Alan Jacobson at Brass Tracks Design has written a pretty persuasive argument for going tab using one of his recent clients, the Bakersfield Californian, as an example. Jacobson’s suggestions could certainly apply to most community newspapers (minus the part about nixing feature photos). He outlines how a tab can save money and provide new revenue opportunities through both advertising upsells and single-copy sales.
Author: Andrew Chavez
Andrew Chavez is a Web specialist at the Dallas Morning News. Before joining the News, he worked at the Austin American-Statesman and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
In a Q&A with an online digital marketing journal, BusinessWeek’s John Byrne elaborates on some of the company’s user engagement efforts, many of which would carry over well to community newspapers. He talks about how BusinessWeek leverages readers’ knowledge in creative ways from crowdsourcing questions to guest columns.
In less than a year, M.E. Sprengelmeyer has gone from being the Washington correspondent at the Rocky Mountain News — covering everything from 9/11 to the war in Iraq — to owning a community newspaper in a small New Mexico town. He writes about his experience on the Save the News blog, and about his optimism about the state of community journalism. “Think of a community newspaper as a bronze statue in the town square,” he writes. “Everybody in town can look up and see that it’s there.”
If you’ve been to one of our Web workshops you’ve probably heard us talk about the Flip camera. It’s an easy-to-use, point-and-shoot video camera that we’ve recommended for those who want to get started with digital video.
Now we have one (a Flip Ultra, worth $149), and we want to give it to you, the community journalists who take advantage of our online services.
To be eligible to win this all you have to do is be a registered user of this site, and a subscriber to our e-mail newsletter.
If you’re not registered yet, just point your browser to /user/register and sign up. Make sure you leave the box checked for “Subscribe to Weekly update from the Digital Initiative” so you’re eligible for the Flip camera giveaway.
You’ll be entered into the contest additional times if you’re also our follower on Twitter (our username is @tccj) or a fan of our page on Facebook (just search for Texas Center for Community Journalism) so if you aren’t registered on either of those sites, this could be a great time to do so.
We’ll select the winner on September 21st, so sign up by then to be eligible.
This is only open to individual journalists (so you can’t register under your newspaper’s name), and you have to live in the U.S.
Good luck.
Here’s a statistic to share with your advertisers: Newspapers are still the main medium that influences the buying decisions of 59% of adults. That’s according to data released by NAA, which contain a wealth of interesting stats about how newspapers readers are affected by advertising. The first link, to MediaPost, has some analysis with the highlights of the data. The second link is to a news release on NAA’s site with the numbers.
A story in the NYT looks at how many are starting their day online, which could mean an even further decrease in the amount of time people have to read the paper in the morning. “It used to be you woke up, went to the bathroom, maybe brushed your teeth and picked up the newspaper,” Naomi S. Baron, a professor at American University told the NYT. “But what we do first now has changed dramatically.” The story uses Web traffic patterns and anecdotal accounts to discuss the phenomenon, which is likely already affecting how many consume their news.
Community newspapers, while hurting from the economic downturn, have been largely immune to other changes in media that have hurt large, metro newspapers, according to an AP story. Also, metros might look to hyperlocal, the bread and butter of community newspapers, to shape the model of the large dailies of the future. Much of this story will be old news to community journalists, but there are some interesting statistics in this story about the performance of community newspapers as a part of the industry.
Fitz & Jen point to a Borrell Associates report that indicates advertising revenue might finally be on the rise. The best part for community newspapers is that the report expects “much of the upcoming growth to come from community and suburban papers.”
The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism has been looking at new models for online news lately, and speaking with online news operations all over the country. In doing so, they’ve provided a great list of ways people are monetizing online content. There is a great deal of information in here, and anyone with a website should check it out.
Shortly after the Ann Arbor News closed, AnnArbor.com went live. The site has an interesting format — it’s rather blog-like — and it screams hyperlocal. It’s definitely worth looking at if you’re a community journalist. And on top of the interesting format for news, they’ve also rethought advertising in a unique way. Check out the articles for more information. The first link, from the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, covers the reasoning behind the sites layout and delves into the ad issue as well. See the other two links for some commentary on the site from Steve Buttry and Jeff Jarvis.