Last Updated: November 09, 1999
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A note
from the president
Free press, free speech. They go hand in hand, so people ask the ASNE
president to give a free speech every once in a while.
I want to share with you some excerpts of a talk I gave to California
editors and publishers. I hope you will react to it and share your thoughts
with me. Here goes.
I saw the movie “Notting Hill” the other night. There were some wonderful
lines in the movie, and one of them reminded me of a sobering comment that
Andy Grove of Intel made to our convention in April. You’ve all read it,
and some of you heard it firsthand: “Newspapers won’t be around in their
present form in three years.”
So now contrast that with the breathtaking line by Julia Roberts in
“Notting Hill.” She was standing there, arguing with Hugh Grant about how
she would be treated in tomorrow morning’s newspapers. Grant’s character
was reminding her that the photos taken of the two of them would disappear
in another day, when newspapers were tossed on the recycling stack. (Actually,
he made reference to birdcages.)
Oh, no, she said. “Newspapers are forever. Newspapers last forever.”
Newspapers will be gone in three years. Newspapers last forever. Ah,
if only movies could make things come true.
Which will it be? Neither, I suspect, and I suppose you are likely to
agree with me.
But I think it’s time to do some serious worrying — or perhaps I should
say, serious thinking — about how we’re going to do a much better job of
providing our customers with the information and insights they want and
need.
To me, that means we have to get very serious about change and risk-taking.
It means we have to get serious about learning what leads to the decision-making
process when people are asked to buy newspapers.
So let’s talk about the imperative of readership. And if we have to
talk about numbers today, let’s just remind ourselves of the decline in
adult readership of newspapers over the past 30 years — down about 20 percentage
points.
There are many reasons why we must be concerned about readership, and
the reasons should appeal to all of us. Some are philosophical; some are
financial.
First, the philosophical:
Our role in a democratic society. Sometimes we might think it’s corny
to be considered the Fourth Estate, but there is power in that thought.
And newspapers, more than any other medium, set the agenda for discussion.
We serve the watchdog role so critical to a government that is supposed
to be of the people.
Our role as a catalyst for a sense of community. Virtually all of us
in this room serve a defined geographical area where the citizens have
hopes and aspirations for the future. But we can’t be a catalyst for that
discussion if we reach only the elite. We must seek to serve all the citizens
in our communities.
Our role is as a guide to living. We must be the useful medium, the
place where people come to be informed but also to live. We ought to help
people save time and save money.
And that should lead us to the notion that we must seek to be the indispensable
source of information and ideas for the people of our communities. I like
the American Express advertising tag line, slightly amended: “Don’t leave
home without us.”
There are business imperatives as well:
We must grow the top line of our companies. I don’t see how we can do
that with a declining share of audience. I recall a conversation with an
advertiser who told me that rate increases would be tied to circulation
increases.
We need to do that to be able to fund the kinds of new ventures that
will enable us to reach even broader audiences, be that through print,
online or other ways.
We need to grow the bottom line as well, to ensure the continued investment
of our shareholders.
That all seems pretty straightforward to me. And if those are decent
reasons and the desired outcomes, how do we get there?
First, we must all recognize this as an issue. I am delighted that the
Newspaper Association of America has decided that growing readership is
worthy of being among its strategic initiatives.
At the same time, we hear concern from corporate executives that we
will punished on Wall Street for making an investment that doesn’t appear
to have an immediate return. That’s not a concern to be taken lightly,
and I do not want to be naive about it. I work for a privately held company
so perhaps you may think I am not qualified to talk about this question.
But we all have shareholders. In fact, I am a shareholder of publicly held
newspaper companies, and like other shareholders, I want their value to
grow. But I also would like to pass my holdings to my children. It seems
to me that will only be possible if we grow our audience over time.
Yes, I believe that if we grow readership, we will grow the bottom line.
What the readership imperative is about, in the end, is an effort to make
newspapers a growth medium.
All right, you say, this is pretty much no-brainer stuff so far. It’s
like motherhood and apple pie. You might be thinking, let’s cut to the
chase. How do we do it?
Seriously: Achieving the readership imperative starts with a readership
initiative. It starts with a commitment. The initial commitment is from
the NAA, ASNE and the Newspaper Management Center — and others, as time
goes on — to helping editors and publishers with new and better tools to
improve newspapers’ ability to grow audiences.
But equally important, there must be a commitment by all of us, and
every newspaper executive in this country. This commitment must come in
the form of participation, collaboration and resources. It must also be
a commitment to the ideal.
Some of you in this room may say that your company already has that
commitment. In fact, at the readership summit in Florida last February,
Orage Quarles, publisher of The Modesto (Calif.) Bee, made a compelling
case for how to grow readership. Make it a company imperative, he said.
Tie it to compensation. That’s what McClatchy does.
I don’t disagree with that. And yet, I think there is even more to be
gained by an industry-wide approach to a methodical but creative examination
of the issues surrounding readership growth.
So what are ASNE, NAA and the NMC committed to?
First, raising money to fund the initiative. As you probably have heard,
the initial commitment is for about $11 million over the next couple of
years. That will provide for the creation of a Readership Center and initial
work done there. This funding is critical.
What will we do? You undoubtedly have heard about Sergio Zyman — in
fact, you may have heard him speak at the NAA convention in San Diego in
April. But the Readership Initiative, while connected to Sergio’s marketing
work, is, at its root, improving the product we market. In other words,
if we’re going to spend a zillion dollars promoting our products, we better
make sure they’re what customers want and need.
The Readership Initiative is not fully planned. But it is safe to say
that it will focus on product and service. Let’s look at each of those
for a minute.
First, product. For the first time, we’re looking at two huge research
efforts. One of the concepts is to gather all the great research that has
been done, and make it available to everyone. While there are obvious problems
with sharing proprietary research, other findings can be shared. Where
there are commonalties, we need to find common solutions — but solutions
that will be adapted for local situations. This can allow us to stop reinventing
the wheel.
Another idea is to conduct further nationwide research, and from that
develop ideas that can be tested. We are suggesting that perhaps 100 newspapers
could be involved in testing interventions, with public tracking of the
results. We already have an example of how that might work, in the form
of the ASNE Journalism Credibility Project. Eight newspapers volunteered
to do (and fund) experiments to address problems identified by readers.
We’ll know next spring the results of those projects.
What we will need is people who will be willing to be very public, very
focused, and without fear of failure to take on this work. I hope some
of you will make that commitment.
In the end, I come back to numbers, but numbers that are based on people.
Can we be fixated on customers?
I hope so. I hope we can be fixated on how we can serve those customers
best. I yearn for all of us to have that commitment — that commitment to
the imperative of readership.
Anderson, ASNE president, is publisher and CEO of The Orange County
Register, Santa Ana, Calif.
