NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING EXECS NEED LONG-TERM VIEW

By: Joe Nicholson That Was the Message At INMA Meeting


San Francisco -- During plagues, some lose faith in God. And
during ad slumps, some newspaper executives lose faith in the
importance of investing in and marketing their products.

That was a widespread view among the 275 delegates gathered here
for the World Congress of Newspaper Marketing, which was
sponsored by the International Newspaper Marketing Association
(INMA).

Earl J. Wilkinson, executive director of the Dallas-based INMA,
expressed concern about newspaper over-reaction to the ad slump:
"A year ago we couldn't see the ceiling; now we can't feel the
floor."

Overseas delegates, a slight majority and mostly from Europe and
Latin America, expressed some of the most pointed concern.

INMA President Frits Lahnstein, an executive with the Dutch
newspaper publishing company Wegener N.V., said American
newspapers may be focused on short-term planning "because
managers in America often do their job for one, two, or three
years and then they are gone." By contrast, he said European
newspaper executives make decisions for the long-term.

Eivind Thomsen, senior vice president of Schibsted, an Oslo,
Norway-based firm that controls large newspapers in Norway,
Sweden, and Estonia, warned about a "focus on margins, margins,
margins.

"The sole reason for being [is] having a relationship with
readers," he said. "If that relationship breaks, newspapers have
nothing to deliver to the advertisers ... You are losing audience
at a time when media usage is changing."



Joe Nicholson (jnicholson@editorandpublisher.com) is an associate editor covering marketing and advertising for E&P.



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