Online audience counts; more readers seek content

Gilbert Bailon, publisher and editor of Al Día, Dallas, is 2007-08 president of ASNE.

PERVASIVENESS OF CHANGE WITHIN OUR INDUSTRY can create feelings of humility, helplessness and instability.

“Just when I got adjusted to the latest wave of change and then right around the corner … BAM,” we mutter to ourselves.

Two recent developments, however, bode well for our ability to change and capitalize on what we do best.

First, the AUDIT BUREAU of CIRCULATIONS has adopted new regulations that will track total audience (net paid circulation AND online usage) under a new category called Audience-FAX, which will be released in November, along with the longstanding FAS-FAX numbers.

The Newspaper Association of America and our joint NAA/ASNE Audience Development Committee continue to advocate and seek new methods of creating and charting audience across media delivery platforms that expand total audience, despite continued decline of net paid circulation. Editors fully embrace and comprehend the impact of what our staffs produce in the core paper, online and in niche publications.

Second, online users have increased their time spent seeking content and decreased time devoted to communicating online, according to the recently released Internet Activity Index conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings. In a 37 percent increase from four years ago, consumers now spend 47 percent of their time online seeking content and 33 percent with communications. That trend should buoy newsrooms and editors whose work crosses beyond the traditional single-cycle daily communication with readers. (See Mark Zieman’s column on Web traffic driven by content.) Challenges remain, however, to provide timeliness and a broader range of content, from live chats and blogs to consumer-generated media and reader commentary. Merely posting commoditized news ubiquitously available in traditional media and online will not embolden news Web sites. Editors and their newsrooms must devise methods to engage and entice readers to become regular users of their online product.

None of the journalists with whom I have talked across the country in the last six months cling to pipe dreams of smooth, predictable sailing ahead. The mutual grasp of reality is deep, yet sometimes unbalanced toward the very significant challenges, with too little energy directed toward new opportunities. That is a mental discipline that editors can directly influence.

Around the corner:

• First Amendment issues remain a top priority. They will be the subject of a special ASNE summit in late October in Chicago. The McCormick Tribune Foundation is supporting this effort to help create wider public understanding of the importance of free speech and its positive impact on our democracy.
• The National Football League has imposed regulations that require photographer credential vests to bear the logo of Canon, an NFL sponsor company. Even more critical, the NFL now limits archiving and restricts Web site video to 45 seconds per day.

These are undue limitations to many media forms, not just newspapers. An array of media associations, including ASNE, is working to negotiate a more reasonable standard that would allow journalists to provide adequate coverage, while respecting the NFL’s copyrighted material. This will be a drawn-out debate with legal implications and high stakes.

In sum, let’s keep our wits and hopes about us as we sit in conference rooms peppered with words like outsource, downsize, right-size and streamline. Let’s also employ words and concepts like innovate, create, experiment and rebirth.

Process should not triumph over our core values and principles. Use the MBAs and the hired consultants, but they must fully embrace and respect the intangible worth of news content and what it means to people who use our products.

Great content still matters and is a differentiator. Cost-flow analysis, etc., are a reality, but they miss elements that transcend the spreadsheet: the value and social relevance of news content.

Newspaper editors must shed any lingering stereotypes of nostalgic dinosaurs and become realists who espouse our defining values that make us unique as we battle in a chaotic world of change and fierce competition.*