Archive for June, 2008
June 25th, 2008
…. so, if you want to reach the younguns, forget print, you gotta be on the Web. Right? Well, maybe, sorta, and depends. Some very clear trends are coming out of our market research here in the News Tower. One is immutable: Baby Boomers and their parents are diehard newspaper readers — and will likely remain so until, well, you get the point. Seventy-seven percent of 55-plus adults read the Sunday newspaper — an increase of nine points since 2005. Sixty-eight percent read the daily newspaper, which is the same as 2005.
(They are also big Web users, so don’t go thinking Boomers don’t do Web. We do. More on that next post.)
Half the 40-54-year-olds read the daily Register Star during the week. On Sunday, the number is 11 points higher for both groups. So aging GenXers and middle-aged Boomers are hanging on to their print papers pretty tightly. (P.S. The numbers are identical to what they were in 2005)
So, what about the younguns? Perhaps surprisingly to a lot of folks who think young ones are Web-only, the under 40 crowd in Winnebago and Boone counties are newspaper readers, too. One out of four adults 18-34 reads the newspaper during the week (about the same as in 2005). And, 37 percent of adults between 35-49 read the daily newspaper. On Sundays, those percentages increase to 45 percent of 18-34-year-olds; and 51 percent of the 35-49 year olds — again, about the same as 2005.
We are transforming into an information center that delivers news, information and advertising across multiple platforms — magazines, daily/Sunday papers, online, and someday holograms — but that traditional newspaper in the Rock River Valley isn’t disappearing anytime soon. We’re a newspaper reading market.
June 24th, 2008
Some are. For sure. Not the Rockford Register Star. Not even close. Love us; hate us. We’re still the gorilla information center that gets results for advertisers and covers the news better than all the other media combined. More on that amazingly arrogant statement in a minute. Back to the dying.
Mostly, it’s the major metros, like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, that are in trouble. Even the legendary ones, like the Washington Post and the New York Times, find themselves wrestling with a bleak forecast they never imagined. One newspaper group owner predicts by the end of the year that as many as 19 major metros could be gone. I think that’s a tad hysterical, even if the guy is a friend. But, though times are tough for us mid-size markets, too, and we must transform more quickly, we’re in no danger of disappearing. For one reason: We’ve always known that local news, information and advertising combine to make up our franchise. Do those things well; stay alive and kicking through the transformation that takes us into the full-blown digital age.
So, how can I make those arrogant statements? ‘Cuz I have the research to back it up. We just completed our every-three-year market research and we’ll be sharing the results over the next couple months. But, here’s a headline for today:
* The daily and Sunday newspapers reach 71 percent of the adults in the market. Add rrstar.com to the mix and we reach 74 percent. In short, if you want to connect with anyone 18 or over in Winnebago or Boone counties, if you want them to know something or buy something from you, you’d better have a presence in this newspaper and on our Web site. How does that compare with three years ago? We’re down three percentage points and up almost 9,000 readers (that can happen when the market grows as this one did.)
Frankly, we expected a 10-15 point drop because that’s what’s been happening everywhere else in the country, and in some places it’s been even more. I know some folks will (a) not believe me, or (b) wish they had an alternative. But, for right now, I’m going to enjoy the fact that both my newspaper and my Web site are doing just fine. More headlines later this week.
June 22nd, 2008
I’m pretty sure Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey didn’t like the Page One photo on Saturday’s newspaper. Next to a headline about City Council considering environmentally friendly proposals for city government, there was a picture of Morrissey drinking a bottle of water. In one sense the photo is unfair: Morrissey has long had a green-friendly-advocacy reputation. The juxtapostion of his bottled water and the headline could lead some to believe he doesn’t care.
But, the fact it, bottled water is ubiquitous. I’ll drink the bottled stuff when it’s handy even though I’m not a bottled water buyer, except in airports or when a tap isn’t readily available. Never could reconcile paying for a plastic bottle of something I could get from the faucet for free. At home, it’s Rockford tap water filtered through a Brita and poured into a reusable plastic bottle. I’ve done that for years, not because I was so “green,” but mostly because I was so cheap.
When there’s a bottle of water around, I’ll grab it, which is mostly likely what the mayor did at council meeting. Still, a pitcher of Rockford tap water and some paper cups would do as well, and might be just the thing for a reprise of that photo-op moment.
But, if we’re going to give up our love of bottled water, we’re going to have to get used to a glass with water and ice, and maybe a paper napkin to catch the drips. That’s what we “serve” at editorial board meetings and I’ve got to admit, I am amused by the almost shocked reactions of some guests when we hand them the real deal — nice glass, ice and all. I’m pretty sure some folks think we might be trying to poison them with water in an actual glass….
June 18th, 2008
On June 20, when the last of our six newsroom buyouts leaves the News Tower, they will have taken with them 131 years of community and institutional memory. They will have taken with them, decades of knowing how to spell Hononegah and how to pronounce Sinnissippi.
Decades of knowing whether we were writing about NIC-10 or NIC-9 and which teams were which. Decades of knowing what Hastec was. Of knowing at whom Silverman threw balled up newspapers. Decades of nodding knowingly and grinning big when someone mentioned Ramhoff, Lenahan, and, of course, Beeg. Decades of knowing how much the deseg lawsuit cost and which school board members were Elvira and the three stooges. These are the journalists who saw Joe Lamb take off his leg and toss it on the desk top to get a new reporter’s attention.
These six are the journalists whose careers in the News Tower helped shape who we are and what we will become. And, as they choose to leave us, I am grateful for their gifts.
There are six, and among them, are six very different reasons for deciding to take the buyout. In most cases, the decision was a joyful one: Give me the cash so I can go do what I’ve always wanted to do. For these men and women, the path to a new life or a new career could be smoothed with financial support they didn’t expect. In other cases, the decision was colored with frustration and disappointment, indeed, perhaps anger. I would be disingenuous and dishonest to pretend otherwise. It would be a decision tinged with “time to get out while the getting’ out’s good.”
But in all cases these journalists struggled with the decision to remove the comma after their names. You know that comma, the one on your business card that says what you do? That comma also becomes who we are, and when it is no longer there, the world looks and feels a lot different. No one removes that comma easily, whether by choice or not. I know. I have been there.
Today, I celebrate the six who have made that decision: Geri Nikolai, 22 years at the Register Star; Judy Emerson, 23 years; Edie Webster, 18 years; Vicki Olson, 26 years; Rob Baxter, 10 years; and, Reed Schreck, 32 years – and most of them spent praying (with Geri) that Brett Favre would NOT retire …..
We will be not less, but different, when these friends and co-workers are gone. It will take months not to hear their voices or wonder if they are coming in. It will take longer still for us to stop saying, “well, if she – or he – were here, they’d be able to do this for us.” Each will, however, pass into News Tower legend.
About them will be told tales, growing ever more colorful with each telling. And, each journalist in this room today, will be part of that amazing newsroom continuum that opens every bar-stool conversation with something like this: “Remember, oh what WAS her name? You know, the one who …..” And, we’ll be able to fill in the name ….
Oh, that was Judy, or Geri, or Edie, or Reed, or Rob or Vicki… We will remember and because we remember, they will be with us always – well, except, when we need some work done. Godspeed.
(The Rockford Register Star offered voluntary buyouts and accepted about 20 building-wide. When it announced the buyouts, we said we needed about 20 in order to reach our goal of being at 94 percent of 2007 payroll expense. We expect to update the story over the next few weeks. Portions of this post were originally shared at a newsroom staff meeting on June 5.)
June 17th, 2008
I vote cliche. Whether it’s a political candidate kissing the proverbial babies, grandma bussing grandpa at the 100th birthday party or a newly married gay couple, the kiss photo is just so passe. But, it’s got the world a twittering as newspapers discuss, then decide, whether they will or won’t use a photo of a gay couple kissing. OK, I’m not so ingenuous as to pretend there aren’t those who will find that photo distressing; there will be. And, the same distressed folks won’t be the slightest concerned that there was live footage on the Web site or on television. It’s all about being distressed because it was in print in the daily newspaper. So, what about here in the News Tower? Pretty simple.
Print good photos. Tell the story. Kiss photos beat kill photos any day in my book. So, if the kiss tells the story, go for it. But, I’m pretty convinced there are better photos than anyone kissing anyone (or thing….).
Want to read more? Check the discussion at this journalism Web site: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=67&aid=145412
June 17th, 2008
Humans like to look at themselves. In mirrors, in still water reflections, in photographs. We moan and groan about having our pictures taken, but we’re first in line to see if we are IN the photo, and, of course, whether we look good. We like photos, too, because they show — not tell — us what’s really going on. It is that cliche in live action: A photo is worth a thousand words. (Want to know where it came from? Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_picture_is_worth_a_thousand_words).
Back to photos and the fotogs who take them. I’ll venture this prediction: As print newspapers transform themselves into deep, broad information centers, we’ll see the evolution of photographers from “support staff” to “main staff.” Word journalists have always been the big names in newsrooms; the visual journalists, like photographers and graphics artists, always took a secondary seat at the table. Not so much anymore. It won’t be long before it’s all about the “multimedia journalist,” not the reporter.
Over the past year, as we have added video and photo galleries to www.rrstar.com, one thing is dead certain: Pictures drive Web traffic. Sure, the text remains important, but our photo galleries trump every text story. Check out the galleries of the flooding in the Rock River Valley and around the Midwest.
June 12th, 2008
My dad used that phrase a lot as the five of us were growing up and we didn’t like something he’d laid down the law on: my house, my rules. I remembered it as we were re-launching “comments” on www.rrstar.com. We had a comment-on-a-story function a year ago and we called it StoryChat. It’s back this week, simply called “comments.” We learned a lot of lessons from the old StoryChat about managing the rudeness of some posters, and the sheer audacity of others in claiming the First Amendment required us to let them defame others. As we took StoryChat down a year ago, I decided that if we ever brought it back it would be more on our terms and less on the terms of those who abuse the rights of free speech.
I figure it this way: Much as I would not want these posters in my kitchen sharing a cup of coffee, I don’t want them on our site spewing their brand of personal ugliness. There are other places they can do that; they can even build their own sites. We’re not clamping down on disagreements, or even the outrageously stupid. But, if it is a post I can’t read without embarrassment, if it’s a post that personally attacks me, my staff, or another poster (feel free to attack the arguments, but leave my personal life out of it), then out it goes. Our site is for civil civic conversation. Thanks, Dad, for reminding me: my house, my rules. I don’t need to explain why.
June 10th, 2008
When I started in the news business in 1972, we did these things called “editor’s notes.” Small, two or three sentence responses to readers’ letters to the editor, a short explainer of why a story was important, or just a comment from the editor on a particular subject. It was a personal connection that for some reason disappeared from newspapers over the next decades. An editor’s column just wasn’t quite the same as those short, quick notes. Then, along come blogs, and while the young ones think they’ve discovered something, blogs are pretty much a digital editor’s note.
I’ve missed — sorta — writing my weekly column for the Sunday Opinion section, but after at least 25 years of weekly columns, I was tired of doing them so I took a couple-year break. I’ve written on other rrstar.com blogs, and now I want to experiment with my own. Might work; might not. We’ll see.
June 10th, 2008
I’m sure I can but doing it for the first time is always interesting. Let’s see if it is efficient enough to do regularly.
