Newspapers Trade Tales of Success p.

By: Debra Gersh

THE PRICE OF admission was an idea, and those from newspapers with circulations under 75,000 came with plenty.
Those who attended an early session titled "Big Ideas for Small Newspapers" at the annual Newspaper Association of America conference shared with their colleagues strategies that had generated revenue or cut costs at their papers.
Co-moderator J. David Tipton, marketing director for Nixon Newspapers in Peru, Ind., started the meeting by advising his colleagues to "throw out the book" and warning that "the newspaper industry is its own worst enemy in many cases."
For example, many newspapers are targeting yellow pages advertising dollars, Tipton noted. Those dollars can be turned around and sold in newspaper-produced and -distributed local business directories.
The company's Peru Daily Tribune, he said, publishes such a guide four times a year and generates $14,000 worth of revenue every three months.
Advertisers can buy from one to four insertions, with discounts for frequency. They may change their ads during the year.
Reid MacCluggage, president and publisher of The Day of New London, Conn., and the session's other moderator, said his paper was able to realize $26,000 in savings the first year that a big ideas committee made up of staff members began implementing ideas for cutting costs.
Among the ideas were baling and selling excess newsprint, encouraging staffers to use phone directories rather than calling for assistance and incurring that charge, changing the company's long-distance carrier, recycling photocopy toner and cutting back from two Dumpsters to one.
For their ideas, employees were rewarded with merchandise from advertisers worth half the money that their ideas saved.
Other ideas included preparing news sheets for local television and radio stations so that these news operations would give a newspaper credit when they lifted headlines; producing local chamber of commerce directories; offering carrier scholarships that increase with seniority to help stem youth carrier turnover; and producing a senior citizens' service guide in conjunction with county agencies.
Nearly 40 ideas from a variety of newspapers are featured in a booklet from NAA called Big Ideas for Small Newspapers.