One of the great truisims of any business is that your customers don’t really care that much about your problems. They want what they paid when they paid for it. Pretty simple. Newspapers are no different. The back stories on why an investigation fell through or why a photo didn’t reproduce well etc., are lost on readers. But there are a few exceptions, which is what today’s post is about.
Saturday afternoon, a fire swept through the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s printing facility in Hanover County, Va. They were printing their Sunday classified section. The Sunday paper is huge for publishers, in both size and profit. Anyway, the fire took out their printing plant. The T-D and the Journal are both owned by Media General, but we’re three-plus hours apart, so a fire there shouldn’t be our problem. But it was/is. Here’s why.
First, the Hanover facility acts as a server farm for some key parts of the Journal operations, including our obits-billing system and JournalNow. Those were dead for a few hours while traffic was rerouted. More importantly, the Journal ended up printing the Classified section of the Sunday Times-Dispatch and then putting the inserts on a truck and heading north. (That’s why the paper was late on Sunday.) We printed their business and living sections for today’s paper. Lots of people here—mainly in the pressroom, circulation and IT departments—scrambled to get it done and done right. The Washington Post printed the rest of the paper. Those sorts of arrangements are fairly routine through the industry. Newspapers compete like crazy, but if somebody’s press goes dark, we’re there to help.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
My brother works for Gannett Supply. Back in the mid-90s he had to coordinate getting the newsprint out of one of their local paper’s printing plant in the midwest because it was going to be flooded and if the paper got wet it would expand and probably cause a lot of damage. From what I remember they shipped the paper to a competitor’s plant and had the paper printed there as well. I always thought that was a pretty cool industry practice.
Didn’t the Greensboro paper print a day’s edition for the Journal in the last year or so due to a similar situation? I seem to recall that. (I could be wrong. I often am.)
Good memory. We had a press problem that was fairly severe and had made arrangements to have the News & Record print us. At the last moment, our presses came back on line, and we printed here.
I have a question for you. Do you think this would happen so smoothly in a two paper town? It sounds very comfy and cozy, but I am betting that there are a lot of interindustry politics that go on as well, where the paper from another city might help out when the rival local paper would not.
I just can’t see the Washington Post ever printing for the Washington Times or vice versa. I can see one or the other appealing to the Baltimore Sun, perhaps, but to the rival DC paper? Not so much.
While I’m at it, have there ever been two papers in W-S? (I know there used to be an evening paper, but my understanding uis that they were owned by one and the same.)
There were several independent and competing papers in the 1800s. The Journal and the Sentinel became part of one publishing company in 1932. The Sentinel closed in 1985.
There aren’t a lot of true two newspaper cities left, and I don’t know whether the Times or the Post would print the NY Daily News if they had a plant fire. That said, the Post and T-D have some overlapping readership, as do the Journal and the News & Record, and the Post and Balt. Sun.
Ken, a bit off subject - one Saturday I did not receive my paper. I phoned your customer service number, followed the prompts, never spoke to a human and within 20 minutes my doorbell rang and the paper was on my porch. A couple hours later I received a follow-up call (human voice) to make sure I had received it. Now that’s some good customer service. Side note and way off topic: I will miss Nat Irvin’s column.
re: Greensboro printing the WSJ, didn’t a few copies of the WSJ go out from GNR’s presses? I remember that happening, and I remember getting my Winston-Salem Journal with a slightly larger page and a slightly crisper feel.
Joe: You may be right. My memory isn’t what it used to be. It could be that Gso printed some papers but they weren’t circulated.
Ricki: I forwarded your comments to our circulation department. Thanks for the kind words. Delivering newspapers is a tough job.
Not two papers in W-S? What about the Chronicle? It’s a weekly. So does that mean it’s not a paper? I read it and the Journal. I’d say W-S has two papers.
I’m sorry. I should have clarified - two daily papers, so that they are in direct competition with each other. A daily and a weekly aren’t really in that situation, so goodwill between the two really wouldn’t be that surprising.
Helen: Thanks for writing. By your definition, WS has more than two papers. We compete with them all on some level, and I have a great deal of respect for The Chronicle. The key distinction for the purpose of this discussion doesn’t have a lot to do with frequency of publication. It’s more basic: Do they have a press. The Chronicle doesn’t. The Dispatch in Lexington prints them.
Thanks for the clarification, Ken. Your point seems to be, competing presses help each other, which is a good thing to know.
Speaking of two-newspaper towns, Mount Airy is about to become one. As your Richard Craver reported recently, publishers Rebel Good of the Elkin Tribune and Mike Milligan of The Mount Airy News left their newspapers after Heartland Publications took over ownership. Their new newspaper, The Messenger, a five-day daily, reportedly will begin publication a week from Monday (July 9). With so many U.S. newspapers cutting back their staffs and operations, this competition in Surry County will be interesting. One thing I’d bet on: The MAN _won’t_ print The Messenger under any circumstances.
That will be interesting to see. I wish them luck, but it’s a tough sell. They can have a sensational editorial product and still go under. A lot of readers don’t care, and advertisers—particularly the mainstays of cars and real estate—are understandably very focused on the bottom line. They don’t want to have to buy two ads ...
Ken,
As in the past, when many more large towns and small cities had competing newspapers, personal and professional relationships may play a big role in the coming battle. Surry Publishing Group’s incorporation papers (I can send you a PDF) identify C. Richard Vaughn, CEO of John S. Clark Co. Inc., as the agent of record and the principal address belongs to Granite Development, the Mount Airy-based commercial real-estate company that owns and operates shopping malls here, in Winston-Salem and elsewhere. I suppose that means Granite’s partners, including Vaughn’s son Rick (C. Richard Jr.) and Surry County Commissioner Craig Hunter, also have a financial interest in The Messenger (and may be underwriting it). They wield enormous influence here and across the state and many of their friends and associates may feel obliged to advertise with and to otherwise support the new newspaper.
Thanks. Send them, and I’ll post them.
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