Six changes that will give newspapers and magazines a solid future

E&P Shoptalk

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I have been blessed or cursed by what my wife, Magdalena, calls my over-analyzing everything. I became a publisher of SOMOS, a bilingual monthly magazine, in 1978, and in 1982, I was honored to serve as the founding president of the National Association of Hispanic Publications.

My company has also conducted over 600 readership studies for Latino newspapers and magazines. Over my 46 years in publishing, I've seen enormous changes and evolutions — many good and some bad. But I'm constantly analyzing the numbers and the trends to see the best future.

For instance, in 1997, when we added health to the topics we surveyed readers about, I had five publishers say, “My readers are not interested in health coverage.” At the time, only 15 Latino publications had any consistent health coverage. Today, health is the largest ad category in Latino newspapers and magazines.

Digital, of course, is a crucial focus of our long-term future. But with some immediate, relatively simple changes, I feel newspapers and magazines can also expect a solid future. I’ve been speaking within the Latino publishing industry about many of these issues for almost a decade, and now is the perfect time to take them to a higher level.

Here are six key changes I feel our industry must make now:

1) Newspapers must unite with all their natural allies.

Entities like the National Newspaper Association and Local Media Association already have loose ties with diverse organizations like the National Association of Hispanic Publications (with 750+ Latino member media outlets), the National Newspaper Publishers Association (with 200+ members), weeklies and other newspaper associations. However, these relationships need to be expanded to include magazines and our other natural allies like the American Library Association and the book publishing industry. We all serve readers. Let's unite so we can better serve readers across the USA.

2) Media research must include readers.

With the soon-to-be-completed National Latino Media Study, which surveyed 10,640 readers from Latino newspapers and magazines across the USA, we found that Latino Readers spend an amazing average of 28.3 hours a week reading. That reading was from both print and digital sources, but it is still reading. This research allowed those surveyed to share the time they spent watching traditional TV, streaming videos, on social media, listening to radio, listening to or watching podcasts and playing video games. The research found that Reader Latinos represent 34% of all Latino adults — or an estimated 15.4 million Latinos. We must demand that national media research not only measure viewing and listening times but also measure time spent reading.

3) Readers not circulation.

Many media planners and buyers at ad agencies today — especially younger ones — have no idea that circulation represents more than one person per copy. Every other media represents its audience in single users. Why doesn't print? Television represents viewers. Radio represents listeners. Digital — users. Let’s make the change to readers. The easier we make it for ad buyers, the more likely they will pay attention to us. If you don’t have a current readership study, you must have one done to know your readers per copy. This change should have been made two decades ago.

4) Learn from the creation of SAUs.

Forty years ago, daily newspapers in the U.S. offered advertisers over 600 different formats and column widths — and national advertising represented far less than 10% of newspaper revenues. Within a few years of creating the Standard Advertising Unit (SAU) over 1,000 dailies and many other publications adopted the standard. With that change, regional and national advertisers paid attention. Over the next two decades, SAUs helped funnel hundreds of millions of new dollars into print. After the downturn in 2006, newspapers have shrunk and gone to new sizes. We seem to have forgotten what was learned in the 1980s.

TV usually places 15-, 30- and 60-second ads — the same for radio — and most digital ads also come in a limited number of alternatives. The 21st-century answer to this for print is to come up with three to five standard ad sizes for use not only by newspapers but also magazines. Any group buy program includes 20+ ad creative formats. The easier we make it for ad buyers, the more likely they will pay attention to us.

5) Unite against scammers.

We all know of at least one newspaper or magazine that doesn’t merely exaggerate its audience numbers — instead presenting numbers magnitudes higher. This hurts all meaningful media outlets. Yet, if you complain to the advertisers that the scammers might take away from you with unrealistically low ad rates, the advertiser typically goes with an “I’m not advertising with either of you” approach. Organizations such as the NNPA, NAHP, etc., should ask offenders within their sectors to either document that they are producing what they are telling advertisers or that they will go onto an offenders list. Then, a national database could be developed, which could go a long way toward solving a problem that costs meaningful media millions.

6) Unite to be proactive, not reactive.

Too many in our industry have waited for others to make the changes. All those who see being in print in the future need to step forward and say, “What can we do to help?”

We need to make these changes now to regain some of the many regional and national advertisers who no longer consider print media alternatives. The answers have been right before us. We must unite and take action now.

Kirk Whisler is president of the Latino 247 Media Group. He can be reached at kirk@whisler.com.

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