Martz Says NAA Goals Achieved p.11

By: JOHN CONSOLI OUTGOING NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION of America chairman Uzal Martz told publishers this week that over the past year, the organization has met the three goals he set out to accomplish, adding the membership is "now experiencing the full potential of the merger of NAA, the Newspaper Advertising Bureau and the various marketing organizations."
Among the goals achieved, Martz said, were "to take the visioning process that formed NAA to the next level, to tighten our ties to other industry organizations so we can work better together on common problems and to expand our international outreach to face challenges that are increasingly global."
Putting NAA's recent past into a time line, Martz said, "1993 was a year of getting organized, 1994 was a year of setting our directions and creating the organization to get us where we wanted to go, and 1995 was when we started to see the payoff."
The visioning process, Martz said, "has done more than give us focus and direction. I see a senior staff that has become a truly cross-functional team, which has sliced away nonessential activities and pared down overhead."
Martz cited as one example the decision to sell the Newspaper Center in Reston, Va., and move into leased space.
Martz said membership is up to pre-merger highs and the transition to a new president and CEO when John Sturm succeeded Cathleen Black was made "without missing a beat."
Martz praised the Newspaper National Network, successor to the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, which over the past two years has brought in almost $40 million in new national advertising business to newspapers. He said, by the end of this year, there's every indication that this figure will grow to a total of $60 million.
"This $40 million," he said, "comes from precisely the kinds of national advertisers that had for so long been ignoring newspapers because our fragmented structure made us simply not worth the trouble."
Martz said the seven newspaper federations now have a total membership of "over 4,000, double our goal for all of fiscal 1996."
"I believe NAA's most critical, most far-reaching achievement is its veritable toolbox overflowing with all the tools needed to help you cope with the rapid pace of change affecting everything we do in our business," Martz told publishers. "With NAA at the point, we're meeting change head-on with new ways to package and deliver advertising, with new media, with a strong presence in Washington, with new production technologies, and with better products for our customers."
?("I believe NAA's most critical, most far-reaching achievement is its veritable toolbox overflowing with all the tools needed to help you cope with the rapid pace of change affecting everything we do in our business," ) [Caption]
?(-Uzal Martz, ourgoing chairman, Newspaper Association of America) [Photo & Caption]