Roughly 565 registered attendees at this point. This post will be continuously updated throughout the day. Check back often. Just arrived in God’s Country, Hershey PA for the
America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference
First Session (that I attended)
Pitching Your Media Company
Jane Hungarter -VP Marketing and Communications, Pennsyvlania Newspaper Association
- advertisers care about prices
- know your “competitive rate card”
- suggests subscribing to Media Market Guide
- Rethink your rate card, but empower reps to leave the rate card as well
- Use paid demographic info sources like: Claritas, Scarborough, Demographics Now
- also free resources like free demographics.com and zipskinny.com
Wes Snider - Mansi Media
- Have great customer service
- if you cant differentiate by costs, the do it by service
Taylor Crawford- Mansi Media
- advertisers want to do things across their footprint, you will lose money if you can’t print something or do something on your site.
- Book end sizes
- Interruption media
Matt Caylor- Mansi Media
- Educate your sales reps – Make Them Comfortable To Talk About the web.
- newspaper reps are still not online savvy
- everyone is looking to take newspaper’s business still so you must educate and empower your sales force to make great decisions.
- you have to hire passionate people
Carin Hoover- Mansi Media
- It is key to capture younger people
- I consult for a catholic newspaper who’s average reader is 55, they need the younger demographic on board to bring you to the next level
END SESSION
Session Two
NIE in Transition: In Print and Online
Chris Yatchyshyn -Manager of Education Services, bucks county courier times
- NIE newspaper digital editions trial period for 2006-2007
- used for training purposes
- in lab settings
- Most papers already had e-editions so the transition was relatively simple
- NIE e-editions launched during National Newspaper Week (NNW)
- The newspaper website is not a replica of the printed newspaper
- “our goal is to encourage students to becom enewspaper readers and lifelong learners”.
- e-editions represent 7.2% of NIE circulation | only 18 of 545 teachers are using e-editions exclusively
*One of the vendors Chris works with recommended that publishers withhold delivery of the print editions on Earth Day to promote the E-edition. I disagree. Doing this reinforces the notion that “print newspapers are bad for the earth and this one day we do good”. Besides, I have yet to see a full lifecycle analysis of print versus e-editions. If you want to introduce E-editions, then just make it a random day, like the first Friday of every month.
Susan Anthony – Director of Community relations, The Patriot-News Harrisburg PA
- The e-edition is not like the newspaper, “it is the newspaper”.
- Biggest benefits? Save on Paper, Ink, Press run times, labor costs, etc…
- Sponsorship can still exist in the e-edition
- Challenges? What are the technology capabilities of the schools?
- We need to be where the students are
Dr. Ann Marie Steele – Manager NIE and Community Services, Lancaster (Pa) newspapers
- Web video is big and growing so we are adding video for schools
- *she’s showing lot of videos on a ppt to highlight the above statement
Nikolay Malyarov from NewspaperDirect makers of PressDisplay.com ( who for the sake of the integrity of the session doesn’t identify his company) asks a really tough question to Ann Marie Steele. Ann said she was directed to stop pushing the E-edition and focus on the print product. Nikolay asks why stop pushing the e-edition? Why are you pushing print on kids who have little interest in print in a declining market, even when it is costing publishers millions of dollars a year to produce NIE newspapers. Mary responds by saying she follows orders…
End of Session
Session Three
The New Breed of Local Directory Products
Michelle Cotton- Interactive Specialist WickedLocal.com Gatehouse Media
- Millions of dollars a year are spent on phone books
- Sites the article A serious case of pulp friction about the waste of phonebooks (yellowpages)
- “puppy dog” effect – just show the customers some attention
- Teach sales teams to become consultants with solutions, she even suggests changing your title to “advertising consultant” instead of “ad sales rep.” to change the feeling
- We don’t allow comments on our site.
Q – which areas are you focusing on right now? (from the audience)
A – Consignment shops are huge in this economy. Contact them immediately. So are chiropractors and salons.
Brian Talty -VP sales Panet Discovery
- what is unique about your locale? that must be taken into consideration when targeting your sales force.
Bob Kellagher – COO Interactive Media, Calkins Media
- We don’t suppress reviews unless we think they have an agenda, and they are usually very easy to spot.
The coverage of this session is abbreviated because I came in late. SORRY. Please contact me if you’d like to lean more and I’ll get you that info.
End Session.
Related posts:
- America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference Day1
- America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference Exhibit Report
- Metaprinter to Report from America East Newspaper Operations & Technology Conference
- 2008 America East Newspaper Operations and Tech. Conference Review
- Just a reminder that I will be at the America East 2009 Conference
Re: Earth Day idea. For those schools/publishers who wish to retain both print and e-edition NIE an alternative could be to offer certain sections in digital whilst retaining print for other content. As you noted above, I do not advocate print for NIE, but if both are used at schools, certain sections can be published in digital only. Soon enough schools will realise that digital NIE is so much easier to deal with at the admin/educational level and is the only thing today’s target audience (i.e. students) can associate with. Do they really need to learn how to circle articles in printed papers? No, they will never apply it in their lives down the road. But the publisher who allows them to post articles on facebook and tweet them, grabs not only students’ attention (and keeps them happy) but the attention of other schools as well.