Coverage of INMA Summit on Audience Development - Palm Springs, USA

"It's clear that the industry is now very deep into organisational transformation,"

said James Gold, vice president of marketing at the New York Times Regional Media Group. "After years of talk about redefining our core mission and purpose, real substantive work is now being done to acquire new talent, adopt new processes, organize resources in fundamentally different ways. These changes in who we are and how we work will lead the evolution of product and brand development. The conference captured the spirit of our times. The speakers and attendees were not debating the need for change. They were all actively involved in leading it and eager to share their experiences in making it happen.

The Summit on Audience Development is an evolution of the INMA Circulation Summits held in previous years. The event has changed along with the wider newspaper industry.

These changes were reflected in the presentations delivered by a number of speakers at the conference. Sandy McLeod, vice president of consumer marketing and strategy at the Toronto Star, examined the shifts in the industry, stating, "We can no longer rely just on paid circulation to ensure our success longer-term, we are facing an entirely new marketplace."

A panel featuring newspaper executives from across the United States - Dan Johnson, director of distribution and audience development at the Spokesman-Review; Larry  Riley, vice president of circulation at the Orange County Register; and Gregg Vivolo, customer relationship management director at the New York Times Regional Media Group

- examined the structural changes within newspapers' circulation departments this change in the industry demanded. Their discussion focused on transformations to strategies, tactics, and the newspaper organisation necessary to prosper in a multi-media environment.

Transitioning a newspaper steeped in decades of print tradition is no simple task.

A number of the presenters at the Summit on Audience Development shared their newspaper's experiences and their best practices for making print and online work together.

For Steve Silberman, executive editor of California's Desert Sun, this meant the  newsroom's transformation into an information centre: "Organize ourselves to gather and deliver news and information across multiple platforms when, where, and how people want it. Focus on audiences, not sections or publications."

Gary Meo, senior vice president of print and digital media services at Scarborough Research, spoke on new metrics to measure newspapers' combined audiences.

He said,

"Media companies - including newspapers - recognise that growth will come from their digital businesses. There is a need for a new metric that demonstrates the value  of the newspaper web site audience. It's time to get the marketing community to  start thinking about newspaper audiences beyond the daily printed newspaper."

The editor and president of California's Ventura County Star, Joe Howry, shared a ground-level view of what it takes to turn a newspaper into a true multi-media  organisation. Attendees learned the motivations, processes, and lessons-learned  from a nuts-and-bolts transformation into a new-media newspaper.

This new environment calls for a new newspaper brand, one that firmly places the  newspaper on the forefront of the multi-media marketplace. Those discussing this revitalisation of the newspaper brand included Ben Marion, the creative director  at The Creative Gene, in Cedar Rapids, USA and Ted Francisco, senior account planner at DGWB. Francisco said, "Who is it that you are trying to have a relationship with and what can you do to better connect with them? How willing is your organisation to change? At your core, what do you really stand for?"

"The Summit on Audience Development provided a glimpse into the innovative changes happening at newspapers across the world," said Dan Johnson. "Unlike conferences  I have been to in recent years, I felt that the mood at this summit was much more positive with an eye toward getting a grasp on the changing industry.

Sandy MacLeod

delivered a particularly good presentation on how Toronto is moving toward growing the various segments of their audience and moving away from the focus on the ABC-defined 'net paid circulation' model. Steve Silberman also showed the contemporary changes being made at The Desert Sun in Palm Springs. That is a newsroom that truly 'gets it!'"

www.inma.org

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