Ad Mavericks

I got my start in newspapers. The thrill of driving around town all day selling ads and then racing back to the office to lay out the ideas I just pitched was great for my early 20-something mind. There are days that I miss that experience.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The demise of the newspaper industry is well documented. What’s not documented enough is these organizations’ failures to react quickly enough to the emerging technology that is now their downfall.

A year ago I read a post on Tech Crunch about an online network of newspaper sites. Brilliant, I thought. The beauty of being able to reach an affluent national audience of 45-65 year olds online would be magic for the newspapers. I haven’t heard a word about it since.

Newspapers need to band together for their own survival. How? How about creating an online newspaper network. You can then reach people nationally instead of having some local hack try to sell you 10,000 impressions. You could have someone who knows how to target hundreds of markets by geography, income, age … you get the picture. You’d be a lot better off trying to sell Microsoft on this concept than the guy at Ted’s Coney Island. As an online media buyer, do you think I want to call 100 reps? Nope, I want to call one, which is what happens when media buyers use Ad Networks like Tribal Fusion or Casale Media. Newspapers should adopt their model.

Now, the newspapers will tell you that they can’t create an alliance with their competitors. I call B.S. on that. Sure Gannett competes with the Tribune Company nationally, but is there really a whole lot of competition on a market-by-market basis? If they don’t do something because it would be helping their competitors, they all run the risk of continuing to die a slow death.

Second, newspaper organizations should adopt the USA Today model. A large newspaper group, like a Gannett or Tribune Company should produce one main news section for national news and national sports news and share that with all of their subsidiaries.  Too often I am greeted in the Sunday paper front page with some story about a guy with a barn in the sticks. That stuff ought to appear in the Metro or the Life section. The Sports section should be done by the national company. National sports news on the first 6 pages, local sports news on the last 6 pages. Is there anything worse than a local sports section? But you give me USA Today type sports coverage and I am subscribing seven days a week. Hello? Gannett owns USA Today!

All I really want from my local paper is some good solid Metro section news, Business section, some local sports scores and opinions, and then all the freaking inserts I have to pull my wife away from on Sunday morning.

Third. News coverage is cheap these days. You can find out something faster on Twitter than you can on your local paper’s Web page. If investigative journalism still truly exists (and there is some debate over that), then why not do a better job of teasing me through a stronger RSS, text message, email alert strategy. Again, if this was handled on a national basis by a newspaper holding company, think of the benefits it would have for their readers, and the papers themselves.

Lastly, Craig’s List and online Job Boards are kicking the crap out of the newspaper classified sections. It’s almost sad to see how much limited content is in these once-robust sections. And this is where the real pain for newspapers is. Many would be surprised to know that newspapers make more money on classified advertising than they do on display ads in the main sections. Sure, some newspapers have a relationship with Career Builder, but that was only half smart. The newspapers should have started their own online job board.

Unfortunately the newspapers have only themselves to blame. Too much status quo, too much pride, and very little big thinking.  Just ask the folks at the Rocky Mountain News.

Author: Josh Fleming

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