Envisioning More Growth p.16

By: Mark Fitzgerald

Incoming president of Inland Press Association says the group
is looking to expand, but not to muscle in on other media
organizations ? even though it now has members from 45 states sp.

WHEN DANIEL BAUMANN was getting his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin at the height of the Cold War, he studied the Russian language and society ? dreaming of becoming a Moscow correspondent.
"Nobody told me that you just don't graduate and become a Moscow correspondent," he said in an interview the other day.
Baumann didn't become a Moscow correspondent. Instead, he worked on a couple of small papers before joining Paddock Publications in 1964, where he took an increasingly key role in its transformation from a small group of weeklies into the Arlington Heights, Ill.-based publisher of the Daily Herald, a 130,000-circulation daily that is the fastest-growing paper in the Chicago suburbs.
But Baumann's college language training stood him in good stead a few years ago when he chanced upon some Russian officials on a trip to Cuba with Inland Press Association members ? and the ambitious dreaming is definitely still on Baumann's agenda as he becomes the 92nd president of Inland at its 110th annual meeting in Chicago Oct. 22-24.
As Baumann takes over the leadership of a growing association, he says he is determined to keep Inland expanding by offering services "ahead of newspaper's needs."
"Inland has to keep moving ahead if it is to keep growing," Baumann said.
Inland's board of directors, borrowing the "visioning" concept the National Newspaper Association inaugurated a couple of years ago, has appointed a small group of publishers to develop new services based on a survey last spring of member newspapers.
"Our members see room to add or upgrade services in a number of areas, including technology, classified ads, editorial and production," Baumann said.
Already, for instance, Inland has lined up a grant from the McCormack Foundation to fund research into newspaper information technology.
"Inland needs to find a role [in technology] and perhaps we can do it by providing ideas and information to members," Baumann said.
Baumann adds Inland intends to provide better services for its growing number of weekly newspaper members ? after all, it's been eight years since Inland Press Association officially dropped the "Daily" from its name ? and to draw large dailies closer to the organization.
"We already have a number of big dailies, but we would kind of like to see more participation from them," Baumann said.
In general, though, Baumann says he finds himself in the happy situation of a man about to take the reins of an association full of contented members.
"Members said good things about Inland in the survey: Inland is seen as cost-effective, a nuts-and-bolts organization that is very practical," Baumann said. "We are [an association] that is run by volunteers rather than a large professional staff, but it was very good to see the rating of the professional staff was quite high."
Inland has shown an ability to grow in good times and bad, and 1995 has been no exception.
Newspaper membership is up 8% for the year, Baumann reports, with 412 dailies, 120 weeklies and 106 associate memberships, mostly from colleges and other newspaper associations.
Inland's crowded schedule of seminars also proved increasingly popular over the last year. The attendance of approximately 1,300 represents about a 13% jump in a year, Baumann said.
At times, though, Inland, once an association of exclusively Midwest dailies, seems almost a little embarrassed by its reach, which now extends to 45 states, the province of Ontario and two newspapers on Bermuda.
"I don't think it's by design," Baumann said. "I think it's that Inland attracts family-owned newspapers . . . . Inland doesn't go out to get members in the South or Northeast, but it does appeal to family owners."
Far from trying to muscle into any other association's territory, in fact, Inland has a philosophy of cosponsoring "and doesn't really worry about who gets the credit for it," Baumann said.
In forging those links with such associations as Newspaper Association of America, International Newspaper Financial Executives and a score of state organizations, Inland has become recognized for its expertise in such areas as human resources, financial research and marketing. It is the lead sponsor of two annual studies that have become newspaper industry benchmarks: the cost and revenue study and the more recently added compensation survey.
Baumann now wants to upgrade the association's internal communications to reflect Inland's sophisticated service to the industry.
For instance, he wants to overhaul the "kind of nuts-and-bolts" look of Inland's promotion brochures, and change the focus of the association's twice-monthly publication, the Inlander.
"It tends to be very much a promoter of Inland activity," Baumann said. "I'd like to see it have more industry trends. So much of what happens in our seminars tends to die there. I'd like to see much more reporting on the seminars to spread the word."
If the 12-page Inlander needs a redesign, there are few journalists more qualified than Dan Baumann.
Baumann's leadership at Paddock Publications provides a good example of how a family-owned newspaper can not only survive but flourish against the sophisticated competition of metro dailies.
When Baumann joined Paddock in 1964, it was publishing several small weeklies in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. The area's growth was just about to explode, yet the cumulative circulation of the weeklies was on a slow decline.
In 1969, Field Enterprises, then the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and the now-defunct Chicago Daily News, decided to go after those suburbs aggressively.
It aimed right at the heart of Paddock Publications with three new papers called the Arlington Heights Day, the Mt. Prospect Day and the Des Plaines Day. Paddock itself went to five-day publication with the creation of the Arlington Heights Daily Herald with Baumann as city editor ? and within a year, was beating the Day newspapers handily.
Field soon gave up the market, selling the Day papers to Paddock, who shuttered them. Baumann became publisher of the weekly group in 1971, editor of the Daily Herald in 1975 and general manager of the paper in 1982. He was named president in 1986 and also serves as chief operating officer and a member of the board of directors of Paddock.
Between its creation in 1969 and this year, the Daily Herald has grown from an 18,000-circulation, five-day, afternoon paper to a seven-day, a.m. daily with 130,000 daily circulation and some of the best color reproduction in a metropolitan area known for its color.