I like it when I read newspaper success stories. This is one. Here we have a publisher, editors and management team that turned adversity into a celebration of how their newspaper could continue to serve its readers best.
This is part of the letter that Walter E. Hussman, Jr. , the publisher and chief executive officer of WEHCO Media, Inc., sent subscribers:
Over a year ago in early 2018, I realized the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was at a crossroad. For the first time in over 20 years, the newspaper would lose money in 2018. Our profit had declined every year for a decade, but we were now unprofitable and losses would be mounting.
Why had the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette become unprofitable in 2018? It related to a complete disruption of the newspaper business model for all newspapers in the United States. Total advertising revenues for all newspapers in the country, from The New York Times to the smallest weekly, were a combined total of $46.6 billion annually in 2000. But ad revenues declined to $11.8 billion in 2017, down 75%. Newspapers typically got 80% of the revenue from advertising and 20% of their revenue from readers. Most family-owned newspapers had been sold by the end of 2017, while there were still buyers. many newspapers had become unprofitable with hundreds of newspapers closing. Back in 2000, newspapers still got 22% of all the ad revenue spent in the United States. But by 2017, it was down to under 5%.
Confronted with this reality, one logical option was to cut back on unprofitable circulation in remote areas of the state, something most newspapers had done years earlier. But realizing that newspapers are not just a business, but a public trust vital to our democracy, we tried to determine some way we could continue to be a statewide newspaper delivered to all 75 counties. We knew that thousands of our subscribers had started reading the exact replica of the newspaper on their own iPad. Most told us they liked it so much they had continued their subscription but had stopped reading the print copy.
So we decided to try and experiment in Blytheville, Arkansas, 186 miles from Little Rock, in March 2018. It was very expensive and unprofitable to deliver to 200 subscribers in an area with about 5,000 households. We realized we could deliver the exact same newspaper in the exact same format but on an iPad rather than on paper. We also realized that many of our subscribers did not own an iPad. So we included an iPad with the subscription, allowing them to read an even better version of their paper. But we knew many would not know how to use it. So we decided to offer one-on-one customer service. We sat down with each of our subscribers and gave them their iPad, showed them how to use it, and showed them how they could read the newspaper on it. We did this in a local Holiday Inn, one on one, and with some subscribers unable to come to the Holiday Inn, we went to their homes and delivered the iPad and explained how to use it.
Successful strategy
The Blytheville experiment was successful with over 70% of the newspaper’s subscribers converting to the iPad. “We did a survey later, and we found most subscribers were reading it as frequently as the print edition. Most said they found it hard to believe, but they actually liked the newspaper better on an iPad,” Hussmann wrote.
We determined that if 70% or more of our subscribers converted from the print edition to the iPad, we could eliminate considerable costs in production, newsprint and delivery expenses. We found that if subscribers paid the existing full subscription price, we could turn an unprofitable newspaper into a profitable one again. And we could do this without reducing any cost in our newsroom, allowing us to continue to offer complete coverage and deliver it throughout the state of Arkansas. Today, we have over 100 staffers in our newsroom compared to, for example, The Denver Post with 60.
Read all about it here:
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/may/18/letter-subscribers/
Mario’s speaking engagements
Here are places where I will be taking the message of mobile storytelling in the weeks ahead:
June 11, Media City Bergen, The Mobile Storytelling
June 12, NEC Media City, Bergen, Norway, Storytelling workshop for Editors
June 13, Fortellingens kraft 2019, Bergen, Norway, Long form Mobile Storytelling for Writers
July 11, Florida Media Conference, St. Petersburg, FL, Keynote for editors: The mobile first newspaper strategy.
Mario’s weekend rituals…..
Monocle interviews me about what I do on a typical weekend (is there such a thing? Not for someone like me who is seldom in the same location twice. But I gave it my best shot, for what may come as a normal weekend, when I am home in New York! Enjoy.
https://monocle.com/minute/2019/04/27/
Pre-order The Story
The newspaper remains the most powerful source of storytelling on the planet. But technology threatens its very existence. To survive, the Editor must transform, adapt, and manage the newsroom in a new way. Find out how, pre-orderThe Story by Mario Garcia, chief strategist for the redesign of over 700 newspapers around the world.
Order here:
https://thaneandprose.com/shop-the-bookstore?olsPage=products%2Fthe-story
An interview of interest
http://www.itertranslations.com/blog/2019/3/11/fd60ybflpvlqrgrpdp5ida5rq0c3sp
TheMarioBlog post #3062