Miriam Camp- Magazine Readership

By: Miriam Camp
Editor: Becky Atkinson
Sept. 30, 2009
Magazine Readership

Magazines use online and social networks to stay up with fast moving trends in today’s culture.

Judy Johnson, a managing editor for Southern Distinction, said, “We’re jumping on the band wagon with Twitter, facebook, and blogs. We don’t want to fall behind”

Johnson said on Sept. 24, 2009, that they were currently working on making sure they were set up with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

The Athens Blur Magazine’s executive editor, Alec Wooden, said that new media has helped his physical publication, even though it is free. He thinks that online and social networks help the smaller magazines.

“Big ones do it so they don’t fall behind,” said Wooden.

Maintaining readership has been good for Blur. “We’re in a fortunate situation because we print a low number,” said Wooden. They do not have millions of subscribers, but they are able to get rid of their copies, because they are free.

Blur produces 4,000 copies every six weeks, a total of eight issues per year. They do not have a fixed cost; therefore, it is not a struggle to distribute their magazine.

Online presence helps Blur, because it keeps them in the audience’s mind when they are between publications.

Johnson admits that Southern Distinction’s biggest demographic is the Athens community, but they are developing a following. They have subscribers in 27 states across the country.

Southern Distinction is mostly sold by subscription, Johnson said. Copies of the magazine are also found in places such as: Publix, Barnes and Noble, stores in Atlanta, and hotels in Athens, Ga.

A bookseller at Barnes and Noble from Athens, Ga., Elise Stangle, who deals mostly with magazines said it is hard to say which type of magazine is the most popular.

Magazines are generally placed on the shelves of Barnes and Noble by corporate decisions, but Stangle can make requests based on customer suggestions.

At a bookstore the cover of a magazine is significant. Costumers will pick up a magazine and flip through it if the cover is striking.

Along those lines, Wooden said Blur’s process is simple. “Has to be something that appeals to people and looks good, Wooden said. “We try to make each issue look a little better and read better than the last.”

Blur uses a blogazine and receives about 4,000 views to their online publications. The largest viewing was around 10,000.

Wooden said they “constantly use all the social networks.” Promotion for their physical publication is found online.

Blur’s Twitter account is mainly used to direct people to their blog. They daily receive around 400 hits a day to the blog. Facebook friends for the magazine’s account have now reached 1,470.

Wooden spoke highly of new technology, calling it hugely beneficial to the industry. “People fear that people will go online only, but if anything it makes people crave the physical issue,” he said.

A year ago social networks were not prevalent in the industry; now they are, “necessary for survival,” Johnson said.
Mary Catherine Kinney, 21, from Albany, Ga., checks her Twitter account from her Blackberry phone.

For some, community newspapers are best bets

By Jennifer Johnson
Editor: Patrick Adams



Marisa Waldrop doesn’t watch CNN, listen to NPR or point her browser to any Web site to get her daily news.

Like many Americans, Waldrop is sticking close to home when it comes to choosing her newspaper.

“It’s what comes to my door,” said Waldrop, a Gainesville State pre-nursing major. “I like it because anything national that affects me is covered on a local-level."

Readers are investing their time in community newspapers because they provide information that they are unlikely to get anywhere else. Instead of filling their pages with information already available on the Internet, community newspapers are specializing their coverage, focusing on important events in their town or county.

"We’re what we call ‘hyper-local,’ so we don't cover anything outside the county line," said Walter Geiger, owner and publisher of the Herald-Gazette in Barnesville, Ga.

With a circulation of 5,000, the weekly has served as Barnesville's hometown newspaper since 1869. The Herald-Gazette posts two-paragraph teasers of every major story on their website, but restricts access to full-length articles and images to newspaper subscribers. It’s this business strategy that Geiger credits with his newspaper’s continued success.

“Large daily newspapers are getting their ass kicked because they’re giving away their content,” said Geiger.

His friend and former colleague John Greenman agrees — to an extent.

"I think that Walter Geiger's observation is influenced by timing," said Greenman, a former publisher of the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Ga., and current journalism professor at Grady College at UGA. "A lot of the smaller newspapers began their Web sites later than the larger ones and learned from their perceived mistakes."

Since Jan. 13, when the Herald-Gazette's Web site became blog-oriented with comment fields, they’ve had 1.9 million page views.

"It has become more than a newspaper," said Geiger. "It's become a forum for grateful parents to thank ER staffs for taking care of their kid's broken leg or citizens to complain about potholes on their street."

Journalists are now finding more work at community newspapers than they are in the city, said Georgia Perimeter College journalism professor Col. (Ret.) Robert G. Knowles.

“Used to be large newspapers were a mecca for journalists escaping small-town newspapers,” said Knowles. “Now, because the big guys are failing so quickly, they’re running back to the one-stoplight towns to report on the Methodist Church’s bake sales.”

Even advertisers are recognizing the value in smaller newspaper markets. According to a survey by the Inland Press Association, advertising revenue in daily newspapers with a circulation of less than 15,000 rose by an average of 2.5 percent in 2008, while ad revenue dropped 25 percent at dailies with greater circulations.

"It’s a timing issue more than anything," said Greenman. “It will happen, but newspapers in smaller markets just haven’t yet been hit by the same kind of forces that the larger markets have been hit by.”

These forces include the consolidation of traditionally large advertisers like department stores and the rise in popularity of online sites for real estate, automobiles and jobs.

"If I’m an employer, I'm not going to advertise my job in Cumming, Ga. with [online sites] Monster or Career Builder when I'm really looking for a local person," said Greenman. “I’m going to go to my local newspaper.”

Citizens in smaller newspaper markets continue to place their trust in their hometown newspapers.

"I’ve always felt like they have my interests at heart," said Mary Quinn of Winterville, Ga., who reads the Athens Banner-Herald every day. "I don't feel that way when I pick up newspapers like the AJC [Atlanta Journal Constitution] or the Wall Street Journal."

As a kid growing up in Savannah, Geiger had an Atlanta Journal Constitution paper route and had read it all his life. Now that the newspaper has ceased home deliveries to his community, he’s stopped reading.

“They used to say that the AJC covered the Dixie like the dew,” said Geiger. “Now it’s like the ‘don’t.’”

[Patrick Adams Final Draft] Falling Print Readership In Relationship to Advertiser Dollars

By Patrick Adams
Editor: Jennifer Johnson

Ivy King, a senior social work major, rarely reads newspapers anymore. She picks up a few headlines from her Blackberry phone, but does not generally rely on print.

“I just don’t want to buy them except for the Sunday paper for coupons,” King said.

She belongs to a current trend of citizens becoming further alienated from news print media. Newspapers are failing to bring in new readers, like King, and losing advertiser dollars at the same time.

More Americans are losing interest in quality journalism, according to Conrad Fink, director of the Cox Institute of Newspaper Management Studies, and current journalism professor at the University of Georgia.

“I believe that Americans have disengaged from serious consideration of the compellingly important political, social and economic issues of the day,” said Fink.

Consumers are increasingly going online to find their news instead of buying the print version. The digital shift is a problem for newspapers primarily due to a lack of interest from advertisers.

Newspapers typically draw 75-80 percent of their revenue from advertising rather than sales and subscriptions, said Fink. Advertisers depend on newspapers largely because of their ability to penetrate households fitting into specific demographic categories. Advertisers want to reach people that might buy their products.

Newspapers traditionally attracted great business from advertisers, but news print has been losing that ability recently.

“Advertising is moving away from newspapers – that’s for sure,” said Dr. Dean Krugman, advertising professor at the University of Georgia.

Readers who are switching to online publications are now spending very little time viewing news before they move on to other Web sites.

“New York Times users are coming on for about 28-30 minutes monthly, meaning just seconds daily,” said Fink. “Users at other newspapers are coming on for much less time.”

Readers traditionally spent 28 minutes daily reading the print product, but this is a decreasing trend, according to Fink.

Citizens who now prefer to go online for their news complain the major reason for not reading the newspaper is that there simply isn’t enough time in the day.

Citizens are receiving less value from reading newspapers thoroughly than doing other things with their free time. Dr. Fink believes that news print management is somewhat at fault.

“By cutting costs, we [newspapers] were losing journalistic value,” said Fink.

The newspaper industry spent too much effort cutting costs in order to adapt to an ailing economy that they began neglecting valuable journalism, according to Fink. If newspapers fail to provide quality reporting, advertisers are not going to reach the right audiences and will give their business to newsprint’s competitors.

“The [Athens] Banner-Herald is still profitable as a newspaper, but they have lost paid advertising and paid circulation,” said Cecil Bentley, former executive editor of the Athens Banner-Herald, and current Director of Career Services and Corporate Relations at Grady College at the University of Georgia.

Paid advertising has been falling for years along with paid circulation, according to Bentley.

Bentley didn’t think there had been much variation in total market coverage during his three years at the Athens Banner-Herald, but much of the audience had shifted towards the digital publication. However, the advertising revenue gained from the Banner-Herald’s Web site did not adequately compensate for the advertising revenue lost on the print side of the spectrum, according to Bentley.

Much of the losses in advertising revenue could also be attributed to the poor state of the automobile, real estate and help-wanted sectors who are all big contributors to classified advertisement revenue, Bentley said.

The future of the newsprint industry will largely depend on its ability to reconcile print with online publication in an efficient manner to create greater household penetration. Greater household penetration will bring in more money from the advertising industry, according to Fink.

Younger readers wanted

Younger readers wanted
By PRISCILLA KATHE
Edited by BECKY ATKINSON

Newspapers are targeting a new audience, the younger generation.
“There is still a market for the newspaper, but there is a lot of opportunity to grow in other areas,” said Scot Morrissey publisher of the Athens Banner-Herald.

Morrissey said, in a phone interview, that he now has two types of audiences, and there is money to be made in both. The first audience is the younger generation who if they want news wants to be able to find their news on the computer or on their television. The other is the older generation who likes to get their news on their doorstep every morning.

“Newspapers need to get off their butt,” Morrissey said.

Morrissey believes newspapers must go where the audience is and make the changes that the audience wants.

For years other companies have been advertising and changing with their audience. The newspaper industry just took longer to realize they needed to make a transition.

When newspapers are not afraid to embrace change, they find an audience. When the Athens Banner-Herald started to embrace this, they found there was a huge audience. They now have around 6.3 million page views on their website.

Morrissey believes newspapers have to cater to the reader.

“If I don’t have a tool [to reach them], they don’t come across the bridge to me,” Morrissey said.
The Athens Banner-Herald now has added many additions to their paper along with internet updates and blog topics. They have added sections for entertainment in downtown Athens, Ga., a section for mothers, and others for women.

The Athens Banner Herald is doing a great job attracting more readers, but the younger college students might just be unreachable.

When asked what would make them read the newspaper more the answer was unanimous, it just is not interesting to them.

“If it was more applicable to college students,” Andrew Lacy, a 19-year-old marketing major said.

Kenya Henderson, an 18-year-old exercise and sports management major, said she would watch/read more if the “stuff was not negative.”

Morrissey also explained that the reason a lot of younger people do not read the paper is because they are not paying taxes and mortgages. When they start to have to pay for these things they will care about what is going on with their school district or the change in healthcare.

A college student’s life revolves around classes and grades. Newspapers cover city hall meeting and political affairs. It will just take age to make students interested in these things.
When the age of the students rose the answers changed.

“I get it [news] from my local paper and my world news online everyday,” said Allie Jackson, a 32-year-old magazine major.

Despite this lack of interest among younger students, the print audience has not lost ground, said Morrissey.