual Editing textbook is on this site. More on the book is here.

Chicago Tribune Publishes the Watergate Tapes in 1 Day, 1974

One of the moments of journalism history that I had a chance to live was the Chicago Tribune’s publishing of some of the Nixon White House tapes – the Watergate tapes – in 1974. It was also a moment where I was so very proud of the Tribune and its management and staffers.

The paper created a 44-page supplement that contained every word of the transcripts. And it was done in a single day. The remarkable inside story about that publishing achievement was capture by the Tribune’s in-house publication, “The Little Tribune.”  The June 1974 edition is full details and names. For example:

After the decision was made, [editor Clayton] Kirkpatrick immediately contacted Maxwell McCrohon, managing editor; Frank Starr, chief of the Washington bureau; and Charles Parvin, assistant news editor then on duty, and instructed them to begin work on the project.

Because a decision had to be made quickly on how the transcript would be printed, a team of five editorial and production men was sent by Tribune plane to Washington’s Dulles airport to meet Frank Starr who would bring copies of the transcript.

Parvin contacted Dick Leslie, an assistant news editor, at his home about 10: 30 p.m. and asked him to round up two other men for the trip. Leslie called Bob Finan, editorial production coordinator, and George Cohen, Book World production man, who had experience with setting copy in cold type. John Olson, vice president and general manager, phoned Fred Hemingston, composing room superintendent, and Fred contacted Pat Ryan, engraving superintendent.  

This is a great story about the power of journalism.  The Tribune managed to print the transcripts BEFORE the official government printing office.

P.S. I was also proud to play a small role as a picture editor.

[art director Gus] Hartoonian and [art director Tony] Majeri created several designs for page 1, and one of them was selected by McCrohon. The front page story for the section was written by James O. Jackson, reporter, and Casey Banas, assistant to the editor, prepared the Transcript Index. Howard Finberg, assistant picture editor, located and sized photographs for page 1, inside and back pages, and ordered Velox prints from the engraving department. [picture editor Chuck] Scott asked photographer Chuck Osgood to take the special front page picture of the tapes.

Presentation to Straits Times, Singapore

In July 1993, I was invited to give a series of workshops to the visual journalists at the Straits Times in Singapore. [Straits Times company also owned the Business Times, a tabloid call New Paper and two native language papers: Berita Harian and Zaohao.]

The workshop was for three days. Among the topics covered:

  • Readership
  • Typography and Readability
  • Ethics
  • Color [although we spelled it Colour]
  • Graphics
  • The Future [Year 2000 design, based on the work done at the American Press Institute seminar on the topic].

Membership, Instructions and More for API Design 2000 Seminar

I’ve uploaded a collection of memos about the American Press Institute’s J. Montgomery Curtis Memorial Seminar on the future of newspaper design. The collection starts with the invite / acceptance letter in April 1988. 

On July 21, API sent out the important information about the  seminar — a memo outlining a task for each seminar participant: design a front page of the future.

Each member is being asked to create a front page of the future, including content mix and design elements. These front pages (which will become a part of this year’s post-seminar publication) will be analyzed in advance by Roger Black, one of the most active and acclaimed publication designers in the United States, and discussed during the program.

There is also a schedule of events and information about discussion groups and the final round-table.

Here’s a look at the seminar schedule:

  • Monday, September 12:
      • 8:30 – 10:00 – “Newspapers in a Visual Society11
        Speaker: John Lees, Partner, Herman and Lees         Associates, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.
      • 10:15 – 12:15 – “The Front Page”
        Speaker: Roger Black, President, Roger         Black Inc., New York, N.Y.
      • 2:00 – 3:30 – Study I: “The Future for Newspaper Graphics”
        Speaker: Howard Finberg, Assistant Managing         Editor, Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Ariz.
      • 3:45 – 5:15 – Study II: “Color”
        Speaker: Nanette Bisher, Assistant Art Director, U.S. News and World Report, Washington, DC.
  • Tuesday, September 13:
      • 8:30 – 10:00 – Study III: “The Impact of Technology”
        Speaker: David Gray, Managing         Editor/Graphics, Providence Journal Company, Providence, RI.
      • 10:15 – 11:45 – Study IV: “The Role of Tomorrow’s Newspaper Designer”
        Speaker: Marty Petty, Vice President/Deputy         Executive Editor, Hartford Courant, Hartford, Conn.
      • 12:00 – 1:30 – The membership will be broken into small groups to discuss in greater detail specific issues raised during the seminar.
      • 1:45 – 3:30 – The membership will return to the API Round-Table to hear reports from each group detailing observations and any conclusion.

One other important document: the discussion leaders biographies.

The end product of this seminar can be seen in this slideshow.