Recap: College Newspaper Business and Web Conference at Yale

Albert Sun — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:43:16 +0000

The Yale Daily News hosted the “Conference for Newspaper Business at Yale” Friday and Saturday, gathering the student leaders of the business sides of a bunch of college newspapers. Representatives from Yale, Brown, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Tufts, Duke, Georgetown, Boston College gathered, including myself representing CoPress and Penn.

Over the two days, we heard from speakers working in the media and marketing industries. But the most valuable part of the conference was the roundtable discussions and workshops discussing the common problems and solutions that college newspapers face. Far too little communication happens between different college newspapers, and that means that the practices and strategies that work well at one place aren’t passed on to other papers.

That’s why conferences that bring together people from different publications are so valuable, and that’s part of what CoPress is trying to do by connecting people from different schools to share their questions and solutions.

As it turns out, we all face a lot of similar problems.

Ideas and topics discussed at Yale

Chief among the topics of discussion was how to make more money and how to make more money online. In the sessions I went to we explored alternative sources of revenue, ways of improving local advertising and website projects.

Among the alternative sources of revenue, many schools explored raising funds from alumni donations and selling subscriptions to parents and alumni of students. This allows many of them to maintain an endowment which can provide steady funding even when the advertising market suffers. Several were exploring a store selling branded merchandise and prints of photos and the paper. Another popular feature is graduation announcements, where parents can buy something similar to a yearbook announcement in the final issue of the paper.

But of course, advertising is still the core source of funding for any newspaper. Roger Lee, a co-founder of PaperG, gave a presentation on how to engage local advertisers. One of the key points of his presentation was to bundle print and online ads together. Since print ads still command higher rates, this prevents online advertising from cannibalizing print revenue.

Online, papers are looking to expand in several ways. Many want to move beyond news and multimedia to providing more types of information to students. Among those ideas include:

Creating guides to local restaurants and businesses
Listings of campus events
Professor ratings
Selling prints and licenses of photos (with this though, it’s careful to avoid running afoul of NCAA rules for photos.)

What other ideas do you have to make your student publication more profitable and more successful? Or what do you want to know about how other student papers operate? Let us know in the comments!

Thoughts after Revenue Two Point Zero: You Need a Revenue Office, Not an Ad Department

Greg Linch — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:35:56 +0000

The background

College news organizations need to move beyond advertising. Now.

Hold that thought.

Some background: The topic of generating revenue to sustain news organizations has begun to consume my thoughts about journalism. There are a number of reasons why, but this mostly came after a little meetup last Saturday in DC called RevenueTwoPointZero (Rev2oh on Twitter).

This isn’t the first time our humble CoPress crew is talking about the business side of journalism. Namely, check out Joey Baker‘s post from December, “But we make all our money from newsprint!”.

But why? Aren’t we just about technology and college news sites?

No. That’s a main theme, but we would be remiss if we left revenue off the table. It’s hard to run a news site without money, unless you’re an exception.

Actually, one of our three main goals directly relates to making money: We want student news organizations to generate more online revenue by having full control over their sites.

Getting back to my opening thought…

The reality

College news sites have mostly been playing catchup to the pros. OK. “College students still read campus newspapers,” according to a 2008 Alloy Marketing study. No real harm done by being late to the video game, for example.

Student media are also looking to the Web as a way to generate revenue, mostly through different forms of advertising. This could mean banner ads, contextual ads, floating ads, video pre-roll (cringe), pop-ups (double cringe) or something else. Nothing innovative, from what I’ve seen. Nothing that’s resulting in a possible paradigm shift, such as the buzz from Russ Stanton’s LA Times onlne revenue revelation.

“But we’re getting along OK online, right?” you might ask. Probably. But the point is that we cannot wait until we need solutions to devise and implement them. Unlike some metro papers, college publications can’t afford to lose a million a week (scroll down halfway).

We need to be proactive. We need to be at least two steps ahead.

The proposal

And those first two steps are really not hard. It’s could be as easy as changing the mindset of the business office and bringing in new people. OK, the first one can be really hard.

In the context of college media, where print revenue appears to be holding up better than the big metro papers (with exceptions: “College papers cut staffs, Friday editions due to lagging ad sales”), there’s still plenty of room to grow online advertising. With this in mind, “an estimated 1-2 percent of total revenue for many college media outlets — if that,” says CICM’s Bryan Murley.

Beyond that, there’s an immense opportunity for generating revenue in other ways, which is the second step. That could be anything from offering consulting on how clients can more effectively reach the 18-24 demographic to selling baked goods in the student union.

So who’s responsible? Everyone on your staff, from editorial to business. That doesn’t mean news reporters will be selling ads, just that everyone should be part of the solution. Contributions could be as simple as brainstorming or as hands-on as consulting in ways that don’t conflict with one’s news role.

“But I’m not a business major!” Rev2oh comprised only non-business people. Participants had a variety of backgrounds, but it was primarily a design-oriented group. At least one person asked why there weren’t any business/advertising people. Alan Jacobson, who organized the event with SND president Matt Mansfield, basically said: They’ve had their chance, they haven’t done enough or haven’t been successful and now it’s up to us.

That doesn’t mean you should “go it alone,” but you don’t need that crowd to get stuff done. In many cases, I’m sure they would provide excellent insights.

Just like we need to take lessons from outside of news in order to improve news, we need to take lessons from outside the normal news organization business office to keep the money flowing.

The idea

We need revenue, not just advertising.

I like many of the ideas Steve Outing has discussed (check out his business model-related posts). Instead of rehashing them here, I’ll just say that all of the following thoughts developed after listening to him on the Journalism Now podcasts and after hearing a number of similar ideas from the small business group at Rev2oh, namely Scripps Interactive’s Jay Small.

Your college news organization’s newly renamed “Revenue Office” no longer focuses solely on advertising, nor does it serve a single customer — your news organization. It should offer specialized services for off-campus clients.
This could include everything from helping them establish a Web site and online brand to helping them promote their product or service on campus.
Regarding setting up a site, there is certainly demand. I couldn’t find reliable statistics, but it’s safe to say that many small businesses in college towns could benefit by having (A) a Web site, (B) a freshly redesigned site, (C) a more interactive site, (D) presence on appropriate social media and (E) better presence on social media, for example.
Another idea would be to have the revenue office offer research and data that would help the client, from student surveys to conducting focus groups. Basically, as Outing and Small separately referenced, this staff would be like an advertising/marketing department for the client.
An important note: they would NOT be public relations.

There are so many possibilities, but we don’t need to reinvent the wheel as a starting point. Yes, we need to look for new models and think outside the box, but we can start by adapting existing models in different fields.

I’m going to be speaking with The Miami Hurricane‘s business manager about these and other ideas soon. The adviser for the yearbook asked me to meet with those leaders to discuss ideas. I implore you to do the same, even if it’s just to get the conversation started.

Final thoughts:

Open your mind.
Listen to any and all ideas.
Don’t be afraid to fail.
Read Alan Jacobson’s initial posts on Rev2oh. Contact him. Find others like him. Their out-of-the-box thinking will open your mind. I certainly didn’t agree with Alan on every subject, but within half a day I saw the business side of news — and the possibilities — in a whole new light. He and Matt didn’t simply put us in a different pair of shoes. We were in a whole different outfit.
Live long and prosper.

UPDATE: Check this out, Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet.

Link-tastic

Here are some links to help provide more context and background on Rev2oh:

The results on Rev2oh site:

More details about the results on SND Update:

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