Newspaper Follies

[Warren Toda]

Yes, another rant. Proceed at your own risk.  

Let's say you own a newspaper and ...



1)   ... you've named said newspaper "Toronto Sun" and your circulation is, ah, not very encouraging. What do you do? You try to bribe your readers to stay.

How?

Have a contest with a great prize.

What would your readers love to win?

Bran cereal.

The Toronto Sun is running a "Social Media Contest". If readers "like" the Sun on Facebook, they are eligible to win several boxes of bran cereal! What 18-to-50-year-old wouldn't love to win that?

There are many jokes to be had by comparing bran cereal and the Sun but I'll take the high road here.

To make it more enticing, the prize also includes an unnamed, generic brand tablet computer. A quick check at Walmart shows that a similar tablet has a retail price of $144, although it can be had in the US for $97.

Sigh.

I guess if your readership base is the over-65 crowd then this contest might work, assuming this crowd can find Facebook.

But there's absolutely nothing "social" about this contest. It shows a total misunderstanding of the concept.




2)   ... you've named said newspaper "Toronto Star" and your circulation is, ah, not very encouraging. What do you do? You try to offer valuable information to your readers.

How?

By using cheap stock pictures of posed models and then pretending that these pictures are somehow related to the story at hand.

The Toronto Star today ran a 7-year-old stock photo from Hungary showing a woman sitting on a sofa. The Star tried to pass it off as fresh art of a Yahoo! employee as it accompanied a column about Yahoo! employees. The Star also misspelled Yahoo!.

As many photographers in the Toronto area know, this is the same stock photo that Toronto's largest camera store has been using on their web site and in their advertising for *years*.

Sigh.

The Star could've used a file photo of the main subject of the article (Yahoo!'s CEO). There are plenty of pictures of her available. The National Post managed to do this. The Post even spelled Yahoo! correctly most of the time.

To be fair, several other Toronto dailies also use set-up stock pictures and pass them off as story-related news photos.

I guess if you think your readership base is the under-65-IQ crowd that doesn't want real information then this might work.

But there's absolutely nothing valuable about using fake photos to shortchange your customers. It shows a total misunderstanding of the concept.



 

[Ken Gigliotti]

A soft rant for the wrong posting . Babes and Bingo contests have been a winning combination for the last hundred years , not the next . Maybe bran and bingo might  be a next century thing.  Baby boomers are living longer. Brilliant. Actually Bingo is still the best interactive  thing for home delivery and street sales .Somehow our core business of home delivery has become a liability.


The biggest issue for newspapers is trying to make a profit , deliver news , maintain quality , keep circulation , stay open .
  The biggest obstacle is rising costs and  giving away product to some customers and selling it to others. Revenue is increasing , it can increase.
 Does outsourcing provide a gateway to innovative change or is it finding a cheaper work force.
   Can owners, managers  and workers , the people who share the same interests  and  work well together everyday for the  common goal of putting the product out everyday , work in the same manner to solve that other issue. Outsourcing is a solution , and a failure by all  to  solve  the core problem. Outsourcing empowers other workers , managers and other owners .
    Outsourcing is a problem that has been an issue  plaguing other former manufacturing companies for the last 25 years in Canada .Make no mistake we are a manufacturing company.
    The answer is obvious and there is a choice.
 
   General news cannot be sold , it is a flooded market , a freegan market.
   Can newspapers provide general news in condensed , free form , but offer something else in  an  expanded , deeper , more innovative information form that people will buy? Do side deals make this impossible?
    Is the newspaper product evolving to a flyer or something else? The ice age is coming .
   These are two issues that can be solved by the people involved.Or not. Smart people with self interest can solve anything.