Woe is us

Once again the confusion sets in: is print dead or is one size fits all dead?
Read this.

(go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/17/newspaper-abcs-websites-internet-news)

From the guardian.co.uk


We thought the internet was killing print. But it isn't
There is no clear correlation between a rise in internet traffic and a fall in newspaper circulation. Some papers are growing in both formats, others are succeeding in neither, according to new research.

by Peter Preston, The Observer

The woe, as usual, is more or less unconfined. September's daily newspaper circulation figures, as audited by ABC, are down 5.31% in a year: Sunday totals are 6.7% off the pace. And, of course, we all know what's to blame. It's the infernal internet, the digital revolution, the iPad, laptop and smartphone taking over from print. Online is the coming death of Gutenberg's world, inexorable, inevitable, the enemy of all we used to hold dear. Except that it isn't.

A fascinating new piece of research this week looks in detail at the success of newspaper websites and attempts to find statistical correlations with sliding print copy sales. As one goes up, the other must go down, surely? These are the underpinnings of transition.

But "in the UK at least, there is no such correlation", reports the number-crunching analyst Jim Chisholm. "This is true at both a micro-level in terms of UK newspaper titles and groups and at a macro-level comparing national internet adoption with circulation performance. Indeed, the opposite case could be argued: that newspapers that do well on the web also do better in print… Understandably worried traditional journalists should know that the internet is not a threat."

Chisholm's aim is to prod British publishers into renewed web action – citing the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent particularly for producing the highest ratios of monthly unique visitors to their sites when compared against print circulations. (The Guardian, with a 125 unique-visitor-to-print ratio, is far higher than any other European paper he can find, and also generates over three times the number of UK page impressions relative to its circulation). Moreover, UK national papers as a whole score well on such tests, clear top of the EU league and walloping German performance nine times over.

Could they, and British regionals, do better, though? Indeed they could. "The issue is not one of total audience, but of frequency and loyalty – and online, as in print, newspapers are great at attracting readers from time to time, but they don't attract them often enough, and they don't hang around."

At which point, perhaps, it's time to look at the flipside of Chisholm's findings. If the name of one game is frequency and loyalty – via investment, innovation, constant linkages and promotions – might that not also be an answer to drooping print sales as well? If you reject the net as an agent of newsprint doom, then reverse scenarios also apply.

Go back to ABC circulations before newspaper websites really began – say September 1995 – to make the point. One, the Daily Star, is doing better than 15 years ago with no net presence to speak of: 757,080 copies in 1995 against 864,315 last month. The Daily Mail, at 2,144,229 this September against 1,866,197, is well up, with a website growing by more than 60% a year. Some – say the Mirror, down from 2,559, 636 to 1,213,323 – have suffered direly. See: no correlations?

The Guardian, Times and Telegraph are all down by around a third, and the Sun has lost more than a million: but again there's no mechanical relationship here. Price matters. It always does. But investment and innovation matter as well. They always do. And you can't help by being struck how little of that goes on in print these days. A pull-out section vanishes, and comes back. Single-theme front pages come and go at the Indy. The Telegraph still looks for somewhere else to put its features. Nothing much changes. Another researcher (at Enders Analysis) calculates that papers have lopped 20% of the pages they put in a decade ago in order to bulwark sharply rising cover prices.

No correlations here, either? Nothing to prove that the more effort and talent you put in, the more you get out? More, more, more ... and more research, please.

Prospering in Chicago

I've had several requests from blog readers to follow up with more details about the Chicago Tribune Direct's purchase of a Kokak Proper press for direct mail and potential niche publications use (see blog entry "Flatfooted No More" Sept.29, 2010).

Following up with Tim Street (director of Tribune Direct Marketing), here are a few more details about their plans.

Although they have purchased the Kodak Prosper 1000 they expect to have the 5000Xl in place hopefully by Q1 2011.

They have had a lot of success in the past few years with Kodak presses in their direct mail business, which has grown 100 percent, although they have visited with and analyzed many of the other digital presses available on the market.

Now they want to follow their recent success into new opportunities for their customers, including the ability to print on multiple substrates and go as quickly as possible, in the 650 feet per minute range. (Tribune Direct is strictly a digital printing company with no offset presses.)

When asked about reference to potential "niche" publications, Street deferred to Paul Lynch (senior manager/quality/commercial printing, Chicago Tribune) as someone who is more focussed on such solutions, but Street posited that possibly Tribune Direct:
1. Could use the Prosper pressed to print publications with tiered advertising directed at different audiences.
Or
2. Could, for instance, print publications for attendees at events at McCormick Place with targeted offers for the attendees such as local restaurants.

Speaking of events at the McCormick Place, Tim pointed out that during Graph Expo 2010, starting on Sunday, the Kzone will live stream discussions of the Tribune developments including from 10:30-11 a.m. Central Time on Monday, Oct. 4 this program, called "Owning the Competition with Digital Print":

The gloves are off. And Tribune Direct is taking it to the competition with the Kodak Prosper Press platform. How? By bringing new, exciting direct mail capabilities to its customers nationwide. Learn how the revolutionary combination of quality and variability at the speed of offset is helping Tribune Direct knock out the competition.
Moderator
Dave Zwang, Zwang & Co.
Panelists:
• Lou Tazioli, President, Tribune Direct • Tim Klunder, Vice President of Sales and Client
Relations, Tribune Direct • Ronen Cohen, Kodak


Visit http://www.Kzonelive.com for the discussions.