The top 3, er, 2 …
There was a certain predictability to the winners of the Arizona Newspaper Association’s top circulation category back on Oct. 10. That category is for daily newspapers with a circulation of more than 25,000.
Three newspapers — The Arizona Republic, The Arizona Daily Star and The East Valley Tribune — took the lion’s share of first, second and third-place awards, just jockeying for the gold, silver or bronze, so to speak. That’s because they were the ONLY daily newspapers in the state that topped the 25,000 mark.
For the six months ended Sept. 30, the Republic had an average Monday-Friday circulation of 316,874, an average Saturday circulation of 347,195 and a Sunday circulation of 458,992. The Tucson-based Star had 93,770, 102,045 and 135,432 respectively in preliminary figures filed with the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which as its name implies, audits circulation figures. The East Valley Tribune circulation figures weren’t listed on the ABC’s site.
The next largest daily was the Daily Courier in Prescott, which averaged 15,518 Monday-Saturday, and 16,722 on Sunday, according to the ABC.
Now, the Tribune — a paper that has been published in Mesa in one form or another since 1891 and the ANA’s 2009 Daily Newspaper of the Year — won’t be around to compete in next year’s contest.
The parent company, Freedom Communications, which filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in September, announced Nov. 2 that it was closing the newspaper effective Dec. 31. The owner was unable to find a buyer for the property.
Ironically, by the night of the awards presentation, the Tribune was no longer a daily newspaper. However, the Tribune had been a daily for most of the contest period that ran from May 1, 2008, through April 30, 2009.
The Tribune scaled back in January, laying off 142 employees as it shifted from a daily, subscription operation to a four-day-a-week, free-distribution model, supplemented by daily online updates. Four months later, it went to three days a week in print.
When Chris Coppola, the Tribune editor, approached the podium to accept the award for the paper, Paula Casey, the ANA’s executive director, remarked that it was the ninth Newspaper of the Year award that ANA had awarded the Trib.
Then, she acknowledged the reality that the Trib was no longer a daily: “I spoke with Julie (Moreno, the Trib’s publisher,) a few days ago and Julie told me that she would like to continue competing in the daily category, we would allow that and welcome it."
That’s not going to happen now, and ANA’s contest committee will be looking at a change of rules for next year’s competition.
It was a sobering night to be in the relatively shiny new facilities of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (at Arizona State University's downtown Phoenix campus) and celebrating the accomplishments of the state’s newspapers, while realizing just how fast they’re going away.
04 Nov, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Google and the cold equations
Listening to Ken Auletta speak about his new book, “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It,” on the same day as Freedom Newspapers announced it would be shuttering the East Valley Tribune seemed inextricably connected, rather than just random occurrences in a busy day.
Auletta, who writes the Annals of Communication column for The New Yorker, was being interviewed on NPR’s “Fresh Air” on Monday.
In describing the book, interviewer Terry Gross quoted Auletta’s text: “Google has eliminated barriers to finding information and knowledge, and its way of building its business — making it free and attracting users before figuring out a way to make money — has become the template for Web startups. But … for the many companies Google has encroached on — such as magazines, newspapers and book publishers — Google can be perceived as the Evil Empire. Any company with Google’s power needs to be scrutinized.”
This is a company that takes in $22 billion worth of advertising revenue and makes more than $4 billion in profit, Auletta tells Gross.
At one point, Auletta describes the difference between Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, and Bill Gates of Microsoft, saying that Gates was a “cold businessman,” while Brin and Page are “cold engineers.” Essentially, he says, Gates wanted to kill his competitors, while Brin and Page are driven by an engineer’s desire to do things more efficiently.
In the process, that raises disturbing questions about privacy of information, copyright and the concentration of power.
“Google believes in transparency, but they’re not transparent,” Auletta tells Gross, as he likens the company’s reaction to simple questions like, “How much do you pay engineers?” to trying to pry state secrets from the CIA.
Google’s ascent in a little over a decade — whether you date its start as 1997, when the founders renamed their BackRub search engine as Google, or 1998, when they filed for incorporation — obviously is one of the biggest business stories today. The company, Auletta says, was not profitable for its first three years. Today, he adds, it represents two-thirds of the search market in the United States and about 70 percent worldwide.
Google’s a-ha moment came when the engineers realized they could sell advertising related to searches and charge the advertiser only when people clicked through to the ad. As Auletta tells Gross, that beats the “scattershot” approach of print media.
It’s no secret that the “everything’s free on the Internet” idea, which has been key to Google’s development, accelerated the slide of newspapers into insolvency and, probably, obsolescence.
Just two decades ago, newspapers were among the darlings of Wall Street, lured by 20 percent profit margins. According to a June 17, 2006, article by Frank Ahrens in The Washington Post (“A Push Toward Private Control of Newspapers”), “The newspaper business was relatively stable over the last half of the 20th century, controlled by a handful of chains that steadily added newspapers and recorded profit margins of 10 percent to as much as 30 percent.”
Even in the late 1990s as the Internet increased its hold on readers, the Orange County Register was considered a major success story in defining how a suburban newspaper could grow and thrive. It was the flagship newspaper of Freedom Newspapers, the owners of the East Valley Tribune.
There’s no denying the trend. Advertisers — some more quickly than others — are abandoning print media for the Internet, where rates are about 10 percent of what print charges.
So R.I.P. East Valley Tribune. Maybe Google’s “cold engineers” can figure out a way to make job searches more efficient and successful.
03 Nov, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Selling out to fight hunger?
It’s rare that I get a chance to combine my admittedly irrational Bob Dylan fandom with reporting on business, but, hey, this is a Jewish News blog, and Dylan is Jewish, sort of.
Dylan’s label confirmed Aug. 25 that he was recording a Christmas album. It seemed a bit hard to swallow given that the former Robert Zimmerman has appeared on at least one Chabad fundraising telethon in recent years. But what’s good enough for Irving Berlin (the Jewish writer of “White Christmas”), Neil Diamond (who has two Christmas albums and counting) and Barbra Streisand (who has just one) appears to be good enough for the folk-rock-country bard.
(What’s the local angle? Mr. D has a show planned for 7 p.m. Oct. 17 at the Arizona State Fair with reserved seats going for $20, while the remainder of the seats are free on a first come, first served basis after you’ve paid fair admission.)
Now, part A of business and finance: Rolling Stone reported in its Sept. 17 issue that Columbia Records, his label, has been begging him for a Christmas album for decades because “they’re perennial sellers, and that’s what every label wants.”
Given that most of Dylan’s albums are perennial sellers, a Dylan Christmas album is like a double whammy of perennial-ness. Hence “Christmas in the Heart,” due out Oct. 13.
I can’t imagine that there are millions of listeners who will wax sentimental over the 68-year-old’s phlegmatic croak tackling such tunes as “Winter Wonderland” and “Little Drummer Boy,” even if it does have a cover fit for a Currier & Ives print. However, there are probably several hundred thousand who’ll buy anything he records. I’ll admit I’ve done it, even when the results were extremely ugly. Anybody remember the outtakes album called “Dylan”?
Now, part B: Citigroup announced Sept. 30 that its Thank You network, which it describes as one of the world’s largest loyalty programs, is partnering with Sony Music Entertainment (the parent company of the Columbia label) to allow Thank You members to use their loyalty points to download Sony albums, both new releases and catalog (read “perennial seller”) albums.
And there will be special promotions via this relationship. The kick-off promotion is none other than “Christmas in the Heart.” Thank You members can download the 15-song album beginning Oct. 6, a full week before the official release and at a discount, just 1,000 Thank You points. The nonpromotional price per song download will be 100 Thank You points.
Finally, part C: In the scramble to get this story out, most sites and news outlets (even my favorite radio report, “Marketplace”) have told it as though Dylan created an exclusive relationship with Citigroup, with nary a mention of the Sony-Citi nexus, a partnership of industry titans. As Citi stresses in its press release, Thank You members “will be able to access and preview the entire Sony Music digital catalog of songs from artists such as Brad Paisley, Britney Spears, Daughtry, The Fray, and many more. (I wonder whether that includes the late Michael Jackson, who has been a Sony artist since “Off the Wall” and “Thriller.”)
Business and finance postscript: This is a charity record. Press releases published at bobdylan.com say that Dylan is donating all U.S. royalties from the record in perpetuity to Feeding America. The Chicago-based charity, formerly known as America’s Second Harvest, helps fight hunger through a nationwide network of food banks. International royalties will be donated in perpetuity to two hunger charities: World Hunger Programme and Crisis UK. The former fights food insecurity in the developing world while the latter focuses on the United Kingdom. The label estimates that proceeds from the release will help feed 1.4 million Americans, 500,000 schoolchildren in the developing world, and 15,000 homeless people in the U.K. during the Christmas season.
Dylan and business post-postscript: Part of the tone of the reporting on the Dylan Christmas album played on the implied irony of Dylan, once a dean of protest songs, “selling out” to commercial interests. After all, Dylan refused to appear on Ed Sullivan’s show when Sullivan wouldn’t let him sing “Talking John Birch Society Blues.”
Well, the so-called “sell out” is old news, folks. Dylan tunes have been licensed for commercials since the 1990s. (I believe I wrote a column when “The Times They Are A-Changin’” was used in a commercial for a Wall Street firm. Can’t remember which one though, and the Web is no help.) His “Forever Young” helped sell Apple computers in 2000.
And in 2004, Dylan himself appeared as a commercial pitch man in a Victoria’s Secret TV ad, accompanied by his 1997 tune “Love Sick.” The tune had made an appearance in a 2003 Victoria’s ad without its composer. In 2007, Dylan appeared in an “integrated marketing campaign” commercial that hawked XM Satellite Radio (home of his “Theme Time Radio” show) as standard equipment aboard Cadillac vehicles.
Finally, let’s not forget the “Refresh Anthem.” That’s the mash-up of Dylan’s “Forever Young” with an Obama-era version by Black Eye Peas guru will.i.am. The Pepsi TV campaign has been in heavy rotation during televised sports ever since it debuted during this year’s Super Bowl.
01 Oct, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Out of the comfort zone
“You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s” said an ad campaign — which will surely date those who remember it — for Levy’s Jewish rye bread.
The theme is being adapted by the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center into “you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy the JCC,” said Kristi Hall, who takes care of programs and partnerships for the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce.
"The JCC has been a member of the Chamber for several years as a means of building relationships with the local communityť," said Moises Paz, president of the JCC. This year, the JCC's representative to the Chamber, Lisa Owens, is bringing the Chamber Airpark Committee's First Friday Breakfast to the VOSJCC for the first time on Oct. 2.
“Especially in this economy, we’ve got to reach out to the local community,” Paz told me earlier today about seeking new members and audiences for the JCC’s services.
Besides letting the local businesspeople know about the activities and fitness center at VOSJCC, Paz said that the breakfast offers an opportunity to welcome the local community to the JCC, encourage involvement and perhaps obtain corporate sponsors for the JCC.
The event, which changes venue each month, regularly attracts about 80 businesspeople, Hall said. That seems like a good number of qualified contacts outside the JCC’s current Jewish comfort zone.
Donald G. Robinson, president and COO of Arizona Public Service Co., will speak on “Fueling the Future: Energy, Sustainability and our Economy,” focusing on Arizona’s current energy and future energy needs and how to meet them.
The breakfast will be catered by Levi’s Catering Café & Bakery. The event takes place 7:15-9 a.m. this Friday at the JCC, 12701 N. Scottsdale Road.
The cost in advance is $15 for Chamber members, $25 for nonmembers. At the door, it’ll be $20 and $30 respectively.
30 Sep, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Change has come today
I’ve got a couple of stories brewing about Valley business networking groups and their creative ideas on finding leads in this downturn.
Many companies that never had to search for business before are finding that they have to dig for prospects because new customers aren’t coming in waves anymore.
The fundamentals remain the same: Finding business is a numbers game. The more contacts you make, the more chance you have of getting new business. The difference in a bad economy is that you make have to make more contacts than you do in good times in order to do the same amount of business.
The difficulty in that is that you only have the same amount of time – or less if you’re an employee with hours reduced in response to the downturn – to make a greater number of contacts.
That’s the problem addressed by ideas like speed networking — based on speed dating — in which you get set up with a guaranteed number of prospects but have a very limited, focused time to find out if there’s a fit.
On the same topic, check out “Never worked harder for so little – Isn’t it a great opportunity?” (The item is on Allan Himmelstein’s blog for The Alternative Board, a board of peers — like a board of directors, hence the “alternative” part — that offers peer advice and coaching for small business owners.)
He tells his readers that a host of professionals in the Valley, such as accountants and lawyers, never had to look for business before. Then, he writes, “The market has changed, and the ones that are learning how to develop business rather than wait for it to come to their door will survive.”
24 Sep, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Tuition tax credit task force members named
Just a quick update for those of you keeping track:
The Democrats caucus at the Arizona House of Representatives yesterday (Aug. 13) announced the membership of the task force to look into potential abuses of the state’s tuition tax credit program, and as promised it includes Republicans.
The Task Force on Private School Tuition Tax Credits will be led by David Schapira (D-District 17), with Tom Chabin (D-District 2) as vice chair. The other members are House Democratic Whip Chad Campbell (District 14), Nancy Young Wright (D-District 26), Cloves Campbell (D-District 16), Rich Crandall (R-District 19), Doris Goodale (R-District 3) and Steve Court (R-District 18).
The Dems announced the effort to put this together just this past Tuesday, so I’m certainly surprised it’s up and running this quickly.
The Dems’ press release says the task force will hold its first meeting at 10 a.m. Sept. 21 in House Hearing Room 3 in Phoenix.
14 Aug, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Minority response on tuition tax credits
State Rep. David Schapira (District 17) plans to lead a task force to investigate possible abuses in the state’s tuition tax credit program. The move was announced in a press conference called by Arizona State House Democrats and led by David Lujan, the House Democratic leader (District 15) this morning (Aug. 11).
The Democrats are also asking the federal government to investigate potential violations of federal tax regulations that may have occurred in relationship to the program.
The state representatives were responding to an investigative series by the East Valley Tribune newspaper and a similar report in The Arizona Republic last week.
The tuition tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar credit on state income tax that individual taxpayers may take for contributions to a qualifying scholarship tuition organization. Such STOs provide scholarships for students to help them defray the costs of private school tuition.
The tuition tax credit program diverts about $55 million in tax obligations from the state’s coffers to the STOs. With allegations of abuse and the state in a budget crisis, the Democrats said there was a pressing need to examine the program to determine what could be done to prevent abuse and better oversee it.
The newspaper stories both pointed out that the program as a whole had failed to increase access to private schools for underprivileged students, which was one of the original selling points for the legislation when it was passed by the State Legislature more than a decade ago.
The Tribune series, in particular, detailed potential abuses of federal tax law that may be swirling around the program and the lack of state resources to oversee the program, which means that STOs and the schools that get funding from them are essentially self-policing.
Spurred by Lujan’s steadfast contention that this was not a partisan issue, one reporter at the press conference pounded the Democrats mercilessly, asking why they had not asked Speaker of the House Kirk Adams (R-District 19) to launch an official investigation by a House committee.
Lujan responded that when Democrats, the minority party in the Legislature, had sought legislation for “accountability and oversight” in the tuition tax credit program in the past the House leadership had been unresponsive. So, instead, they took their concerns public and invited concerned Republicans to join a task force that the Democrats hope will be composed of five from their party and five from the GOP. “This was an opportunity where we could take the lead,” Lujan said.
Essentially, the task force will seek public testimony as a legislative committee would do and seek to offer legislation in the next legislative session that is scheduled to begin in January.
That’s if, as one wag noted, the current special session to pass a budget ever ends.
11 Aug, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Hello, I must be going
I never questioned the meaning of the phrase "Jewish community" before, but after five days of the Gralla journalism program at Brandeis University, I realize how ambiguous the phrase is.
Today, with so many ways to define one's life as a Jew, it's unclear whether "Jewish community" means all of klal Yisrael or just its organizational structure. It's a question that underlies what Jews in America will do with their organizational infrastructure in response to the economic downturn.
Jacob Berkman, who blogs as The Fundermentalist on JTA's site, lays out the grim statistics and lots of old-line organizations have taken big hits, including the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization for the North American federation system. Addressing an audience at the closing public panel of the Gralla week, he said that he thought that the Bernard Madoff scandal was just a small insult added to the main injury except in the cases of foundations that were completely wiped out by investing in the financier's Ponzi scheme.
For the most part, said Berkman, who covers the nonprofits and foundations that fund Jewish needs in America, the recession has brought most of the problem as endowment portfolios have declined in value by about 25 to 30 percent and family foundation funders as big as the Grinspoons have decided they have to be more strategic with their giving.
Some old organizations may be on their last legs, but that's OK because others like the Natan Foundation, a cooperative of philanthropists under age 45 who pool their money to fund innovative projects they believe in, are succeeding even in this down economy.
That testifies to the resiliency of the "Jewish community" in all its possible meanings, and it's a good note for me to leave on. As a result of this fellowship, I'm heading back to Phoenix with a surfeit of big ideas to digest and develop. I'm hoping they'll help improve Jewish News of Greater Phoenix and jewishaz.com, and maybe even help energize our Valley community.
17 Jul, 2009 > Comment - 0 -