Marketing the News
JOUR 350
 The News and Media Business

Week 5
Competing with TV
•	“marketing” approach to news first seen in late 1970s
•	more reader-friendly content
•	a/k/a “disco” journalism
•	USA Today revolutionized newspaper design in 1982
•	Full color, extensive use of graphics
•	Shorter stories, bite-sized “factoids”
Selling audiences to advertisers
•	newspapers traditionally relied on circulation data
•	readership demographics
•	age, income, occupation, etc.
•	broadcast audiences harder to define
•	used phone surveys, ie. A.C. Nielsen
•	but gathered much more useful information
•	ie. spending habits
Readership surveys
•	circulation dip made newspapers compete
•	began surveying readers, non-readers
•	to determine what content would sell
•	“Market-driven” journalism began
•	giving readers what they said they wanted
•	not what editors thought they should know
•	circulation rose in U.S.
•	from 60.7 million in 1975 
•	to 62.8 million in 1990 
Newspaper Readership Project
•	Started in 1977 by alphabet soup 
•	ANPA, ASNE, NAB, etc.
•	conducted 70 research studies
•	held 10 conferences
•	Suddenly marketing consultants were everywhere
•	Presstime estimated their numbers in the hundreds
Targeting the “Me Generation” 
•	Consultants urged editors to appeal to a younger readership 
•	that wanted help in coping with life
•	Urged more people items, celebrity coverage to attract readers
•	Briefer news coverage, summary boxes
•	Light features
•	How-to sections
Focus groups emerge
•	Survey research often problematic
•	Answers aren’t always accurate
•	Focus groups brought consumers together
•	For more in-depth discussion, comparison
•	Allowed market researchers to get deeper into the public mind
•	Utilized increasingly sophisticated marketing methods
What do readers want?
•	More upbeat stories – less bad news
•	More “escape” stories, light features
•	Shorter stories – quick reads
•	Led to the rise of “news you can use”
•	ie. focus on the self
•	In-depth reporting declined
•	Style prevailed over substance
Case study: USA Today
•	Created by Gannett chain in 1982
•	Targeted national readership
•	Focus on sports
•	a killer weather map
•	Short stories became known as “News McNuggets”

Case study: Vancouver Province
•	Converted to tabloid format in 1983
•	after much market testing
•	Martin Goldfarb and Associates surveys in 1981 
•	papers “cold, impersonal, aloof, [and] mercenary” 
•	consultant Leonard Kubas found 63% of Vancouverites considered them identical 
Going tabloid
•	Southam had market-tested a tabloid in 1981 as a third newspaper
•	called Pacific Post
•	showed a tab would be a hit with readers 
•	but there would not be enough advertising revenue for it as a third paper
•	as the second  paper, however, it would be more attractive to advertisers 
•	would appeal to a different readership than the Sun
Further test-marketing
•	80-page mockup of tabloid Pacific Post produced in March, 1983
•	550 members of focus groups tested for their reaction -- proved positive
•	Pitched tab to Southam board April 22
•	approved unanimously
•	called “the most exhaustive analysis of market position and future options ever undertaken by a Canadian newspaper” 
The “Breezy Tab”
•	relaunch accompanied by a $500,000 ad campaign
•	1,000 TV commercials
•	1,600 radio spots 
•	extensive market-testing had come up with a slogan: “All the News! Convenient too!” 
•	Sun called it “the first Canadian newspaper to be designed from the start by marketing studies” 
The Little Newspaper That Grew
			Sun				Province
1983		243,419        		148,928
1985		248,472        		175,078
1987		239,237        		183,018 
1989		230,782        		189,028
1990		220,141        		190,949
1991		210,917        		189,124
1995		206,027        		159,815
2000		200,420        		166,746	 

The ’90s – a decade of desperation
•	advertisers began deserting newspapers 
•	used new promotion strategies (direct mail)
•	traditional newspaper advertisers failed
•	ie. department stores (Woodward’s, Eaton’s)
•	big-box retailers emerged in their place
•	ie. Walmart
•	1990 recession saw first drop in ad revenue in 20 years
•	dropped 5% in 1991 – biggest dip in 50 years!
The end of newspapers?
•	competition from cable TV news grew
•	drained readership
•	the Internet threatened advertising base
•	classified ads
•	ie. cars, homes, autos
•	some predicted newspapers would die out
•	and be replaced by online news, advertising
Going the “audience quality” route
•	survey research focused more on buying traits of readers
•	called “psychographics”
•	to prove they could deliver more desirable consumers than radio and TV
•	began constructing audience profiles
•	based on psychological traits of readers
•	as determined by survey research
Case study: The Vancouver Sun
•	paid polling firm Angus Reid $100,000 in early ’90s
•	to conduct a sophisticated survey of readers
•	classified into psychographic categories:
•	“literate acquisitors” (21 percent)
•	“middle-class joiners”
•	“home bodies” 
•	“post-literate hedonists” 
•	“insular forlorn” (11 percent)
Case study: Orange County Register
•	Has taken the reader-oriented approach furthest
•	Includes reader-written features
•	Columns on dreams, favorite vacations
•	Reader-friendly beats
•	Shopping malls
•	 “car culture”
•	also has an innovative organizational structure
•	“flat” hierarchical structure
•	called “newsroom without walls”