Right in the centre - Matching the market
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- Published on Thursday, February 18, 2016
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press
The fate of newspapers is a much discussed topic these days. Strangely enough, it’s debated mostly in newspapers, which is ironic on two fronts. Why is the topic in the papers so often if, as many say, newspapers are sliding away? Second, why do newspapers concentrate so much on their own demise?
It is true, some newspapers have ceased production. The closest examples that I know about are Hudson Bay Junction and LaRonge, both northern Saskatchewan weekly papers. Both are very small markets and both were not locally owned.
The latter note is most noteworthy. A newspaper, in order to come close to succeeding, has to have local ownership or a locally based publisher/manager who is devoted both to the cause and the community. It’s a time honoured principle.
Whether a newspaper is daily, weekly or somewhere in between, the newspaper has to define its market. We do that all the time. We evaluate what our market area for news and advertising is and we try to cover it. There are always some spots on the edges where it can be debated that the newspaper should go a bit further but a decision has to be made based on ads and readership. It’s no secret that a printing press can print as many papers as you like but if the publisher can’t pay the printing and postage bills, it won’t be printing for long.
I got a call early one recent weekend morning from a lady who had moved out of one of our newspaper coverage areas. She really missed the Banner, especially some of our columnists. I explained that we simply don’t mail our paper that far based on our market area. I suggested that she could buy a subscription, either a hard copy or an online version, the online one being cheaper. We’ll see if that happens.
But back to newspapers and why they slip in appeal to local readers. A daily paper, just this past week, had a lead story with a catchy headline. I opened the story to find it happened in a far away city. The story had no local relevance, it took up space that could have been used for local news. There was little or nothing in the story that would allow local people to learn anything about the event or do anything about it. It was almost a total waste of space in a local paper.
Local papers are not immune from internet intervention by any means. It’s not unusual for local stories to get on the web before it gets into print. Timeliness is important and that’s why we post so many stories on Facebook and on our website ahead of our print product. It’s just part of how we do business today in the news world. That said though, the newspaper should be the news anchor in local community. Even if there’s only one staff person, that person should be in the centre of the news cycle providing the facts, the details and the most timely reporting. Let TSN or CNN or CTV do their thing. They have mostly national stories to cover. Let the Toronto Star or Winnipeg Free Press do their thing on the national or even international scene. It’s the local paper that does the local grunt work to get the news out and hopefully get it right.
One of the reasons well run locally based newspapers are doing fairly well is advertising. An ad on the computer or phone is fleeting. It can be hard to find again for future reference. Many ads are blocked on the websites. No doubt, there is some very effective advertising and marketing on the web, but you can’t beat a newspaper. Newspaper ads are available to re-read as many times as you want. They are there, passively and politely waiting on the coffee table or kitchen table to be read again and again as many times as you like. Newspaper ads don’t jump off the screen at you and annoy the reader or block your view. They just sit here, politely waiting for when a reader is ready to read it.
For sure, there will be more and more electronic ads and news but both have to be local to work. The ads and news both have to be trusted, reliable and locally generated or else they won’t gain your trust or attention. The key is that a publisher has to look after local news and ads above all else. That’s why what you read on these pages is local, we understand that and we strive to keep it that way.
