Philly vs New York! Future of Newspapers — Part 2
Posted on October 20, 2009. Filed under: Jazz, Newspapers, Public Relations Marketing, Uncategorized | Tags: Ellie Becker, IMS09, Jazz, Journalists, Marketing, Music, New York Times, Newspapers, Philadelphia Inquirer, PR, Public Relations, Publicity, Social Media, Web 2.0, Westchester Eye |
No, I’m not offering wishful thinking about the World Series pairing – although I’m partial to a back-to-back Series win for my hometown team. What I’m amazed to tell you is that my native Philadelphia Inquirer is up there with my adopted New York Times in the race for major dailies to figure out how to leverage print content – and monetize it – online.
In fact, this is shaping up as a week of focus on forward-thinking print media strategies. Yesterday’s post was about the new weekly paper concept of the Westchester Eye. Today I get an email from the Inquirer, subject line: Think Green – Get the eInquirer Online.
Aside from my first sarcastic thought that online would be the obvious place to get an e-paper, I was immediately curious as to how the eInquirer might differ from the online content currently available on Philly.com, the existing Inquirer/Daily News website. So I clicked.
Well here it is folks. For those who can’t bear to give up the look of the print paper — including me to a degree, the eInquirer delivers an identical on-screen facsimile — complete with ads. As my impatient mind raced forward I asked myself, “Looks good, nice try. But people don’t access content online the same way they do in print.”
Nonetheless, I decided to click on the free two-week no obligation trial. A demo popped up and it didn’t take long til I began to think, “Maybe they’re onto something here!” What you can do is flip through the ‘paper’ as though you were perusing the print version. But as you cursor over stories additional info, including story rank, pops up. If you wish, you can click on a story to opt for a couple of different online-friendly reading formats.
You can also clip, organize and save articles. From the tool bar you can access drop-down menus, email and share stories via social media networks, subscribe to condensed RSS feeds, view all photos in the paper in a gallery, access breaking news, go back to prior issues and archives and take advantage of a variety of search and other nifty options – including downloads and a mobile version.
The price? $2.25 per week delivered to your inbox. I checked to see how this compares to the print subscription price and was offered eight weeks for $48.64 — creative pricing 😉 – or $6.08 per week. In my estimation, I think that a tad more than a third of the cost of print for an online version that gives convenience, flexibility and far more functionality is an attractive deal. Plus you get to save some trees. But I’m interested to know what you all think.
The question I have is, will people gravitate to the $2.25-per-week replica – even with bells and whistles — when they can still go to the robust Philly.com and get news, commentary, entertainment calendars and more for free. I’ll let you know how I like my trial e-subscription and will get more info about how or whether the Inquirer plans to migrate to an all-paid model and ditch its free content.
The New York Times also offers an electronic edition for $9.99 per month for Monday through Friday delivery ($87.95 for a one-year sign-up) and $14.99 per month for seven days ($174.95 for a one-year sign-up). As far as recall the Times has never marketed this option to me, though I’m a subscriber.
Recently I reduced my seven-day print subscription to the Times’ ‘Weekender’ delivery option — Friday through Sunday. It runs about $26 per month vs $48, and the rest of the time I get my news online. That might explain why the electronic version is buried in a link low on the left-hand sidebar of NYTimes.com. But if, as its copy says, “The future of the digital newspaper has arrived!,” maybe the Times ought to give it a bigger shout out and see what happens. As I think of throwing out the weekend papers I didn’t read because I was away, from here I’m going to sign up for my NYTimes seven-day free trial of a full week of the electronic version.
Anyhow – Go Philly! Go Phils!! My hometown – which, as I’ve noted elsewhere on this blog sometimes has a bit of an inferiority complex vs NYC — can be proud of its championship baseball team and of its paper as it innovates to survive in a digital world.
In honor of Philadelphia, you’re listening to native son Joey DeFrancesco on Hammond B-3 organ (an instrument that drives me wild!) as well as trumpet. He’s playing Naima, a rare gentle tune by legendary jazz tenor sax player John Coltrane, another Philly native. It’s from Joey’s album Reboppin’.
Enjoy! See you soon!
You’re Launching What?!! The Future of Newspapers — Today!
Posted on October 18, 2009. Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Jazz, Kenneth Chandler, Marketing, Music, Newspapers, Peter Moses, PR, PRSA, Publicity, Social Media, Web 2.0, Westchester County, Westchester Eye |
We’re all well aware that print publishing is in serious trouble. The Seattle Post- Intelligencer and other fabled dailies are no more. Gourmet Magazine is defunct. BusinessWeek has been herded into the Bloomberg stable. And efforts to monetize print content online, has been largely unsuccessful. Consider The New York Times’ failed effort to take even part of its premium online content out of the ‘free’ column.
Despite these gloomy facts, some print media veterans are exploring where print’s future may lie. Case in point is Westchester Eye, a weekly paper launched today (Monday, Oct 19) by newspaper veterans – and long-time Westchester County, New York residents — Kenneth A. Chandler, Publisher & Editorial Director and Peter Moses, Editor-in-Chief.
I met the two on Friday when they presented to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Westchester-Fairfield Chapter. They see a niche for a new kind of regional weekly publication in their market that will benefit local advertisers, while meeting the desire of readers for stories no longer being covered by besieged dailies or not easily found online. They have the creds to take a decent stab at it, too.
Chandler is a former publisher of the New York Post and the Boston Herald. Moses was a long-time reporter for the Post whose beat covered the Bronx and Westchester County and who served an almost decade-long stint as a broadcast producer, so he understands journalism from more than just the print platform. Both intimately know the turf on which their experiment is unfolding.
What Chandler and Moses recognized is that, while dailies are struggling to survive in print, migrate to the web or come up with some hybrid formula (see annarbor.com), weekly community papers are thriving. In my area, for example, some years ago, the parent of the daily Connecticut Post bought Brooks Community Newspapers, weeklies serving a number of towns in Fairfield County.
So what makes Westchester Eye new and different? You have to ask, in a region where every small town is served by a daily (here a localized version of Gannett’s Journal-News), a local weekly or shopper, maybe a county-wide weekly specialty publication (here the Westchester County Business Journal), and maybe a glossy monthly lifestyle magazine, what’s the need?
In general, Westchester Eye eschews day-to-day breaking news coverage. Rather, the emphasis is on identifying and covering new or emerging trends. This puts them into more of a forecasting mode. It also allows for in-depth coverage of stories over time.
“People have told us we’re either visionaries or crazies,” said Moses. “Of course, we think it’s the former. Our sense of the marketplace is pretty sanguine and straightforward. There is no local business news in the Journal News anymore. The Westchester Business Journal does a great job, but is mostly a business-to-business weekly. Our focus on business stories differs from that model.”
Moses added that lifestyle stories have suffered, too, in daily paper coverage, the result of wide reporter layoffs. They intend to package lifestyle coverage in, “a smart and entertaining way.” Politics will also figure large in the paper’s coverage, crossing borders to go from hyper-local perspectives to more regional implications and impact.
For his part, Chandler described their venture as, “letting the dinosaurs out of Jurassic Park!” The paper has an ad-based business model. No classifieds. Online presence will be limited to teasing stories and giving advertisers an extension of reach – for now. Striving for editorial and journalistic excellence over time, good old-fashioned separation of church and state is the ruling policy. No pay for play. He sites some recent precedent for trend-focused reporting – NewsWeek and Sporting News.
According to publisher Chandler, the bigger dailies are too expensive for local businesses to have any significant impact. And local weeklies have a limited reach. Although packages with group publishers of community papers may extend that reach, the cost can come close to or even exceed the cost of advertising in dailies. He believes that the closer you get to grass roots, the less the Web is a factor, and, in fact, has been very inefficient for local advertisers.
“Print is still good for the local business,” he said. “It allows the plumber, for instance, to build a presence so he’s top of mind when a plumbing emergency arises. And our geographic reach will allow retailers and others to reach potential customers from a broader geography.”
For now, Westchester Eye will be distributed to about 200 locations including major office parks, train stations, retail locations and others. On the editorial side, it is carefully vetting and hiring freelance talent.
I agree with Chandler and Moses’ assessment that this region has long been a nightmare for advertisers. And one of the reasons that publicity has been so attractive a part of the marketing mix. So – go for it Ken and Peter! Hope Westchester Eye is a smashing success. Hope to see you in Fairfield County before too long!
Today, the story is inspiring the music choice. In honor of the Chandler-Moses collaboration, you’ve been enjoying one of the most delicious jazz collaborations ever – Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong from the album Ella and Louis Again. The tune is George and Ira Gershwin’s They All Laughed. Seems apropos for a venture that may well succeed despite conventional opinion to the contrary.
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New PR Words - and Music! 