Born in the U.S.A.

By: Mark Fitzgerald On a late October afternoon, Marvin Martul and two other 14-year-old boys are hanging out in the central plaza of the colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala. They are banging plastic water bottles against a bench and cracking wise with each other when they are approached by an E&P reporter who asks whether they had a favorite newspaper.

After some giggling at the notion of being interviewed by a gringo with a bad accent, Marvin says, yeah, he does have a favorite paper: Nuestro Diario. "I like the sports, the stories about soccer, the crime stories," he says. "But the main thing is, it's entertaining, a way to

pass the time." His buddies, who won't give their names, chime in that they, too, read Nuestro Diario, which means "Our Daily Paper."

And how often does the young teenager read that paper? "Cada dia," Marvin says. Every day. And his pals? "S?," they say. "Cada dia."

Note to U.S. publishers and editors: Don't try this at home. There's just about zero chance that three American 14-year-olds encountered at random in a city park will all say they read a newspaper every day. And yet, Nuestro Diario's success at turning non-readers, young and old, into loyal buyers owes so much to newspaper readership research conducted in the United States that the tabloid might as well carry a "Made In America" label.

In an ironic instance of the student turning teacher, Nuestro Diario is the hottest case study on the international newspaper circuit.

Before Nuestro Diario was created six years ago, all the newspapers in Guatemala combined sold just 180,000 copies a day. All by itself, Nuestro Diario averaged 291,301 copies daily this summer, according to San Rafael, Calif.-based Verified Audit Circulation (VAC).

Publisher Jorge Springm?hl traces Nuestro Diario's remarkable achievements to ideas he picked up from a newspaper association headquartered in Dallas and a joint venture of industry and academia located in Evanston, Ill.

"John Lavine and Mike Smith were crucial to our success. If you are humble and willing to learn and do what they say ? you will be a success, too," the voluble Springm?hl says in an interview between sessions at the Inter American Press Association general assembly this October in Antigua.

He's referring to the director and managing director, respectively, of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University (a joint project of the Kellogg School of Management and the Medill School of Journalism). "And don't forget to mention INMA, I learned so much at INMA," Springm?hl adds, referring to the Dallas-based International Newspaper Marketing Association.

Nuestro Diario is about as pure an expression of contemporary research into newspaper readership as any paper published on the planet. An engineer by training, Springm?hl leads a staff of 96 that applies a rigorous readership formula with steely discipline.

Nuestro Diario's sensational success in such an unpromising market as Guatemala offers many lessons for a U.S. newspaper industry struggling with long-term decline in total readership and a precipitous drop-off in young readers.

"They have done so many smart things," says the Media Management Center's Smith. The paper has already had at least a little bit of influence on an American newspaper: When Tribune Co. was developing a youth-oriented daily tab that became RedEye, Smith gave executives in Chicago a presentation about the Guatemalan paper.



An 'Americas' dream

Nuestro Diario has big ambitions. "We want to become the largest paper in the Americas, in all the Americas," Springm?hl says in English. "I think we can produce success in other markets, with local partners."

That includes the United States, the biggest of all markets ? and one he's clearly been thinking about a lot. For instance, he says that with all due respect to Hoy, the newspaper Tribune Co. has so far rolled out in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, he's concluded that a national Spanish-language daily won't work in the sprawling United States with its mix of native and immigrant Latinos drawn from throughout the hemisphere.

Nuestro Diario ? which mixes hard news with crime coverage, car accidents, soccer, girl-next-door cheesecake and a healthy dollop of celebrity news that Latin American newspapers call farandula ? has grown well beyond expecations. For starters, Guatemala is not exactly a dream newspaper market. Some 80% of the population falls into the lower-income or even desperately poor groups demographers label the 'C' and 'D' segments.

Now Nuestro Diario is well on its way to doubling the number of newspaper readers in Guatemala.

The next-biggest paper is the 140,643-circulation Prensa Libre, the well-respected dean of Guatemalan newspapers, and Nuestro Diario's owner for the past three years. El Periodico, the upmarket-oriented newspaper, averages 27,426. Siglo Veintiuno, also targeted high, sells 27,491. Its spin-off tab, Al D?a, is aimed at the same downmarket demographic as Nuestro Diario, but at 41,988 copies a day, its sales do not reach even 15% of that paper. (All figures are taken from the newspapers' quarterly submissions to VAC for the July to September 2004 period.)

Nuestro Diario's distribution depends 100% on single-copy sales, and yet, when it raised its cover price 15% last Oct. 11, circulation also rose ? just as it has after four previous price increases. By mid- October, according to the paper's unaudited figures, circulation was averaging about 329,000, and one day, after a big national soccer team victory the night before, it leapt to 402,000.

Advertisers are willing to pay even steeper increases: In six years, the price of a full-page ad has gone from 2,000 quetzals to 24,000 quetzals, or about $258 to $3,091. One more thing: No matter what they pay, advertisers cannot demand premier positions.

"If your paper really is reader-driven, then the all the best pages should be reserved for the reader," Springm?hl says flatly.

Nuestro Diario never applies any of its readership rules halfway. And the most important rule, Springm?hl says, is that the reader comes first.

That's why, for instance, the first six pages are completely ad-free. The first ad always runs on page 7, and it's always a full-page ad. Putting readers first is also why there are no stair-stepping blocks of ads that pinion editorial content to the edge of a page. While ads are allowed on certain pages with content, they all are uniform-sized horizontal banners that run on the bottom of pages.

This predictability is a key to Nuestro Diario ? and what people worldwide, especially young people, want in a newspaper, says Media Management Center's Smith.

"Again and again what they'll tell you is there's too much newspaper there," he says. Nuestro Diario from the start avoided that perception of overload by setting a strict number of pages: 32 pages on Tuesdays through Saturdays, 36 on Sundays, and 40 for the heavier sports coverage on Mondays. "In America, of course, you could never do that because the ads dictate the number of pages," Smith adds.

But the locked-in number of pages, Smith and Springm?hl argue, offers three big advantages. First, it makes the reader comfortable, since editorial content and ad content are easy to find in predictable places. Second, it makes advertising real estate more valuable, and forces the newspaper to think constantly about accepting only advertising that builds readership. Third, it allows the newsroom to know right from the start of the cycle exactly how much space it has.



Not yellow (or red) journalism

Nuestro Diario's slogan translates roughly as "News as it is." In a violent country racked by powerful street gangs and the aftermath of a 36-year civil war that ended only in 1996, "news as it is" often means violence. There's more coverage in Nuestro Diario than in the A or B papers, but everyone covers Guatemala's many forms of violence, the robberies, assaults, drug turf wars ? even riots around the nation provoked by a proposed six-cent increase in the bus fare.

The paper runs full color on every page, and while a certain lemony tint is a favorite background, Springm?hl insists there's nothing yellow about the journalism. "And we are not 'red,' as they say in Mexico," he adds, referring to papers that feature gruesome photos of accidents or mayhem. The paper has rules about coverage, too. No pictures of bodies or blood. No exaggeration or exclamation marks in headlines.

What's most interesting about Nuestro Diario's coverage, though, are not those things reporters, photographers, and graphic designers are not allowed to do ?but what they have to do every day.

Stories are told with a mix of text, photos, and graphics. There are lots of short captions, giving information that is not repeated anywhere else. The main story, always short, almost never quotes anyone. Instead, the quotes appear in short snippets under headshots of the sources, who may be witnesses to a crime or giving an opinion about what happened.

In a package of text and graphics occupying just a third of page, there might be more than a half-dozen ways to enter the story. On the big story that stretches across pages 2 and 3, there might be 25.

"Young people read differently," Springm?hl says. "They surf. They want to get information in a way that is agile."

To get that effect, reporters and photographers work closely with designers, who are assigned to a single section of the paper. Every page is produced separately and reporting teams compete just to get on it. "We produce much more news than we publish," Springm?hl says.

"The first challenge you hear to this is that it's 'dumbing down' journalism," says Northwestern's Smith. "I often say to people, well, you try to get that much information in a half-page of text. I don't think that's dumbing down ? I think it's smartening up the presentation."

Nuestro Diario is also filled with pictures of ordinary people ? exactly what readership studies say readers and non-readers want to see. "I always think of Mike Smith asking publishers, 'How many pictures of readers do you have in your paper every day?'" Springm?hl says.

Of course, readers also want to see some out-of-the-ordinary people, too ?and Nuestro Diario has rules for that. While the paper every day manages to showcase photos of bikini-clad women ?whether beauty queens, celebrities or models ? they must look like madrinas, Springm?hl says, using the term to suggest the equivalent of a wholesome cheerleader. Females account for 42% of Nuestro Diario's audience, the publisher notes, "and we don't want anyone, um, promiscuous, no one who is a threat to the female reader."



Promos have the Big Mo

Some of the most effective ads are the ones Nuestro Diario does for itself just as it is about to increase its cover price. "Every time they increase the price, they increase circulation because the promotion they run is so lucrative," Smith says. "People come for the promotion and get hooked on the content."

The paper has given away a house with all utilities paid for a year, for instance.

Readers get hooked on the promos, but Springm?hl says the paper isn't: "I believe if you overdo it, it becomes like a drug." So just before every price increase, the paper also adds some content. In October, it was the horoscope column of Walter Mercado, a flamboyant figure who is wildly popular in Latin America as a kind of astrological Liberace.

The promotion following the October price hike offered a chance to win about $500 a month for life. Whoever won the drawing, which was scheduled for Nov. 29, learned then that Nuestro Diario would pay all the taxes on the winnings.

"It's a surprise," Springm?hl says. "A newspaper always has to have a pleasant surprise for the reader."