Last year was not an easy one for US newspapers. A lacklustre job market made for empty recruitment pages. Cutbacks in department store advertising hurt retail category revenues. And troubles in the tourism industry translated into thin travel sections. But there was a bright spot. National advertisers, from entertainment groups to carmakers, showed an increasing willingness to launch their products, promote their brands and supplement other media campaigns in newspapers.
Student government representatives are debating whether the Gannett Newspaper Readership Program is a threat to the student paper, the Iowa Daily State. Gannett is asking student government to approve distribution of four newspapers on campus—the Gannett-owned Des Moines Register and USA Today as well as the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. Funding would come from a student fee of about $5 per semester. Mark Witherspoon, the student paper's adviser, tells Daily reporter Luke Jennett that Gannett aims to increase circulation so it can boost advertising rates. "Gannett is asking students to pay $270,000 to hurt campus life—to injure themselves," Witherspoon says.
Three more of the nation's publicly traded newspaper companies on Thursday reported higher advertising revenues in the fourth quarter, although a long hoped-for, all-out newspaper recovery hasn't materialized yet. Print advertising revenues at The Washington Post rose 3 percent to $572.2 million in 2003 compared to the year before, and increased 4 percent to $155.9 million in the fourth quarter compared to a year ago. General and preprint advertising revenues rose in the fourth quarter and full year and offset declines in classified and retail. And although classified revenue was down at The Post, help-wanted revenues actually rose $800,000 or 6 percent in the fourth quarter, even though volume was flat. It was the first rise in revenues in employment classifieds since 2000.
Andrew Scutro wanted to see how well American troops communicated with Iraqis when he went to the suffering Middle East nation but confronted some communication barriers of his own. He would have loved to accompany an Iraqi handyman to his neighborhood but was warned that being seen with an American could endanger the man. Freelance writer Whitney Joiner interviews Scutro about the weeks he spent embedded with a civil affairs unit.
Daily papers have treated alternative newsweeklies with contempt, but it seems "that even that small share of local advertising revenue that is often a weekly paper's sole means of support is now coveted by the big boys," writes News Editor James Shannon in a MetroBEAT cover story. In February, Gannett's Greenville News will launch a youth-oriented weekly, The Link, to compete with the Greenville, S.C., alternative paper. Alt-weekly publishers in other cities tell Shannon how they dealt with the Gannett challenge. Boise Weekly Editor-in-Chief Bingo Barnes says he "spent the first month driving around and moving our racks and newsstands back into prime locations."
CityBeat Editor/Co-Publisher John Fox got a lot of advice, both solicited and unsolicited, after reporter Leslie Blade was subpoenaed to testify before the council's Law and Public Safety Committee. It's only the second time in 10 years the council has issued a subpoena to anyone. Blade caught the council's attention with her Dec. 10 cover story on cops who double-billed the city and housing authority. In an editorial this week, Fox says Blade should be proud to discuss the expose with the council, but she won't be sharing names of sources or information not included in her story.
