"Update" and "Coffee News" story for Pub Aux

Got this story published in the March 2009 edition of Publishers' Auxiliary.

By Larry Timbs
Special to Publishers’ Auxiliary

A lot of newspapers in the United States are in dire financial straits.

Newspaper ad revenue is down—by about $2 billion or 18 percent in the third quarter of 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America. And online ad revenue seems also to be declining.

Little wonder that so many newspapers today are just trying to hang on and survive the worst economic recession in recent memory in the U.S.

Newspapers are making ends meet through layoffs, hiring freezes, furloughing of employees and the elimination, in recent months, of thousands of jobs.

So where have a lot of the newspaper advertisers gone and will they ever return? And if they do return, when exactly will that be? Not likely anytime soon, some say, considering today’s record numbers of homeowners facing foreclosures, plunging retail sales and consumers retreating to deep hibernation.

Advertisers seem to be nervous at best, and who can blame them, considering the general depressing funk of today’s economy?

Key questions: How can newspapers ever get advertisers back into the fold? What can be done, if anything, to convince hometown Main Street businesses and services that the local community newspaper is an effective way to win back customers and boost sales?

Those questions seem even more challenging in an era of newspapers not only confronting a sour economy; newspapers are also wrestling with how to adapt to declining or near zero growth readership (especially among young people), increasing competition for ad dollars from other media, and an overall change in media habits of consumers.

But maybe a twice-a-week community newspaper in Decatur, Texas, offers a ray of hope. The lesson from Decatur is that part of the answer in luring advertisers back is in size. Maybe size matters. Maybe smaller is better.

For example, Decatur’s hometown newspaper, The Wise County Messenger, has been publishing its one-page (front and back, 8.5 inch by 11 inch) “Update” five days a week (Monday through Friday) for over 30 years, according to ad manager Lisa Davis.

About 4,000 copies of the freebie “Update” are printed and delivered each day to banks, grocery stores, post offices and any other high traffic areas throughout Wise County, Texas (population about 50,000).

On the front page (and remember, “Update” is the size of a sheet of typing paper), readers find tidbits of news about what’s happening in Decatur (population about 6,000) and in other places in Wise County. The news blurbs are about meetings, community calendar items, accidents, police reports, festivals, weather, funeral notices.

On the front page of “Update” you’ll also find four ads, each selling, per day, for $100 or $75, depending on their size. A typical day, for example, will see a car dealer or AT&T Wireless or dirt hauling business or attorney advertising in “Update.”

The entire back page of “Update” sells for $200 per day. (A sample copy of “Update” distributed at an NNA meeting a few years ago featured this back page with a restaurant menu--paid for by the Big Z Travel Center in Rhome, Texas.)

A nice thing about “Update” is that it not only brings in money for the Wise County Messenger (published on Thursday and Sunday); it also keeps the newspaper’s readers informed about breaking news.

“Update” is easy to read—like reading a letter from your mother or friend—and easy to handle. No cumbersome big newspaper pages that are hard to navigate or fold and unfold. No jumped stories. “Update” looks friendly. No long, large, overwhelming gray masses of type.

You can read “Update” over a cup of coffee or finish looking at it while you wait on your menu order. Plus, again, it’s free.

Yes, the downturn in the economy has affected the Wise County Messenger. The newspaper, which had a good year in 2008, is seeing advertisers today getting tighter or a bit more nervous with their money. That means the paper might be re-evaluating how it structures advertising in “Update”—maybe to just having two ads on the front page instead of three.

That said, “Update,” according to Davis, is “still a wonderful product. We’re still making good money off of it, and we’re definitely going to continue it . . . It’s feasible and you can do it. We also put it online.”

Davis doesn’t know why more community weekly newspapers don’t have a similar advertising vehicle. She mentioned that the Wise County Messenger seems to be the exception in this regard, even though the newspaper has promoted “Update” and shared news about it with the Texas Press Association.

“We’ve done it for so long and we know how profitable it is,” said Davis, who’s been at the newspaper for about 19 years (15 years as ad manager.) I just don’t know why other papers don’t do this. It’s one of the best products we have.”

Another two-page (11 inches by 17 inches) front and back advertising medium that newspapers might want to emulate is the freebie “Coffee News,” published weekly in the Charlotte, N.C./York County, S.C. region.

Like “Update,” the coffee-colored “Coffee News” is easy to handle, can be read in about 8-10 minutes (perhaps while sipping a cup of coffee or waiting for your menu order) and features mainly tidbits of positive or humorous human interest news about such things as area art guild exhibitions, fundraisers for the Human Society or the opening of a “warming center” for homeless women and children. Trivia questions, quotable quotes and a horoscope also help engage readers. A “Find the Coffee News Man Contest” challenges readers to locate a little Coffee Man” hidden in one of the ads; find the “Coffee Man” and notify the publisher via the Internet or by mail and you become eligible for a cash prize.

In the Jan. 6, 2009, edition of “Coffee News” were 18 paid ads, each about three inches wide and two inches deep. Each ad sells for $35.77 per week.

“Coffee News” publisher Kevin Lanier has 20-plus years working professionally in advertising (part of it with the Charlotte Observer). He says the 9,000 copies of “Coffee News” distributed each week to over 900 doctors’ offices, restaurants and waiting areas provide “affordable, consistent advertising for small to medium-sized businesses.”

An advertiser is always on the front or the back of each of the nine editions of “Coffee News” and it takes only a very few minutes to read the ads and the news tidbits; thus, potential customers give the ads more scrutiny than ads appearing in multiple page publications such as newspapers, Lanier said.

And in the current downturn in the economy, “Coffee News” seems to be holding its own, according to Lanier.

“We’ve actually attracted advertisers looking for a more affordable alternative for their advertising needs,” Lanier wrote in response to an email query. “Instead of investing that $3,000-$4,000 per month for a billboard on I-77, they’ve considered Coffee News as a source to get their message out. Being a new company that is entering its third year, we are profitable and looking to expand in April by adding a tenth edition . . . which is slated to begin April 17th. . . We are investing in the business and are currently in a high growth mode.”

What’s the lesson that newspapers might take away from a publication like “Coffee News”?

Maybe it’s that smallness and being free, and not being hung up on labor-intensive journalism, has its place–for advertisers and readers.

“With the general public being so time-starved, they don’t take the 20-30 minutes each day to read the newspaper that my parents and grandparents used to do,” Lanier said. “Many current day college students and recent graduates have never purchased a newspaper as they rely on the Internet for information. . . Granted we (Coffee News) don’t have the news content that newspapers have, but we provide an 8-10 minute respite and only publish good news.”

Larry Timbs is an associate professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., where’s he’s also faculty adviser to the weekly campus student newspaper.