NFPW presentation by Dean Miller, Idaho Falls
Newspapers have never had more readers, we're just not getting paid for those eyeballs that see our stuff.
Obituary report from Carole Olsen:
2001: $58, 430
2002: $66,693
2004: $86, 364
These numbers reference paid obituaries, and these are one of the most popular parts of the paper and the income pays for a lot of things at the paper, but each of those obits is a dying reader.
We've always thought that people grow into reading the paper, but are we really? Scarborough Report: If you take all the consumers born in the same year, the percentage of readers doesn't change over time. In other words, people aren't going to start reading a paper if they aren't doing it earlier in their lives. (Source: Simmons, 1967 and 1999 Scarborough Report Top 50 DMA Markets)
Reader's rank topics in their preference, and we aren't giving them as much of the content as a percentage of the paper as would fit the topics' ranks. 22-minute-a-day readers are totally dedicated readers.
Readership data is available on the Web at the Northwestern University Readership Management site.
"In the United States, white people are old people and old people are white people." We need to study young readers to understand how readers (potential readers) look at the world.
Experience-based marketing is needed for our purposes as well:
No. 1 reason readers come back: It looks our for my civic and personal interests.
Biggest turnoff: There's too much information (too many pages, too many special sections, tries to cover too much, articles are too long). No. 2 turnoff: stories that discriminate or stereotype minorities.
These strongly impact the 18-34 age group.
Newspapers are the slowest institution to change, and we haven't kept up with changes in readers' habits. Change is a skill that can be taught, and we need to learn how to manage change. It's OK to make mistakes and change back.
Strongly encourage you to subscribe to a magazine called "The Week." Miller's interest in and knowledge about international news grows from reading smaller tidbits.
There are so many free sources for big national and international stories, that why would Miller spend the money to put it in his local paper. And why would he want a 22-year-old copy editor making decisions about stories about what's happening in Georgia with Russia?
We have to communicate in the ways people now take in content.
The era of the left-brainers is over. Photos, videos are more provocative and creative. A mug shot can increase readership of a story by 40%. Photos are looked at first, then cutlines, then headlines, then the text (and no one ever reads the byline). There needs to be a cliffhanger at the jump to get people to turn the page.
Four things going forward that we will be dealing with:
Transparency: don't hide, divulge and explain and link to values (post government documents)
Searchability: Get what they want in the form they want
Speed: On their schedule . . . i.e. red box vs. netflix
Mode: scanenrs vs. methodical users; audio vs. video vs. print
Two useful books: "Usability Engineering" by Jakob Nielsen (useit.com); "Pure Design" by Mario R. Garcia
Miller's paper in Idaho puts each year's ethics report on the WEb for readers. This is a personal ethics report by each staffer at the paper for their activities over the past year. For example, Miller's wife ran for and won a position on the local school board and it was posted on the site so readers would know the connection.
*audacity software online (free) is a great audio editor and easy to use
Miller is looking for freelancers that can offer packages for all types of readers
First two words of headline are the entire game online-avoid "the" as the first word
Web breaking news can be the what where who (and when), but the paper story will probably be a more second-day story that fills in the why and how.
The beauty of this day and age is that we can communicate with a much broader audience than ever before; we just have to figure out how to pay for it.
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