Top Newspaper Sites for March

In the interest of promoting those newspaper Web sites that are effectively driving traffic to their site, I wanted to share a piece from Editor & Publisher that Steve passed along to me. Nielsen Online gathers data to rank the top 30 newspaper Web sites month. According to E&P's account, The Dallas Morning News and The Wall Street Journal have each greatly increased unique online readership as have The Plain Dealer and Village Voice Media. The complete list can be viewed here, and additional Nielsen Online data can be found at this page.

Industry Movement

Here are some changes to the classified advertising industry that you may find of interest to your networking circle.

Charlotte Aaron is the vice president of classified advertising at the San Antonio Express-News. She had been the newspaper’s classified director.

Jessica Alderman has been promoted to the position of advertising director at The Neshoba Democrat in Philadelphia, Miss. She succeeds Annette Watkins.

Kelly Casalino, who had been director of interactive media at the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill., has been named assistant vice president at the newspaper.

Jamie Flaws is the vice president of classified advertising at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. Flaws had previously been executive director of classified advertising at the newspaper.

Valerie Vaz is the classified advertising director at the Fresno (Calif.) Bee. She succeeds Della Hemphill.

Lu Wagner is the classified advertising director at Gold Country Media in Auburn, Calif., which is comprised of 11 community newspapers in California. She succeeds Steve Jameson.

Dennis Warren, former advertising manager at the Enid (Okla.) News & Eagle, is publisher at the Claremore (Okla.) Daily Progress.

New classified sections in Bloomington, Yuma

The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind., and the Yuma (Ariz.) Sun have changed their structure, giving classified advertising its own section.

The Herald-Times' classified advertising section will offer color on each of its pages. The Yuma Sun's classified advertising section was created by moving sports to the second section of the paper; it had previously shared the third section with classifieds. The Yuma changes are for Monday-Saturday editions.

Patrick MacDonald reports on CEO panel at NEXPO 2008

Vendors at NEXPO 2008 had a chance to hear from four CEOs early Sunday morning April 10. Dennis Nierman, CEO of Alpha Technologies and a veteran vendor, moderated the panel.

Dean Singleton, CEO of Media News, was the first to respond to the question: "When newspapers are trying so hard to lower costs as ad revenues continue to decline, why would they not send more people out to NEXPO to find the new solutions that vendors have to automate production and prepress workflow?”

"You may see fewer people here at NEXPO this year," Singleton said, “but you can be sure you will be talking to the decision makers."

Gary Pruitt, CEO of McClatchy, urged vendors to keep in mind that newspapers have weathered recessions and ad declines many times over the years.

Still, the majority of the vendor population that I spoke to sees owners moving far too quickly in cutting costs that may hurt in the long run, and not moving quickly enough to the Web and all the opportunity it has to offer in gathering and processing content.

~ Patrick

Local Search To Grow In 2008

During his presentation at the INMA Internet Advertising Summit in London in early 2008, Mats Lindh of Derdubor in Norway cited two sources about online advertising in 2008.

The first, from Borrell Associates, said there will be a 48% increase in local online ad spending in the United States in 2008, and local search advertising will more than double.

The second source is a press release from The Kelsey Group, whose analyst team concluded there will be a big increase in local search as well as more search done through specialized devices during the year.

With local search surging in 2008, newspapers must take advantage by building their Web sites' search product. They need to make an imprint and prove themselves to be the source for community search information fast before they're the third or fourth source of choice.

More about Lindh's INMA presentation about Derdubor.no can be read in the upcoming issue of Inside Online.

Who is your focus?

The question often crosses my mind: Who are the people newspapers must ultimately please? Are they the advertisers? Are they the readers?

During my brief tenure at MacDonald, we have had only a few advertisers for whom we were accountable. Brainworks has advertised with us each month since I began in September 2004. Others have appeared only briefly, until we recently added Bluefin, Ranger Data and Print-It-All.com to our roster of advertisers.

My point of view about the ultimate focus of a publication, therefore, centers on the reader. What do they want to know? What are they looking for? How can we at MacDonald best help them? Admittedly, we are a business-to-business publication, so our focus will always remain on the readers. And, again, admittedly I work in editorial I do not sell the ads that you see in our publications, so my focus isn't advertiser-related.

When you create your classified product each day or week — and special sections, tabs or other publications or Web site pages — who do you create it for? Who is the section ultimately for? If they are for the readers, what decisions do you make that prove it? If they are for advertisers, what do you do to make the publications better for them?

Industry Movement

There have been more changes in the industry in terms of personnel and positions. Some of the latest changes include:

Tony Bernados being named director of sales and marketing at Morris Communications. He had previous been the classified multimedia director.

Jeanine Foulon is now The Chatham (Ontario, Canada) Daily News' advertising manager.

Karen Larson of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis has been named vice president of specialty publications and business development. She had previously served as the newspaper's vice president of classified advertising.

Congratulations to Tony, Jeanine and Karen! Keep an eye out for these and other personnel changes in the July 2008 issue of Inside Classified.

July 2008 Marketer Is Coming Soon

The upcoming issue of Real Estate Marketer is being sent to the printer this week, and there's a single subject: gaining market share. Be sure your real estate advertising executives and clients take a good, long look at the advice suggested in the main article.

As always, Real Estate Marketer includes sample headlines and benefit statements, and examples of artwork from MacDonald's Creative Library.

Automotive Career Month

April is the month in which all of the publications I edit come together. Yes, it's Automotive Career Month once again. Thanks to new online recruitment databases at Automotive News and the NADA Web sites, automotive careers can now lean on more established niche Web sites. Automotive News has been promoting their new career site heavily through an e-mail campaign while the NADA has been promoting its site on its front page in conjunction with Automotive Career Month. What is your market doing to promote awareness of careers in the automotive industry? Even without industrial production in a market, how can newspapers capitalize on automotive career month for the benefit of automotive and recruitment advertising bottom lines? Send your solutions to MacDonald once they've run by either mailing tearsheets to 302 Ferry Street, Lafayette, IN 47901, or e-mailing them to andrew@gomacdonald.com. The best solutions will be featured in an upcoming issue!

When events like these come up, how do your departments work together? Some newspapers have automotive representatives handle both dealer advertising and dealer recruitment while others have recruitment representatives tag along with automotive representatives to make the additional sale. How does your newspaper handle this? What has been most effective in your market when soliciting automotive recruitment advertising?