Prepared for the Board of Directors of the Chestnut Hill Community Association
Prepared by Joel Hoffmann, Master of Journalism Candidate, Temple University
Dec. 10, 2008
Everywhere we turn, we hear evidence that the U.S. economy is in bad shape. The unemployment rate hasn’t been this high (6.7 percent) since December 1974, when the United States was in a “severe recession.” The current recession appears to be gaining steam, particularly in the newspaper industry. The Denver Post reports that 14,447 newspaper jobs have been cut nationwide this year. The trend has been fueled largely by a 28 percent decrease in print-advertising revenues ($5 billion) since the third quarter of 2005. Much of that loss has been attributed to diminishing demand for newspaper classifieds.
The trend is likely to worsen, according to a report released on Dec. 3 by Fitch Ratings, an international credit risk analysis firm: “Fitch expects newspaper industry revenue growth will be negative for the foreseeable future as both ad pricing and linage will be under pressure within each of the four main components of newspaper companies' revenue streams: circulation and local, classified and national advertising. Newsprint costs could rise, and it could be difficult to offset revenue declines with cost cuts.”
Fitch predicts that newspapers and newspaper chains will continue to default on loans in 2009, leading owners to liquidate assets and shut down newspapers, and by 2010, some cities may no longer have a daily newspaper. (Philadelphia may be left with only one major daily, as Philadelphia Media Holdings, owner of the Inquirer and the Daily News, is struggling to pay down its debt).
Major daily newspapers are suffering the worst. (News that the Tribune Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, has filed for bankruptcy has shaken the industry). But some smaller-circulation community newspapers are feeling the pain, too.
Take Journal Register Co. for example. The Yardley, Pa.-based publisher announced in November, when its stock was trading for one cent per share, that it was trying to sell off an undisclosed number of its 22 dailies and 300 non-dailies, including papers in Philadelphia. JRC plans to close two Connecticut dailies and 11 weeklies by Jan. 12, 2009, if those papers are not sold, and it seems likely that some of JRC’s holdings in the Philadelphia region will meet the same fate. (Many of the Local’s regional rivals are owned by JRC, namely the Mt. Airy Times Express, the Germantown Courier, the [Roxborough] Review, the Lafayette Hill Journal, the [Conshohocken] Recorder, the Springfield Sun, the Main Line Times and the Ambler Gazette).At first glance, this evidence seems to support the Chestnut Hill Community Association Ad Hoc Committee’s conclusion that the Chestnut Hill Local is headed toward dire financial straits. But the evidence above is skewed. Few assessments of the newspaper industry have included independently owned weeklies like the Local.
Matthew Caylor, an Internet advertising specialist with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, explained why the evidence is misleading: “When you go into those niche publications and weekly publications and community-based ones, no one else is offering that news but them. So the ones we've spoke with, we've seen their circulations growing because they're providing something no one else is providing.” Caylor said that all newspapers will have to struggle with the economic downturn, but he noted that independent weeklies are more able to weather the storm because they are used to working on a “shoestring budget,” with a small staff and lower overhead costs.
Mary Walton, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, made a similar point in the American Journalism Review back in 1999, when corporations were buying weeklies for almost 10 times what they were worth: Moreover, unlike big papers that are vulnerable to economic cycles, little papers have a more stable base. Their advertisers have nowhere else to turn, and “even in bad times, people can afford 50 cents for a newspaper,” says Kevin Murphy of SunTrust Equitable Securities Corp., a Nashville investment bank. "And they're very hard to supplant. Someone just can't throw up a newspaper next door to you. People get in habits. The paper could be terrible but people still get it.”Surely, much has changed since the 1990s. The percentage of people who said they had read a newspaper in the preceding 24 hours decreased from 58 percent in 1993 to 34 percent in 2008, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who said they got news from the Internet three or more days per week has increased from two percent in 1995 to 37 percent in 2008.
Although the Internet is eroding the audience for daily newspapers, it does not seem to be doing that to community weeklies. To wit, the Pew Center reported in its biennial news consumption study this year that “at a time when daily newspapers are losing readers, the audience for local weekly community newspapers has remained relatively stable.”While we at the Local recognize that our outstanding $90,000 debt is a problem, we are not convinced that we will be a casualty of the current economic crisis. We see opportunity for growth because our product is unique and important to our readers in Northwest Philadelphia and beyond. If our JRC regional rivals go under, there will likely be an increasing demand for coverage from the Local. The Mt. Airy Times Express and the Germantown Courier have a combined weekly circulation of 32,716. We have to wonder how many of those readers would go to the Local if Mt. Airy and Germantown received more news coverage. We must think big.This report will explore the Local’s growth opportunities, both in terms of revenue and community impact. But first we must consider what the Local is right now and what it was intended to be.
In December 1955, the first issue of the Chestnut Hill Cymbal, the Local’s predecessor, was published. On its cover an ambitious mission was printed: “The Chestnut Hill Cymbal is published as a non-profit civic enterprise the purpose of which is to generate understanding and create public interest in the problems facing our community today. … The Cymbal will in so far as practical publish all points of view. Controversy will not be avoided but rather sought in the belief that constructive argument is a vital factor in achieving broader comprehension. The principle of this publication is that sound human progress can only be achieved through general public understanding.”
While the paper has evolved with the times, its core mission, articulated in the Lentz Policy that is printed in the letters to the editor section each week, remains: It is the policy of this publication to anticipate community problems and prepare public opinion for their solutions, to review community problems as they arise and to present possible solutions, to study community problems and, with the help of expert opinion, direct community thinking toward a solution consistent with local tradition and the best forward-looking interests of Chestnut Hill. It is the policy of the LOCAL to publish all responsible points of view on the various issues presented in the Forum.
In short, the Local was designed to be Chestnut Hill’s chief booster and critic. This is consistent with how community journalism experts define the role of a community newspaper. But as Jock Lauterer, author of Community Journalism: Relentlessly Local, points out, community newspaper publishing is in many ways more challenging than running a large daily:
“Community newspapers collect, report, handle, write and package news in a fundamentally different way from any other news medium. … For us, news is not some detached, impersonal set of occurrences happening to nameless, faceless news sources. … At a community paper, news is not events happening to inanimate objects. News is people, your people, and how the changing world affects their everyday lives. News is your people being caught up in events. Our job is to record that changing human condition in such a way that we provide not only an accurate and fair representation of what happened, but also understanding, compassion, context and, one hopes, growth.”Community journalists don’t just report on a locality, Lauterer says. They are part of that locality, and that’s the way it should be. The more these journalists are perceived as part of the community, the greater their accountability. Accountability runs in both directions, though, and so it is the newspaper’s mission to hold the community and its leaders to high standards of conduct as well. (The Chestnut Hill Community Association’s status as a quasi-governmental body doesn’t lower the bar for scrutiny. The Local has long been charged with the responsibility of holding the CHCA accountable to its members).
Lauterer believes this is essential: “If the area community newspapers aren’t providing vital watchdog services, it’s very likely no one will. Historically, American newspapers in general and community newspapers specifically have been that watchdog. Some consider our surveillance role to be almost a sacred calling. It is certainly not to be taken lightly…”
Upon studying this two-way accountability flow in great detail, W. Lance Bennett and William Serrin, two of our nation’s preeminent journalism scholars, note that there is hardly a consensus on how to define that watchdog role when the perspectives of government officials, political parties and special-interest groups are factored in. But Bennett and Serrin show us that the architects of the American republic knew full well that a democracy cannot thrive unless journalists monitor those in power. War, financial crises and pressure from advertisers have contributed to the decline in investigative reporting since the early 20th century, they say, but national public opinion polls conducted late in the 20th century have illustrated “strong public support for the watchdog ideal.” (In 1997, for example, 84 percent of those surveyed were favorable to investigative reporting).
Bennett and Serrin were careful to qualify this point. “There was also considerable objection to the practices often employed in what passes for investigative journalism today, and the emphasis on pseudo investigation and sensationalism.”
Bennett and Serrin believe that investigative journalism should not be limited to “negative, one-dimensional stories.” Authentic watchdog journalism, they say, should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” It should also explore “what works, and it how works.”In his case study of Pulitzer Prize-winning community newspapers, University of Minnesota professor John Hatcher illustrates high-quality investigative reporting in practice. He shows us what it takes to be awarded the highest honor in journalism while working at a newspaper with limited resources.
These journalists were intelligent, with advanced degrees from elite education institutions. They worked for newspapers that were financially independent. They worked for or were themselves owners who were willing to take a stand on an issue despite whether it was one that was popular with readers, local leaders or advertisers. The journalists were willing to dedicate themselves to a story regardless of the hours and resources involved. They were people who saw it as a primary role of journalists to take a stand on behalf of those who may not have before those in power.Jerry Brown, dean of the University of Montana School of Journalism, echoes this sentiment: “Community paper editors always run the risk of making people mad and losing subscribers, but the greatest threat to their livelihood would be to blink when the tough stories must be published.” Although the Local has often been criticized for pedaling negativity through its reporting, the paper’s editorial staff strives each week to balance criticism and boosterism, to promote sensitivity, fairness and understanding, to provide a high level of service to the community.
As Linda Gilmore, former editor of the Junction City (Kan). Daily Union, has said, it’s not possible to please everyone in the community, but it’s important to print a diverse mix of community news and events in the paper each week. Even the most provocative issues of our newspaper include photo and print coverage of local news, sports and events; a community arts and culture calendar; a celebration of “newsmakers” who are doing good deeds in and around the community; slice-of-life columns and arts reviews written by authors from the community; feature stories about notable people and businesses; crime reports and obituaries; advertisements for area businesses and a plethora of opinion.Upon picking an issue of the Local at random and reading it from cover to cover, it is clear that the paper devotes as much space to uplifting content as it does to critical content. More often than not, the balance is skewed toward boosterism. Survey data collected by the Local since November has shown that the majority of respondents hold the paper in high regard.
Of the 63 people who returned our in-paper survey, 45 described the paper in definitively positive terms, six described the paper in definitively negative terms and 12 tempered praise with constructive criticism. Expressed as percentages, the responses were 71.4 percent positive, 9.5 percent negative and 19.1 percent mixed.
Because the survey respondents were not chosen at random, we cannot conclude that their perspectives perfectly mirror those of our readership at large. Nonetheless, it seems likely that more readers would have taken the time to criticize the paper if they were truly dissatisfied with it.
The survey-takers offered a variety of opinions on how the Local could improve, what it needs more of and less of, but the most consistent theme — found in 52 percent of the responses >— was the need for more local content, especially news. Seventy-three percent of respondents suggested some way for the Local to improve (See Appendix A for complete survey results). We agree with our readers that there is room for the Local to improve. Before that can happen, though, we must lay out a plan of action that will help the paper stay financially stable in a weak economic environment while continuing to address the needs of its readers, advertisers and employees.
As we have seen, independently owned community newspapers, weeklies especially, are generally more adept at weathering recession than papers run by corporations. That is the case not just because independent community papers have less debt and overhead expenses than their corporate counterparts, but also because their survival is “inextricably woven into the fabric of [the] community.” While early proponents of corporate media believed that newspapers would benefit from the vast capital and resources made available by corporate owners, a number of prominent media critics have found upon further analysis that corporate owners too often choose profit over democratic news values.
Robert G. Picard, a professor of media economics at Jonkoping University in Sweden, has observed that the conflict between commercial and democratic objectives will not allow media corporations to simultaneously do what is best for the public and their investors. As investors have called for higher and higher returns, many media corporations have in turn cut back on public-service content, especially foreign and investigative reporting, which they deem too costly. While media corporations have the ability to provide a wealth of information through new technologies and a growing number of subsidiaries, the content they produce often lacks diversity of viewpoint and is endlessly repackaged for those subsidiaries, according to Picard.
John McManus, Ben Bagdikian, Robert McChesney and John Nichols are among the media scholars who have leveled similar criticisms. McChesney and Nichols have gone so far as to declare that “profit trumps civil society every time.” While their point is overblown, it still seems that profit has been winning the battle for quite a while.
This examination of the flaws of corporate ownership is relevant because it helps us put the Local’s finances into perspective. The Local was intended to be a non-profit publication, a service to the community, but it is nonetheless a business venture. However, as David Woronoff, publisher of The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C), a 15,000-circulation independent tri-weekly, has noted, you must have a good product to stay in the community’s good graces. “It will never live to be a community institution if it is not successful as a business,” he says. “So, the publisher must be adept at growing the company’s revenue and circulation bit by bit every day. We believe the best way to do that is putting out a first-rate newspaper. Good journalism is good business.”
Because the Local does not have a publisher, it is already at a strategic disadvantage. This is not to say that the Local’s top brass lack business savvy. Pete Mazzaccaro served as the acting business manager of the paper between March 2003 and September 2004, long before he became the editor. But asking the editor to be the de facto publisher is problematic on a number of levels.
First, the Local’s editorial department is already spread thin, with each full-time member taking on a wide range of duties. (For example, I am a reporter, photographer, sports editor and multimedia producer). Second, if the Local’s readers knew that Mazzaccaro was responsible for the paper’s main editorial and business functions, it could seriously damage the paper’s reputation in the community.
“Remember, advertising sells influence and what they call ‘eyeballs on pages,’” Lauterer tells us. “All the news side has going for it is credibility. Once trust is lost, news is devalued.” Lastly, in our research we have been unable to find a paper comparable to the Local that does not have a publisher. Even fledgling Journal Register Co. weeklies have publishers assigned to them. In our opinion, a competent full-time publisher could greatly help the Local expand its revenue base and market reach.
The CHCA must choose that person wisely, involving Local staff in the selection process. Given its size and family-like environment, the Local needs a publisher who will complement the staff, making the most of their strengths and weaknesses. Lauterer provides insight on this issue as well. “For a paper to have a happy shop, employees must feel that the management is accessible, supportive, sympathetic, eager to listen and, most importantly, flexible enough to change policy when it’s needed,” he says.
The publisher should have a clear vision for the paper, which should be in line with the newspaper’s core mission, according to Lauterer. If the newspaper’s management is not committed to that mission, Lauterer says, “The newspaper lurches forward, propelled by the inertia of nothing more than its own production schedule and publication frequency — without direction, guidance, or any sense of self, calling, purpose or mission.” There is no doubt that the Local can generate more revenue, particularly through Web advertising. (We’ll explore that in more detail soon). But we must remember that profit is not the Local’s core mission — nor is it the core mission of the CHCA.In terms of financial accountability, the Local does not answer to corporate shareholders. It is responsible to community stakeholders, including the CHCA board of directors, among 2,100 other CHCA members, and the paper’s print and online readership. If the Local were treated like a corporate product, the paper’s ability to serve those community stakeholders would be greatly diminished. As leading scholars have shown, a demand for extraordinary profit is not compatible with high-quality journalism. That seems to be the case especially at the community weekly level, according to Bill Reader, a community journalism scholar and former opinion page editor at the Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa)..
"Community newspaper owners need to take their reason for investing into deep consideration, Reader wrote in an e-mail. “If it's just to make good profits, then they would be much wiser to invest their money in some other venture,” he said. “If they want to make some money while providing a community service, then they'll be happy with a newspaper. In the end, I think only those who care about the social role of a newspaper are cut out to be good newspaper owners.”
Lauterer concurs: “Even if you’re the owner, it’s their paper,” he says. (They means the community). “Lose sight of that fact and fail; recognize and capitalize on that attitude and soar.”
We must recognize all of the community stakeholders’ needs in plotting the future of the Local. We must also recognize the needs of our advertisers, who are largely responsible for keeping the Local financially solvent. A revitalized Local Web site would allow us to provide better service to both groups. This is not just conjecture. As you will see, marketing research strongly supports this conclusion. At this time, the Local Web site has no display advertising. It is failing to capitalize on an untapped source of revenue.“Ways must be found to broaden and invigorate the advertising base. Ways must be found to saturate the target population beyond what is currently being done. A Web site with paid advertising is a must,” says Dr. Edward J. Trayes, a Temple University journalism professor with more than 35 years of international newspaper consulting experience.
So how much money is the Local leaving on the table? According to Matthew Caylor of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, newspapers in the state average online advertising revenues equivalent to 10 percent of their print revenues. With the right mix of Web content, then, the Local could generate an additional $80,000 per year. (In order to avoid advertiser discrimination lawsuits, it is strongly recommended that the CHCA executive committee abandon its plans to prescreen all Web advertisements).
You’re probably thinking to yourself, “OK, but how are we going to persuade advertisers to spend more money when credit is drying up and employers are scrambling to cut costs?” Our core advertisers have stayed with us since the bottom fell out of the subprime mortgage market in mid-September. They’re going to stay with us for this reason: Targeted local advertising works. The Web will help them expand their reach, according to Caylor.
Local Web advertising is attractive “for the simple fact that you’re giving your advertisers more options,” Caylor says. “The ones that don't want to do print right now — you're giving them another way to come into your office.” It also gives them access to Local readers who do not subscribe to the print product. On average, Caylor says, 50 percent of those who read a newspaper online do not read the print edition. Because the Local had been tracking its Web traffic with a free program called Stat Tracker, which recently stopped recording the number of hits, we cannot provide an up-to-date snapshot of our online readership. (This, of course, is one of many reasons why the Local needs a revitalized Web site).
In May, Local editor Pete Mazzaccaro reported that the paper has been “developing a large and substantial readership online, a readership that has materialized in only the last two years.” In 2006, the Local Web site got 250,000 hits. In 2007, the number of hits was 1.2 million — a 480 percent increase. The site was averaging 100,000 hits per month as of May, with a tenth of those visitors coming to the site at least twice per month. The Local site was also averaging 3,000 regular weekly visitors.
We know from our survey that our in-paper display advertising is effective. Of 63 readers who had completed the survey by the first week of December, 10 reported that they always read display advertisements in the Local and 38 said they frequently did so. That means that 76 percent of respondents read those advertisements frequently — at least. Many are doing more than reading those ads. They are making purchases because of them. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said a Local display ad had inspired them to purchase something in the past month. Seventy-one percent said that was the case in the past six months.
Imagine what might happen if the Local Web site were a portal for e-commerce in Northwest Philadelphia.
Advertisers depend on their customers’ trust and brand loyalty because it is more cost effective to reach an existing customer than a new one, according to George and Michael Belch, professors of marketing at San Diego State University. They must also be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their chosen medium in order to ensure that they are spending their money wisely and reaching the people they want to reach. Over the past three decades, advertising agencies have made this increasingly easier for their clients by targeting niche audiences with similar interests and socioeconomic attributes, according to Joseph Turow, a professor of mass communications at the University of Pennsylvania.Turow says that “…the new portraits of society that advertisers and media personnel invoke involve the blending of income, generation, marital status, and gender into a soup of geographical and psychological profiles they call ‘lifestyles.’”
Turow has argued that this trend doesn’t bode well for civil society at large, but he notes that it has strengthened niche communities. Advertising agencies have strived to make consumers “feel secure and comfortable,” he says. What more could advertisers ask for? Advertisers must associate themselves with media outlets that resonate strongly with consumers, especially when market competition heats up."As Lauterer explained previously, community newspaper readers tend to regard a newspaper as their own when there is a strong sense of community among them. Eastern Kentucky University journalism professor Elizabeth Hansen corroborated this point in a readership study of the Richmond Register, a 7,000-plus circulation community daily in Madison County, Kentucky. “It’s that sense of ownership and connection that results in many newspaper readers perceiving the paper as their paper,” she concluded. We know from experience that people regard the Local as their paper. We have also seen that Local readers are largely interested in the paper’s advertisers.
An August 2008 study conducted by Jupiter Research for the Online Publishers Association shows why this is so important. The researchers administered surveys to 2,069 “local online content users” to learn how they interacted with Web advertisements. (Those surveyed were representative of the U.S. adult population online in terms of age, gender, education, household income and geography).
When asked how satisfied they were with local community coverage on different kinds of Web sites, the respondents gave local newspaper sites the second-highest satisfaction rate: 48 percent. Those who described themselves as weekly visitors to local newspaper Web sites said they were 77 percent satisfied with local community coverage, giving such sites the second-highest ranking again. This evidence suggests a strong connection between frequency of visiting a local newspaper Web site and satisfaction with its content. It gets more interesting.
Local newspaper sites were ranked highest for the trustworthiness of their local advertisements (56 percent). They also inspired the highest percentage of consumers to take action after viewing an advertisement (46 percent). Additionally, 40 percent of online newspaper users said they had spent $500 or more online in the previous 12 months — another second-place ranking.
The implications of these statistics are obvious, but OPA president Pam Horan’s take on the study is worth considering: “With strong brands and trusted environments, local media sites deliver concrete results for local advertisers. … Just as we see on a national scale, media sites outpace portals and all other online media at delivering meaningful advertising results.” Consider this data in light of the Local survey responses about display advertising. The opportunity for increased revenues is clear. Matthew Caylor of the PNA lends even more support to that conclusion.Again, Caylor concedes that the economic downturn is an issue, but he is still optimistic. “The bulk of our newspapers have profited [from Web advertising],” he says, “and for 2009 we’re projecting that they’re going to be making even more.” He also noted that a 2007 survey of all PNA members (with a 30 percent response rate) showed that almost 70 percent of respondents said they were generating revenue and profiting from the Web. Another 15 percent broke even and 15 percent lost money, he said, mainly because they had started their Web operations in the previous two years.
“You have to invest within the first two year in the product,” he said. We must recognize, though, that some barriers must be broken before the Local and the CHCA can profit from the Web. First, the Local’s advertising manager, Sonia Leounes, must choose the Web advertising model that will best serve local businesses and readers. Because the Local is a member of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, Caylor has offered to help Leounes decide from one of three models: CPM impressions, cost-per-click and flat fee.
Caylor said that cost-per-impression works best with Web sites that receive a great deal of traffic, like the New York Times’ site. A fee is assessed for every 1,000 times an advertisement is viewed. With the cost-per-click model, the Web site generates money each time a user clicks on advertisement, but the payment rate depends on the number of Web hits a site generates and how frequently individual users visit the site. In the flat fee model, advertisers are charged a fixed rate over a fixed period of time.The amount that a site can charge depends on how much advertisers are willing to pay, Caylor says. “It could be anywhere from $350 to $350,000,” he says. “It depends on what the market can bear.”
Caylor has also suggested that we offer combination deals to those businesses that want to advertise in print and online, but he says that Web advertisements will be of little value unless they are hyperlinked to the advertiser’s Web site and changed frequently. “Ads that are static and stationary on a site are less effective. They start to blend into the site,” he said, adding that users will stop clicking on the ad, rendering it completely ineffective within nine days.“It’s important that newspapers communicate regularly with their advertisers and have the technology to track advertisements and change them as frequently as needed.,” say Jane Huntgarter, vice president of marketing and communications for the PNA, and her departmental colleague Katie Szott. (Google’s free Ad Aware program is one possibility for ad cycling).
However, hooking an advertiser, especially a national corporate advertiser, requires more effort, according to Hungarter and Szott: “What attracts advertisers to market their campaign on a newspaper’s Web site is original, creative ideas.Advertisers are looking for innovative ways to build profitable relationship with consumers, reach their target audience better, and to grow revenue through attracting new customers.”
As it stands, the Local’s Web site is hardly a bastion of innovation. It’s static. It lacks interactivity. It’s warehouse for much of what makes it in the paper each week, except it’s far less visually appealing. Some in the industry call this shovelware, and as Ball State University journalism professors Lori Demo and Jennifer George-Palilonis have found, it is not conducive to a successful and profitable Web site. According to Demo and George-Palilonis have observed that “at smaller newspapers, staff sizes and technical resources cannot approach those of the larger newspapers that have been pioneers in producing compelling, sophisticated content that fully exploits the Web’s capacity for nonlinear, multimedia storytelling.”To counter that trend, the professors have created a program called WebFirst, which allows small newspapers to offer interactive, multimedia content on their Web sites without hiring more staff. Upon testing the program at a 20,000 circulation daily in the Midwest, they concluded that the program could be adopted “with limited newsroom interruptions” and could also draw more traffic to a small newspaper’s Web site.
Although the Local is a substantially smaller operation than the newspaper in the study above, we could integrate some of the WebFirst tactics. These include the creation of interactive graphics, the reporting of breaking news in “chunks,” which readers could read in whatever order they prefer, and the addition of more audio and video news content created by Local interns.
“If the Web is the platform of the future for newspapers,” they argue, “the WebFirst model increases the likelihood of survival for the type of solid newspaper-style journalism that plays suach an important role in the democratic process.”
The Web’s limitlessness also permits us to build community by featuring user-generated content. By giving our readers the opportunity to comment on stories and post their own creative works (e.g. hobby blogs, photographs, videos and podcasts), we could bring new meaning to the Local’s Web site. The Local could host contests to recognize the community’s best user-generated content. A group of citizen journalists could be organized to increase the quantity and quality of local news, to cover uncomplicated events and allow the Local’s trained reporters to focus on complex, investigative features when necessary. (To protect the Local from libel law suits, it is recommended that those who want to submit user-generated content should have to register for the Local site with a valid name and e-mail address). The Local’s Web site could become a virtual hub for the community, for Northwest Philadelphia, but that would require some additional adjustments. It is recommended that Scott Alloway become the paper’s online editor. To offer the community what the experts call for, we will need someone who can frequently monitor and update the Web site. The production and editorial staffers must work together to make the Web site thrive. But only a dedicated editor can keep it vibrant. This project will requiring shuffling staff responsibilities, but we are up to the challenge. All of the community’s stakeholders will benefit if we embrace the Web.
Notes
Uchitelle, Louis, Edmund L. Andrews, and Stephen Labaton. “U.S. Loses 533,000 Jobs in Biggest Drop Since 1974.” New York Times on the Web. 5 Dec. 2008. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/economy/06jobs.html?_r=3&th&emc=th>. (That rate is closer to 12.5 percent if you include those who have stopped looking for jobs).
Olinger, David. “Ad Losses Send Industry into a Tailspin.” Denver Post Online. 4 Dec. 2008. 7 Dec. 2008. < http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_11142071>.
Fitzgerald, Mark. “'Several Cities' Could Have No Daily Paper As Soon As 2010, Credit Rater Says.” Editor and Publisher. 3 Dec. 2008. 6 Dec.2008<http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003918781>.
Blodget, Henry. “Newspapers Prepare to Make Savage Cuts.” Silicon Alley Insider. 2 Dec. 2008. 6 Dec. 2008.. <http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/newspapers-prepare-to-make-savage-cost-cuts-nyt->.
De la Merced, Michael J. “Tribune Files for Bankruptcy.” New York Times Blogs. 8 Dec. 2008. 8 Dec. 2008. < http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/tribune-files-for-bankruptcy/index.html?hp>.
“Journal Register Mulling Sale of Some Newspapers.” Philadelphia Business Journal. 14 Nov. 2008. 8 Dec. 2008. <http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2008/11/10/daily46.html>.
Keating, Christopher. “Bristol Workers Battling to Keep Paper Running.” Hartford Courant. 6 Dec. 2008. 8 Dec. 2008 <http://blogs.courant.com/capitol_watch/2008/12/bristol-workers-battling-to-ke.html>.
“Philadelphia Cluster Publications.” Journal Register Company. 1 Jan. 2008 8 Dec. 2008. <http://www.journalregister.com/pub_ph.html>.
Caylor, Matthew. Telephone interview. 3 Dec. 2008.
Walton, Mary. “The State of the American Newspaper: The Selling of Small-Town America.” American Journalism Review. 1 May 1999. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3245>.
“Key Audiences Now Blend Online and Traditional Sources: Audience Segments in a Changing News Environment.” Pew Center for the People and the Press. 17 Aug. 2008. 6 Dec. 2008< http://people-press.org/report/444/news-media>.
“Key Audiences Now Blend Online and Traditional Sources: Audience Segments in a Changing News Environment.” Pew Center for the People and the Press. 17 Aug. 2008. 6 Dec. 2008< http://people-press.org/Reports/pdf/444.pdf>.
“Mission Statement.” The Chestnut Hill Cymbal. Dec. 1955: 1.
See pp. 99-100 in Lauterer, Jock. Community Journalism: Relentlessly Local. 3rd ed. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Ibid., pp. 28, 62.
Ibid., p.110.
See p. 173 in Bennett, W. Lance, and William Serrin. “The Watchdog Role.” Institutions of American Democracy: The Press. Eds. Geneva Overholser and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Lauterer, p. 177.
Ibid., p. 180.
Ibid., p. 184.
Hatcher, John. “Small Papers, Big Stories: A Comparison of Community Newspapers That Have Won the PulitzerPrize.” Grassroots Editor. 46:1 (2005): 1-10.
Lauterer, p. xiii
Ibid., p.342.
Ibid., p. 104.
See p. 6-7 in Bagdikian, Ben H. The Media Monopoly. 6th ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.
See pp. 337, 344 and 346 in Picard, Robert G. “Money, Media and the Public Interest.” Institutions of American Democracy: The Press. Eds. Geneva Overholser and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
McManus, John H. “Market Driver Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware (Excerpt).” News: A Reader. Ed. Howard Tumbler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; Bagdikian, Ben H. The Media Monopoly. 6th ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000; McChesney, Robert W., and John Nichols. Our Media, Not Theirs. New York: Open Media, 2003.
For a divergent view on this topic, see Hamilton, James T. “The Market and the Media.” Institutions of American Democracy: The Press. Eds. Geneva Overholser and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Hamilton argues that the Internet and cable and satellite TV have given consumers a multitude of entertaining options, which has precipitated the move away from public-service content. Surely, people like to be entertained. In his view, media corporations are responding to the market and giving people what they want. The trend doesn’t seem so clear cut. As Tom Rosenstiel of the Committee of Concerned Journalists said recently at a Temple University lecture, if you eat junk food frequently, you’ll forget what it’s like to have a good meal. The same goes for media content, in his opinion.
Lauterer, p. 349.
Lauterer, p. 292.
Lauterer, p. 313.
Lauterer, p. 309.
Reader, Bill. E-mail interview. 22. Nov, 2008.
Lauterer, p. 52
Trayes, Edward J. E-mail interview. 22. Nov, 2008.
Caylor, Matthew. Telephone interview. 3 Dec. 2008.
Sorkin, Andrew R. “Lehman Files or Bankruptcy; Merrill is Sold.” New York Times on the Web. 14 Sept. 2008. 6 Dec. 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/business/15lehman.html?_r=1>.
Mazzaccaro, Pete. “Doing More with More.” Editorial. Chestnut Hill Local. 1 May 2008. 6 Dec. 2008. < http://www.chestnuthilllocal.com/issues/2008.05.01/opinion.html>.
See p. 12 in Belch, George E., and Michael A. Belch. Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communication Perspective. 6th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004.
Ibid., p. 298.
See p. 3 in Turow, Joseph. Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Ibid., p. 2
Belch and Belch, p. 298.
Hansen, Elizabeth K. “Connecting with the Community: Readers’ Satisfaction with Their Newspaper over Time.” National Newspaper Association, Oct. 12-13, 2006, Oklahoma City.
“Local Online Media: From Advertising to Action.” Online Publishers Association. 19 Aug. 2008. 8 Dec. 2008. < http://www.onlinepublishers.org/media/image/Local%20Online%20Media%20Ads%20to%20Action%20_OPA_8_08(1).pdf>.
“Local Online Media Hold Significant Advertising Advantage.” Online Publishers Association. 19 Aug. 2008. 8 Dec. 2008 <http://64.13.250.16/newsletter.php?newsId=425&newsType=pr>.
Caylor, Matthew. Telephone interview. 3 Dec. 2008.
Ibid.
Hungarter, Jane, and Katie Szott. “Online Advertising: Thinking Outside the Banner.” Insight: Marketing and Research Newsletter. March 2008: 8.
Ibid.
Demo Lori, and Jennifer George-Palilonis. “WebFirst: How Small Newspapers Can Harness the Power of the Web.” National Newspaper Association, Sept. 2007, Norfolk, Va.
Ibid., p. 3-4.
Ibid.