| There's
lots of evidence that newspapers are more than holding
their own in a cluttered media marketplace. A healthy
9% increase in newspaper ad spending in the first half
of 2002 – and predictions by Veronis Shuler that ad spending
will increase another 3.2% in 2003 – is just one example
of the industry's resilience.
Another
is the success of newspapers in adapting and integrating
online technologies to extend their news coverage, to
provide services and information not available in their
print products, and in other ways to make themselves
indispensable to their local markets. The reason for
that success is amazingly simple: Almost from the beginning
(that is, the early to mid-1990s), newspapers – unlike
most of their media competitors – have viewed on-line
content delivery as an opportunity rather than as a
threat.
NEWSPAPER
WEB SITES ATTRACT VISITORS
This
week, confirmation that effectively adapting technology
to strengthen their local news and information franchises
has come from The Media Audit – a subsidiary of International
Demographics, Inc. – which reports the good news that
in a 2001 study of 85 metro markets, twenty-eight daily
newspaper Web sites attracted more than 20% of local-market
adults, and the number of newspaper Web sites that attracted
more than 10% of local adults doubled, from 48 in 2000
to 100 in 2001.
And
don't be too quick to pooh-pooh the percentages as low:
in a highly competitive media marketplace driven by
demographics and market share, attracting one of every
four adults - or more, as the Omaha, San Antonio, Charlotte,
Hartford, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Orlando Web sites
did in the survey – is worth bragging about. To attract
over 40%, as the Washington Post's site did – is to
be king of the media hill and to set a standard for
the rest of the industry to follow in building strong,
vital, compelling newspaper sites.
THE
STAKES FOR EMPLOYMENT ADVERTISING ARE HIGH
The
advantages of having a website that offers what the
local market wants and needs are both obvious and subtle.
On the obvious side, good sites broaden and deepen a
paper's news coverage; attract, renew, and offer incentives
to subscribers; and provide targeted solutions to advertisers
and marketers. Compelling Web sites strengthen the franchise
in many ways, not least of all by supplementing the
coverage in their print products and providing the immediacy
of broadcast – for both national and local news.
In
the competition for advertising revenue, strong Web
sites help newspapers compete, particularly in areas
where some assumed that newspapers were vulnerable.
For
example, the early popularity of national job boards
such as Monster probably eroded to some extent the dominance
of local classified/recruitment sections. But in creating
compelling, user-friendly sites, newspapers have struck
back in a big way. A newspaper without a Web site was
vulnerable to national job boards, which marketed themselves
to hiring managers and recruitment agencies as ways
of recruiting talented employees regardless of the size
or location of the market in which they were working.
Either
individually, by creating strong sites, or through the
kind of cooperation that created Web sites such as Employment
Wizard, newspapers can compete – and are competing –
for the national recruitment business they had conceded
to national job boards.
Just
as important, newspapers with strong Web sites offer
hiring managers additional ways of recruiting from the
local market – where job boards were always weak. In
doing so, newspapers reinforce their already considerable
strength in their local markets AND offer national solutions
to recruiters as well.
With
a sluggish economy exposing the limitations of large,
national-only job boards like Monster, local newspapers
– both in print and online – are reclaiming their market
dominance. Beyond that, they're positioning themselves
for huge rewards – in news coverage and in advertising
– particularly in classified/recruitment – when the
bulls chase the bears out of the market.
Copyright
@2002 Landon Media Group, LLC
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