1. Breaking Faced with fewer ads and a
the News
dwindling audience, the countryâs
biggest newspaper chain set
out to reinvent the business. First
step: Put the readers to work.
by jeff howe
It wasnât exactly a subtle gesture. One morning last December, Tom Callinan, editor seven years. Back in 1999, he was in the audi-
of The Cincinnati Enquirer, walked into his office to discover a package from his bosses at ence when Intel chair Andy Grove bluntly
Gannett, the company that owns the Enquirer and 84 other dailies across the US. When he told the members of the American Society
opened the box, he had to smile. It was a pair of Nike running shoes. The note from Gannett of Newspaper Editors that the Internet and
newspaper division president Sue Clark-Johnson was succinct: âSince our work is far from new technologies were about to swamp their
over, I thought you might need a new pair for â07.â ¶ Callinanâand all the other top editors hulking cruise ship of an industry. They
who received shoes that weekâgot the point: The nationâs largest newspaper chain was in had a choice: Change course or go under.
deep trouble, and the editors had better get ready to run fast. ¶ Callinan had been ready for The $57 billion industry didnât change, but
15.08 hyPerlocal media
0 8 6 august 2007 Baerbel Schmidt
photograph by
3. Indianapolis Starâs version of cincyMOMSâ almost never resemble anything commonly Rather than assign a conventional investi-
called IndyMomsânow produces its own considered journalism. gative reporter to the story, âwe asked our
monthly print magazine featuring the best âIt used to read, âBe a Citizen Journalist,ââ readers to help us find out why the cost was
forum posts of the month. Parker says. âAnd no one ever clicked on it. so exorbitant,â says Kate Marymont, News-
Such innovation isnât exactly Gannettâs Then we called it âNeighbor to Neighbor,â Press executive editor.
style. Better known for ruthless cost-cutting and still nothing. For some reason, âGet The response overwhelmed the paper,
than risky initiatives, Gannett has emerged Publishedâ was the magic phrase.â Parker, which had to assign additional staff just to
as the first big publisher to attempt a whole- a cheerful woman in her mid-fifties, will pore deal with the volume of tips, phone calls, and
sale reinvention of the newspaper. Rather over several dozen submissions from readers emails. The News-Press posted hundreds of
than slashing jobs, Gannett is shifting staff today. These will range from a local custom- pages of documents to its site, and readers
into new positions and investing in new tech- car builder trumpeting his upcoming appear- organized their own investigations: Retired
nologies. For years, the newspaper busi- ance on the BET show Spring Bling to an engineers analyzed blueprints, accountants
nessâmuch like the music industryâhas emotional notice about a play being staged to examined balance sheets, and an inside
largely ignored the shifting ground beneath raise funds for a fifth-graderâs bone marrow whistle-blower leaked evidence of possible
its feet. âNow the blinders are off,â Carroll transplant. Contributors submit to one of bid-rigging. âWe had people from all over
says, âand we canât move fast enough.â 233 neighborhood Web sites, each aimed at the world helping us,â Marymont says.
At the heart of the plan lie two Big Ideas a town or community in the Cincinnati area. For six weeks, The News-Press site saw
that are sweeping through journalism circles Parker approves the submission (âI almost record traffic, âexcepting hurricanes,â Mary-
nationwide: Involve the reader in every never reject one,â she says), scans it for âthe mont says. In the end, the city cut utility
aspect of the process, and take a so-called F-word,â and posts it to the site. âA few years charges by more than 30 percent, an official
hyperlocal approach to news coverage. In ago, these would have come across the tran- resigned, and the fees have become the driv-
recent years, Gannettâs Cincinnati arm has som as press releases and been ignored.â ing issue in an upcoming special election of
gone from producing one metropolitan news- Thereâs a valuable lesson hereâand not the city council.
paper to producing 270 niche publications, just for newspapers. Citizens are desperate Gannett quickly exported the model to its
including suburban papers, neighborhood to broadcast their message to their commu- other papers. In March, in response to an
Web sites, and regional magazines. The read- nities; they just arenât going to employ the article about tainted drinking water in Roch-
ersâtheir thoughts, their half-baked opin- conventions of journalism to do so. âOne of ester, readers of the Democrat and Chronicle
ions, their kidsâ Little League scoresâare at our most popular categories is called First- unearthed toxic-waste storage locations.
the center of them all. Person,â Parker says. âPeople really love Florida Today set up a Watchdog section
And the strategy seems to be working. to reminisce about the 1937 flood. We got with a Blow the Whistle! email link; it led to
While revenue has been down at Gannett great stories on that.â The reader submis- a series on how insurance companies inflate
broadly, Web traffic is steadily climbing. The sions do more than provide the Enquirer their cost estimates for hurricane coverage.
Enquirer is up 38 percent from last year, and with additional content to sell ads against. The Watchlist, a page that tracks breaking
the average jump among all Gannett papers is âOur 27 suburban papers could never fill developments with help from readers, is one
more than 25 percent. More traffic and more their pages without this material.â One of of the paperâs top destinations.
Web pages mean more potential ad revenue. the common criticisms levied against Gan- Gannett has learned what social network-
By expanding onto the Web with a speed not nett is that it is crowdsourcing content in ing sites like Friendster and LinkedIn figured
seen in the newspaper industry since the order to cut staff, but this charge misses the out a few Internet eons ago: âPeople donât
mid-1990s, Gannett might just save the local point. Crowdsourcing enables the publisher want to sit back and receive information.
news-gathering operation. But what survives to expand: more Web pages, more niche They want to be up there playing with it,â
might not look much like a newspaper. publications, more ads. says Callinan, the Enquirerâs editor.
While much of the citizen-produced writ- So the paper will give people what they
Linda Parker has a memo for professional ing is about church picnics and school sports, want: On May 1, the Enquirer launched the
journalists: Contrary to the fear rippling readers are also contributing to serious Data Center, a database stocked with a
through newsrooms, citizens donât want journalistic investigations, breathing new quirky mix of information drawn from pub-
your job. They donât want to interview life into a genre that is increasingly consid- lic records and open archivesâlocal baby
obscure officials to write boring stories ered an endangered species at metropolitan names, crime reports, property sales, CEO
about arcane changes in local zoning laws. newspapers. Last spring, The News-Press, a salaries, gas pump inspections, andâstrange
As online communities editor, Parker should Gannett paper in Fort Myers, Florida, heard as it soundsâpolar bear hunting permits.
know. A GetPublished! button features prom- that readers from a new housing develop- Donât yawn. In December 2006, Gannettâs
inently on many Enquirer Web pages, and ment were being charged up to $45,000 paper in Asbury Park, New Jersey, posted
the submissions land in Parkerâs queue. They to connect to the water and sewer system. its own version of the Data Center, called
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4. DataUniverse. It has drawn an improbable approach at newspapers in Lawrence, Kan- in Montgomery, a suburb of Cincinnati, gets
35 million pageviews; most of those pages sas, and Naples, Florida. Today heâs a VP at an ad package deal that includes the North-
bring in additional revenue. Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, east Suburban Life as well as the microsite
The Enquirerâs team of in-house program- where he is leading an ambitious effort to for that neighborhood.
mersâa prized asset in newsrooms these bring hyperlocalism to the nationâs eighth- Or say youâre looking to sell HD plasma
daysâare turning the Data Center into a largest metropolitan area. When he advises flatscreens. Youâll want to buy the bundle
compelling service that will draw traffic. newspapers, his message is simple: âQuit of ads aimed at white-collar, 34- to 54-year-
Crime stats and other data are geotagged putting second- or third-string copydesk old males. The package includes heavy
and linked to the latest satellite imagery. people on the Web team. Because I was just rotation on the Web pages frequented by
Users will be able to drill down to view data at Google, and I can tell you, they donât hire Little League coaches and comes with a nice
on individual buildings. âNo one cares about second- and third-string talent.â spread in the high school sports section of
property transfers,â says Lee Ann Hamilton, When I asked newspaper division presi- the suburban papers. âOnly 25 percent of
a deputy managing editor at the Enquirer. dent Sue Clark-Johnson how Gannett would local businesses currently advertise in a
âBut everyone wants to know how much pay for its new strategy, she said the com- newspaper,â Maness says. Mom-and-pop
their neighborâs house sold for.â pany was âtaking the resources we have and businesses have never been able to afford
Of course, not everyone at the Enquirer moving them around.â There are indeed to advertise in a big metropolitan paper.
is enthusiastic about the companyâs new many new jobs created by Gannettâs Infor- But advertising in a neighborhood paper
direction. The emphasis on the local gener- mation Center, but they are being filled by and on a hyperlocal Web site? âWe can
ally comes at the expense of the regional and people whose jobs might otherwise be cut make that very affordable,â Maness says.
national. Margaret McGurk has been at the âlike third string on the copydesk. Clark- He points to The Des Moines Register, one
Enquirer since 1990, âa damn long time,â as Johnson says Gannett did spend $3 million of the first Gannett papers to implement
she puts it. Witty and profane, McGurk typi- purchasing new video cameras, software the new strategy on both the advertising
fies a newsroom personality thatâs in increas- systems, and other tools, but thatâs a round- and the editorial sides. By March 2007, ad
ingly short supply. She was the film critic for ing error in a company that earned $8 bil- sales had increased 44 percent over the pre-
10 years. But in 2005, the Enquirer did away lion in revenue last year. vious year. This was due largely to 184 new
with that position, and McGurkâs frequent The hope, naturally, is that the Information advertisers coming into the paper, most of
flights to Hollywood were replaced by fre- Center will not only pay for itself eventually them small businesses.
quent drives to northern Kentucky. âIf some- but also begin to make up for the decline in Those rosy figures canât obscure the fact
that newspapers have entered what War-
ren Buffett described, in his deadpan, clini-
cal fashion, as âprotracted decline.â But it
âNo one cares about property would be a mistake to confuse decline with
transfers,â says an Enquirer editor. extinction. The irony about the decline of
newspapers is that they are still, strictly
âBut everyone wants to know how speaking, a healthy business. Some 40 per-
much their neighborâs house sold for.â cent of Americans will read one of nearly
1,500 daily newspapers on any given day. The
one offered you an interview with Martin revenue from the print publications. Cincy- average profit margin at a newspaper in 2006
Scorsese, youâd have to say no, because heâs MOMS, for instance, has brought in a whole was about 21 percentâroughly double that
not a local guy,â McGurk says. new set of advertisers. âFirst we had to of the average Fortune 1000 company.
Callinan isnât out to make friends; heâs know the Information Center would work The Cincinnati Enquirer has published con-
out to save his newspaper. âItâs adapt or on an editorial level,â Clark-Johnson says. tinuously since 1841. It has survived radio, the
die,â he says. âAnd not everyone wants to âNow weâre concentrating on developing a Great Depression, labor strikes, white flight,
adapt.â Some of the Enquirerâs staff have parallel strategy for advertising.â TV, and scores of paper shortages. Thatâs no
left for other avenues of employment. But The strategy is all about niches. The news- guarantee it will survive the challenge posed
manyââmore than I expected,â Callinan paper, one of the last mass-market mediums by the Internet, but it does guarantee it wonât
go down without a fight. ïżœ
saysâchose to change with the times. this side of American Idol, has finally splin-
tered. âWeâre aggregating audiences along
Contributing editor jeff howe
Creating a solid strategy is one thing. both geographic and demographic lines,â
Making it work on the ground is quite says Maness, the VP of design and innova- (jeffhowe@wiredmag.com), author of a
another. Just ask Rob Curley, whoâs cred- tion at Gannett and a chief architect of the forthcoming book about crowdsourcing,
ited with popularizing the hyperlocal Information Center strategy. So a pizzeria wrote about indie music in issue 14.09.
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