Board : Message from AWNA’s President George Brown
2008-09 AWNA President George Brown
Dear Members:
The most important task your AWNA board is charged with is to help you make your newspaper profitable. And we will take that responsibility seriously.
A newspaper in financial trouble is in difficulty not only on the bottom line, but also in the community. Especially among our smaller, independent members, time spent worrying about the bottom line is time spent away from covering community news, time spent away from kicking ass on the editorial page and time spent away from leading the agenda for change in your community.
Certainly your board will work hard in the coming year to deliver new clients and more advertising to your newspapers. We’ve had some setbacks this past summer and it will have an impact on the association. But we’ve got a plan to get back on track and with your support, we will turn things around.
But improving your bottom line is not just a matter of driving national advertising to your door – it’s a matter of improving the effectiveness of your newspaper as an information package.
It seems like community newspapers have always been on death’s door. In the last 75 years we survived the threat of radio only to face certain death by television. We’ve also stared down competition in our markets, coffee shop “news” sheets, shoppers and the regional boogeyman.
H. L. Mencken said: “The way for newspapers to meet the competition of radio and television is simply to get out better papers.”
That will apply to the rise of the Internet as well.
Some experts have determined that the last newspaper will be delivered sometime 2025 – the Internet finally driving a stake through our paper mache heart.
And the Internet will smother and extinguish the community newspaper – if we stand still and do nothing while readers surf for their news.
But our community newspapers are not dying, their function and scope is changing though – just as technology and our communities are changing. They are as vital as ever – perhaps even more so as we try to make sense locally of what is happening globally.
Our newspapers are seen by our readers as an extension of their lives: an eye into their children’s classroom, a seat in the gallery at a town council meeting or a look behind the scenes at the community theatre. This is where our strength has been and where it will continue to be if we are to embrace the Internet.
Simply, if we are to remain relevant and effective we must remain local. It will always be our mission to report on and to comment on the affairs of John Q. Public – even though the shape and delivery of our newspapers change.
I think the reader will be more selective in his reading, choosing the new sources that speak to him, that concentrate on his interests. By being that source of information, we will deliver a better customer to our advertisers.
Our strength is that our readers want the strength, authority and familiarity of their hometown newspaper.
In whatever form.
Community newspapers will survive – in print or online- only if we continue to meet and exceed the expectations of our readers. We need to entrench stronger editorial standards among our members to improve their value and validity to advertisers and readers alike.
No less a voice than Duff Jameson, a past president of this association, observed at our spring meeting that we have some crappy looking newspapers.
In a world were advertisers have more choices than ever before about where to spend their money, these members lower the common denominator and paint us all as weak and ineffective. They re-enforce the stereotype that we’re all old relics, still working with hot lead. That we’re dinosaurs sinking into a pit of ink.
Approached head-on by your board of directors, the AWNA will strengthen the future for our community weeklies.
As publishers and editors we must make a greater effort to attract and retain young staff on both the news and advertising sides of the business. We need their fresh ideas and their knowledge of emerging technologies to re-invigorate our newspapers and to position us for the future.
Community newspapers have to be all things to all people. If we are to grow our readership, to outlive our strongest readership demographic, if, you will, we are going to have to find innovative ways of getting to young readers.
Younger readers want information but it’s not necessarily in the traditional form we’ve been offering them in what has been essentially a take or leave it proposition.
We are best positioned to expand the links we have with our communities. Our brands are strong. Look at the lineage of your own newspaper. In your town, who has been around longer than your business, and who in your region provides better editorial content?
Who provides better advertising information, linking merchants and consumers than you do? It’s just a matter of seizing the opportunity these new avenues provide us to make sure we remain the media company uppermost in the minds of readers and advertisers.
Community newspapers are in trouble if we don’t work as an industry to re-invent ourselves.
Readership is moving away from the printed form. But we have decades of tradition and miles of quality journalism to that new, online outlets can’t hope to match. We cover our communities in depth. We have a strong voice and we bring an attitude to the job.
We are no longer newspaper companies. We’re news companies. Our mission hasn’t changed – technology has. We’re still about providing information, connecting our communities and helping buyers and sellers to transact.
As experienced publishers and editors in the new news business, we need to create a future for our industry that integrates our print and online presence in a strategic package that readers and advertisers will go to first.
The Internet is the greatest thing to ever happen to journalism. When more journalists and publishers recognize that, we’ll be creating news products that really matter and work for people.
Our profession isn’t dying. It’s evolving.
And I pledge that your new AWNA board of directors will be in front leading the change.
George A. Brown,
AWNA president