By Deb Shaw

Learn about the many applications this fast growing social network tool has in local media

Am I the only person who doesn’t tweet?

Perhaps it’s my hesitancy to take on yet another social networking tool that’s heightened my awareness factor but it seems like everywhere I turn the talk is all about Twitter. Turn on the local news and the talking head is telling me I can follow the latest and greatest on Twitter. Whoopi and Barbara were arguing over who had the larger number of followers and Elizabeth chastised Ms. Walters for not tweeting enough. Time magazine lobbed an in depth cover story into the mix, seemingly just to further fuel my insecurity over this latest social networking player.

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Individual Giving Campaign Kicks Off and Pledges Are Urged

Click here to learn more about the Foundation’s Giving Campaign

With the theme of “The Cause Is Personal...For All Of Us” the SNA Foundation (a 501(c)(3) charitable trust affiliated with SNA), has officially kicked off its’ individual giving campaign. All donations are tax deductible and the goal is to raise $250,000 over the balance of the calendar year. Every penny raised will be used to further the Foundation’s mission of helping suburban and community publishers make the digital transition successfully. “We want to provide much needed research and information to community publishers to help them develop successful business models on the digital side so that our industry can continue to inform and engage the local citizenry,” said SNA President Nancy Lane.

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By Deb Shaw

Ann Hoffman: “It would surprise me if there are many folks in our business who are still resisting using the web for breaking stories.”

“It would surprise me if there are many folks in our business who are still resisting using the web for breaking stories,” says Publisher Ann Hoffman who runs The Daily Advance in Elizabeth City, NC, as well as several non-daily newspapers in the region. Yet, at a recent SNA Foundation-sponsored webinar (Topic: Small Staff Can Make A Big Web Presence), one participant challenged the notion of putting news on the web first, arguing that doing so would be a threat to their single copy and subscription sales. No doubt, he is not alone in his concern.

Is there an approach that can combine these two perspectives for the benefit of both mediums? You bet there is but hold on a minute... the approach can come with a price. Daily Kingston (NY) Publisher Ira Fusfeld points out that posting an exclusive story for the web gives your competitors a heads up, enabling them to match it on line and in print. “That creates a tug of war here between the old thinking and the new. On the one hand, we want our exclusive in print. On the other hand, we want to be first with the story on the web,” comments Fusfeld.

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Nearly 300 Web sites have already signed up; all community newspaper Web sites are invited to participate and benefit from volume pricing.

News Release

Livonia, Mich. and Traverse City, Mich., June 11, 2009: Community newspaper Web sites will now have the opportunity to run manufacturers’ coupons online via a new partnership between LocalPoint Media (LPM) and Valassis, one of the nation’s leading media and marketing services companies. Manufacturer coupons will be available to consumers through Valassis’ redplum.com Web site.

Under the terms of the program, newspaper Web sites will create a locally branded coupon section of their site to house the grocery coupons. They will also be able to sell local coupons and banner ads around the highly desirable grocery coupons. The program provides a revenue share based on a “pay per print” model. LPM has negotiated a volume-based revenue share that will provide newspaper Web sites with better terms than they could negotiate on their own.

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By Deb Shaw

Mark Poss, CEO of Red Wing Publishing, shared insights about their web ad sales blitzes at the 2009 SNA Spring Publishers' Conference held in Tampa.

We’ve all heard about the less is more concept. Perhaps you should consider following the lead of the folks at Red Wing Publishing in Minnesota and apply the principle to your website advertising. They did, and the results are impressive. So far, over 3 sales blitzes in the last 11 months, more than $225,000 in online ad commitments have been inked.

‘Nascarnage’ is how Red Wing CEO Mark Poss describes the old look of advertising on their sites. With a bunch of logos down the side, the original web advertising model was jumbled, off-putting and looked like a Nascar racecar cramming in sponsor logos. “It’s easy to spot newspapers which adhere to this dated model,” says Mike Blinder of The Blinder Group. “You can simply go to their Web site and look for a litany of small, boxed ads appearing one on top of the other, all the way down the side of the Web page.”

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By Deb Shaw

Click to view live NewsView maps.

Like fancy silverware and crystal on a dining table, the NewsView feature on Metroland Media Group Durham division’s websites adds pleasure to the experience of the sites but it doesn’t stand alone as the only reason to visit. As with any compelling local media site, content is king but a quick look at the feature will give you reason to understand why judges in the just announced SNA Community Website Contest selected the team of Ian Caldwell and Bryan Stokes as Innovators of The Year. They are the brains behind the geo-coding based feature of their local sites that, at least in part, has helped boost traffic and unique visitors since its’ debut last year.

The NewsView maps pinpoint local stories on their websites and are aimed at making the local coverage in the seven communities that they serve even more hyper-local. This unique online experience launched at the end of August ’08 as part of the ‘new’ newsdurhamregion.com and in September, their first full month with the new site, they had page views that totaled 396,197 and total monthly unique visitors of 72,640. That compares to 442,685 page views in April 2009 and total monthly unique visitors of 97,204. Although no one can say exactly what impact the geo-coding by itself has had, the trend indicates that the online experience they’re offering is definitely attracting more views and visitors.

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