'Fine Tuning' At The NAA p. 13

By: George Garneau

Newspaper Association of America cuts dues for smaller papers,
reduces the 'unwieldy' size of its board, creates task forces sp.

TWO YEARS AFTER a shake-up united seven newspaper associations into the Newspaper Association of America, the NAA board is changing its dues and management structures significantly.
Outgoing NAA chairman Donald Newhouse, president of Advance Publications Inc., described the changes as a "fine tuning."
The action to cut dues for papers with less than 10,000 circulation is designed to reverse the hemorrhage of small papers from the NAA since the merger raised dues steadily during the past three years.
Now representing 1,050 newspapers, the NAA has lost about 350 members, many of them small papers, since the merger of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, Newspaper Advertising Bureau and five groups representing executives in circulation, marketing, advertising, research and promotion.
The NAA's board of governors, in a bid to increase participation and smooth decision-making, also restructured its "unwieldy" board of directors.
The NAA has reduced the size of its board of directors, increased the size of its executive board and created three task forces.
The changes followed a "visioning" process involving a survey of members and six sessions with members ? all designed to chart a new mission and role and to set new priorities.
Uzal Martz, NAA secretary and publisher of the Pottsville (Pa.) Republican, who led the visioning committee, said the process was based on openness, inclusion and participation.
The process, which started in September, "confirmed that there is a broad consensus on the need for NAA and on the challenges facing the association and pointed out a number of inescapable road signs," Martz, incoming NAA vice chairman, told members at the group's convention in San Francisco this week.
Among them were the accelerating pace of change, the need to unify to protect common interests, an "unwieldy" governance structure and the need to communicate better with members.
The process also produced five priorities for the NAA:
? Help build advertising and improve newspaper sales and marketing.
? Lobby government to protect business and free speech rights.
? Aid diversity in newspaper staffing and content.
? Provide research and develop new products to aid competitiveness.
? Provide technological guidance.
The board decided that the NAA no longer could help build circulation and readership nor could it support employee relations and cost-cutting because those functions require action by individual papers.
The new dues schedule takes effect June 1, when the group's next fiscal year begins. Dues for papers with less than 10,000 circulation drop to a flat rate of $350 a year. Previously, dues ranged from $500 to $2,000, depending on circulation.
A new requirement forces newspaper groups to pay dues for all of their daily and weekly papers. Rates are based on circulation. If at least half of the papers in a group have less than 30,000 circulation, each is billed individually.
NAA officers said reduced revenues as a result of the dues cut could mean cuts in some underutilized services, such as printing press training. But they said it was impossible to anticipate the effects and they hoped that the reduction could spur more newspapers ? former members and new ones ? to join, raising dues revenues.
They said Thomson and Donrey newspapers have indicated that they will join.
Martz said members were in "total unanimity" about the need to cut the size of the board of governors from more than 60 people.
Beginning in September, in place of the board of governors and executive board will be a board of directors of 25 to 35 CEOs, publishers and other executives, chosen to represent size, ownership, geography, ethnicity and gender.
The powerful executive committee will expand to nine members, from seven, and will include the five elected NAA officers, chairmen of marketing and public policy committees and two at-large members.
Three task forces have been assigned to recommend how to improve councils, committees and participation; how to allocate spending according to priorities; and whether to form a 60-member advisory group to represent members.