For newspapers, a painful look back

By the editors of Media Life

This article is part of a Media Life series “Reinventing the American Newspaper.” Click here to read other stories in the series.

In its ongoing series “Reinventing the American newspaper,’’ Media Life is looking at the big issues facing newspapers as they struggle to adapt to this new era: editorial, digital strategy, circulation, revenue sources, right down to whether print editions will even survive.

But a big part of the discussion has to be where newspapers have screwed up.

The fact is, while we can blame digital for many of newspapers’ woes, their problems go back years earlier. Their big failing was in not tackling those problems in the early years of digital, when the threat of this new competitor was very clear.

It matters a lot today.

If poor management did newspapers in, not digital, it follows that smart management can indeed revive newspapers. Newspapers are not dead. They can be reinvented.

Just what were those problems?

To find answers, Media Life went back to a survey of readers in 2007.

Why 2007?

We chose 2007 because in many ways it was a watershed year. While papers were clearly feeling the incursions of the web, ad revenues were still strong at just under $50 billion, down modestly from a peak of $51.5 billion the prior year, according to ZenithOptimedia. The big tumble was still ahead.

Newspapers were being managed much as they had been over the prior decades.

But, alas, not managed well, certainly when it came to ad sales, as Media Life readers made quite clear in a survey that June.

They described buying newspaper advertising as just short of a living hell.

Reading their comments these years later, knowing what was to come, it’s no mystery why newspaper ad revenue took a sudden downward curve and kept sliding, declining to just under $20 billion this year.

Buyers’ frustrations were palpable.

Media Life asked this question: What do you dislike most about buying newspaper advertising?

Here are some of the responses:

“How complicated it is. There is a different rate card for every conceivable option. Also, newspaper billing is notoriously inaccurate, making buying newspapers much more time consuming than necessary.”

“Rate cards. They are all over the place as far as calculating the discounts. Discounts may be based on frequency, inches and/or spend. Then you have a few that offer monthly discounts. It can be very confusing and is overall annoying to deal with when planning multiple publications.”

“Lack of uniformity in rate cards. Complicated discount structures. Difficult to negotiate with. The invoices are a nightmare. Need I go on?”

“The scam of multiple rate cards and the general cocky attitude of the reps (‘We’re the only daily newspaper in town!’). Circ goes down and rates go up. Advertisers are losing value in newspapers every day, but newspapers act like it is still 1970.”

“It’s so blame difficult. I buy for individual markets all over the country, and no media kit or rate plan is the same. Half the time your own rep doesn’t know what they are offering. Then you go to place the plan and they’ve changed what they just told you the previous month. Other than yellow pages, it’s the single worse ad vehicle that I use as far as media planning.”

“The lack of flexibility that you seem to get with online and traditional broadcast opportunities. Few papers allow the sales staff to develop plans that will help the client’s money go farther unless they are spending thousands of dollars. Additionally sales person is usually what I call an ‘order taker.’ They do very little to try and truly help. Customer service is another big problem here.”

Tags: advertising, media buyers, media buying, media planning, newspaper advertising, newspapers, reinventing the american newspaper