You would think that a surefire way to be depressed is to spend two days at a meeting of newspaper editors and newspaper circulation managers. I did. And I’m not. Maybe I should be, but that’s neither here nor there. Myself and about 50 other news and circulation types from Media General (which owns the Journal) spent two days at the Benton Conv. Center talking about circulation, mostly what’s called single-copy sales and mostly about Sunday single-copy sales. Single copy is all the papers sold through racks and at stores. In markets like WS, it’s a growing part of our total circulation.
And unlike subscriptions, it’s much more variable. It changes with the weather, with the time of the year, and—of course—with what stories we put on the front page. It’s also clear from some of the research, that different people are looking for different things in their Sunday paper. Some folks want coupons. Others want deep-think pieces. Others want a quick read of the news—and don’t give them any depressing stuff. The main issue, though, is time. Sunday is no longer a day of rest, reflection and reading.
One of the exercises we did was to compare the best-selling and worst-selling Sunday papers from each of the newspapers and try to look at what worked and what didn’t. The winning papers had a couple of things in common. First, they were well-designed, particulary in the top half. Two, the main stories were local. Three, they tended toward more serious news . Not necessarily mayhem, but more news than lifestyles. (Our best-selling Sunday single-copy paper was about the investigation into the shooting death of Sgt. Howard Plouff.) But if there was an easy solution, I didn’t see it.
What I’m interested from all of you is the following. If you’re an occasional buyer of the Journal, tell me about your decision-making process in choosing to buy the paper on a particular day.
I don’t know how many of you saw this story today, about the arrest of the publisher of a weekly newspaper in Alamance County. Tom Boney, the publisher, is eccentric, but he cares about public records and open meetings, and he fights the good fight. If you saw our story the other day about the Davie school board holding meetings in a member’s garage, you know why this is such an important issue.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
Please tell me you were distracted when you wrote “Myself and about 50 other news and circulation types from Media General (which owns the Journal) spent two days at the Benton Conv. Center talking about circulation, mostly what’s called single-copy sales and mostly about Sunday single-copy sales.”
Myself would be depressed, if I wrote such a setence. LOL
I mean sentence. LOL
Goodness, helen, this is the second time I’ve that happen. (This was the first: http://lifeinforsyth.blogspot.com/2006/08/question-of-burning-importance.html ) I guess your fingers are trying to remind you you too are human. :D
Ken, I am a subscriber, so I don’t know if that makes what I say irrelevent on this front, but I do tend to skim lifestyles stories (but I do at least skim them) but read, really read, more serious local stories. And I love local stories. National and international news I tend to get online, frankly. The Journal is my hometown paper, emphasis on hometown.
Daily I spend 20-30 minutes with the paper. Sundays about an hour. I would spend longer if you had the equivalent of the Washington Post magazine. I used to spend an additional half hour with that when I took the Post.
Although I’m a long time subscriber - 22yrs - I want to weigh in on your single sales - specifically the people that sell the individual copies. Driving to work each weekday morning I notice one gentleman selling papers. He is on Stratford Rd. southbound at the Silas Creek exit ramp. He’s standing on a little island, yet literally in the middle of very heavy traffic. He is disabled. I fear one day he will be struck by a vehicle. I have seen him fall walking to a driver to make a sale. I know this is a source of income for him but would there not be a safer place for him to sell?
Sunday editors should remember the importance of a good “news hole” for state, regional and local news stories along with the more important national and international news stories of the day.
Sunday newspapers are known for the variety of “special sections” which they regularly offer to their readers. Here in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, we have two Sunday newspapers to choose from--The (Raleigh) News & Observer and the Durham Herald-Sun. Each newspaper has an inviting array of special Sunday sections to attract regular subscribers and possible new customers.
But this former newspaper writer and copy editor has come to the view that the state, regional and local coverage of Raleigh’s News & Observer, always in good supply “during the week,” has fallen off so much in the Sunday editions of The N&O;that even if you read the Raleigh paper on weekdays, whether in addition to the Durham newspaper or not, you just about have to go get yourself a Durham Herald-Sun on Sunday “just to find out what’s going on” during the weekend (from the local and regional news standpoint).
So desk editors of major Sunday newspapers serving important regional urban centers, such as the Triad’s Winston-Salem Journal and Greensboro News & Record, would do well to remember that many readers want a good “news reporting” digest to go along with all those special feature sections which make the Sunday newspaper such a special part of the Nation’s journalism scene.
These are all good questions and comments. Thank you. And sorry for the delay in responding.
First, the hawkers. We have a crew of folks who sell papers at corners for us on the weekends. They’re independent contractors, in that they buy the papers from us, and then resell them. I agree that it sometimes seems like they are risking life and limb to sell a paper. But from my discussions with the circulation people, what’s come through time and again, is that they are a pretty dedicated crew. And I get the sense that many people use them, because they are cheerful, they make change, and they are a person, rather than a rack.
Now, about Sunday content. The goal of the Sunday paper is to offer more than in the daily paper. We do that in a couple of ways. Parade magazine, color comics, Sunday biz section, Arts section, etc. Like most aspects of the paper, none of these sections appeal to everyone. But the idea is to provide enough of them that people see value in reading the paper. We don’t ignore the local news aspect of the Sunday paper. We typically hold a few stories from the week. But there’s not a lot of hard news happening on Saturday, so sometimes it seems a little heavy on the festivals. I agree that we omit hard news at our own peril
Ken--
Many thanks for the response. Oh, I certainly meant to include local features with local news in comments about the content of Sunday newspapers. Good coverage of local festivals in the region is very important to your readers and especially to the cities, towns and communities whose civic-minded citizens put out a lot of effort into making a once-a-year festival event appealing and interesting to area residents.
Community festivals are a strong suit for North Carolina community living and coverage of these is a real plus for our newspapers. In earlier years, I enjoyed covering such Eastern North Carolina events as Benson’s Mule Days, Grifton’s Shad Festival, Ayden’s Collard Festival and Spivey’s Corner’s “National Hollerin’ Contest.”
And we enjoy hearing about the festivities in the Piedmont and in Northwestern N.C. as well, such as the Stokes Stomp and the annual Fiddlers’ Convention at Mount Airy. Yes, it’s good that television and on-line news services can make quite a splash at these events, but you take a good newspaper article with a staff photo or two, and you can put out a package that every reader from Wentworth to Spencer will want to see.
Meanwhile, you have all those great arts activities right in the heart of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County to write about. So please keep that great Journal news and feature coverage coming throughout the Triad and Piedmont North Carolina.
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