Community Journal

2014 Volume VII, Edition II

Discussin PostalInterlink photo/ Helen Sosniecki

Living history

Johnson Publications publisher Lori Pankonin, right, watches a presentation at the print shop in Railroad Town, which is part of the Stuhr Museum’s Living History Community in Grand Island, NE. The tour was a fundraiser for the Nebraska Press Foundation as a kickoff to the Nebraska Press Association’s annual convention in April. For more photos from the Nebraska convention, click here.

Stop printing postage statements

By Brad Hill
President

Brad HillHave you ever published an issue where the page count on your postal documentation was higher than that of the paper itself? Answering 'yes' has become ever easier as mailing requirements and the complexity of supporting documentation have increased over time.

Today, it’s common for periodicals to submit two or more postage statements for every issue, requiring up to eight pages each. And for every postage statement there must be an accompanying Qualification Report, which can easily add another six pages or more. The 3553 CASS Summary adds one more page.

Although the Qualification Report and 3553 are not strictly required for each issue, they must be provided upon request. Add it up to see that it can easily take 30 pages of documentation or more just to mail a single issue! The good news: you don't have to print even one page of it when you submit your documentation electronically.

More than 200 publications now submit all of their postal documentation online with a single click through Interlink Circulation, with dozens more adopting the method, officially termed eDoc, each week.

Operators prefer using eDoc because it saves time and eliminates the handoff to whoever would have taken hardcopy reports to the post office. Postal clerks like it because they don't have to manually enter anything into their PostalOne! system, saving them time and eliminating human error.

Using eDoc also satisfies a requirement for overnight drop privileges, by providing required documentation to the USPS ahead of when the mail is inducted. Outside of overnight drop, however, there is no requirement for newspapers to submit postal documentation electronically.

Notwithstanding the advantages of using eDoc, it is important to understand that USPS' backend system, PostalOne!, is under constant development, and efforts to enhance that system do occasionally break what had been working. When that happens, submitting hardcopy reports provides a straightforward fallback, and they also may be used to request refunds if the error caused USPS to miscalculate postage due. To identify and prevent such issues, I recommend comparing USPS-calculated postage due against a print preview of the postage statement in Interlink Circulation.

Moving to eDoc is surprisingly simple, and easier than ever since Interlink worked with USPS to eliminate the most common problem relating to PostalOne! -- account setup. For the steps to begin using eDoc, see the related how-to article in this newsletter, or visit http://www.ilsw.com/?s=eDoc or contact our Client Solutions team for assistance at 888-473-3103.

Lewis County Press visit

Williams and MacLaren

Lewis County Press General Manager Tej Ghosh, accountant Peggy Wolf, left, and Interlink Senior Sales and Marketing Manager Helen Sosniecki are shown in Lewis County Press’ new offices in an historic church building in LaGrange, MO. The company’s newspapers, which use Interlink Circulation, are on the table in the foreground.

The Reality of the Next Few Years

By Mike Buffington, publisher
Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc., Jefferson, GA
Reprinted with permission. Written in response to April column by Ken Blum in Black Inkling on The Challenges Hometown Newspapers Face.

Mike BuffingtonInteresting comment on status of community newspapers. While we have not seen the depth of problems many metro papers and regional dailies have, to suggest we have avoided the reality of a changing economic environment is to ignore the obvious.

While one might argue that community newspapers have a unique niche because of their local content and demand for readership, the readership issue is very different from the business model changes we face.

Consider:

--Some 60% of U.S. counties are losing population as younger people migrate toward cities and suburbs. Community newspapers cannot exist or thrive in communities that are being torn asunder by depopulation.

--As big box stores become more ubiquitous, they replace local merchants who are traditional ROP advertisers. Most big box stores don't run ROP but focus on preprints if they do any local advertising at all. The problem is that preprint rates will never be higher in the future than they are today; in fact, I'd argue that preprint rates have not changed in the last two decades due to increasing pressure from the big boxes to lower preprint rates and/or give "value added" free advertising. How will community newspapers pay the bills of increasing expenses when ROP is in decline and preprint rates are frozen? (And large preprint vendors wait 90-120 days to pay.)

--Public notices make up a large percentage of revenue for many rural community newspapers. But there is increasing pressure in many states for some of those to go online. That pressure freezes public notice rates where they can never be increased lest we open a debate about their value in a digital world. Given the political climate, some public notices could disappear overnight due to a legislative action over which we have no control.

--Some big categories of traditional community newspaper advertisers have migrated to online marketing. Real estate and automotive are the two that we all have felt. And for the foreseeable future, finance is a weak category of local revenue as banks retrench.

--Our newspaper websites will never, in our lifetimes, generate enough revenue to pay for the cost of real news gathering. Pageview rates are very, very low and pageviews in rural areas are so low that little revenue can be generated compared to traditional print revenues. And I'd argue that paywalls won't solve the online revenue problem.

--Online viewing has put increasing rate pressure on traditional subscription rates. Many people, especially the younger generations, expect news to be "free." So how do we generate more reader revenue in a climate where the end user expects to pay nothing for content even as our cost of distribution increases?

There are exceptions to all of this, of course. Resort areas and those around high-demographic communities are in a unique position and can better deal with some of these pressures. And there are some isolated markets that have not been hit hard by the big boxes and where local merchants still advertise in their local newspapers.

But many rural community daily and weekly newspapers are being greatly challenged by a very volatile economic environment.

Some of this might have hit us earlier, but during the 1980s-1990s, we were able to dodge some of the impact due to a booming economy and the greater efficiency digital cameras and computers brought to community newspapers.

We were able to shed a lot of production costs during those decades from the revolution of technology. Today, however, we have reached a plateau and future cost savings via technology are likely to be incremental.

I'm a big believer in community newspapers and the value they bring. But just because we believe we are indispensable doesn't make it so in the rough and tumble world of the marketplace.

I don't have the answer, but I do think there will continue to be downsizing and consolidation at many newspapers as we try to shed expenses. That, I think, is the reality of the next few years.

Weekly newspaper publishers’
protest produces positive result

Newseum’s ‘Today’s Front Pages’ includes ‘non-dailies’

By Bill Tubbs, Publisher
North Scott (IA) Press
Reprinted with Permission
(April 30, 2014, edition)

Community newspapers across America organized what appears to have been a successful protest two weeks ago to get the Newseum in Washington, D.C., to include us in its Today’s Front Pages exhibit.

The Newseum, for those who haven’t been there, is an interactive museum of news and journalism located on Pennsylvania Avenue, near the U.S. Capitol. It is a seven-level, 250,000-square-foot museum with 15 theaters and 14 galleries.

Its mission is “to help the public and the news media understand one another better” and “to raise public awareness of the important role of a free press in a democratic society.”  The Newseum's operations are funded by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to “free press, free speech and free spirit for all people.”

In five years, the Newseum attracted more than 2.25 million visitors, making it one of Washington's most popular destinations. A front page from each of the 50 states can be read by passers-by.

The rub was that front pages from the 85 percent of the nation’s newspapers that are “non-daily” were not welcomed. Those newspapers account for 75 percent of total print circulation of U.S. newspapers.

It started when community publishers were in Washington, D.C., in March for their annual summit with lawmakers. They noticed an exhibit about a fictional TV anchorman occupying an entire level at the Newseum – but very little about the community press.

Gary Sosniecki, a retired Missouri publisher who lives in Le Claire, Iowa, wrote an editorial about the snub that was printed in the newsletter of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE). His wife and co-publisher, Helen, had an inspiration. “What would happen if all 5,500 weeklies forwarded their front pages to the Newseum on the same day?”

One thing led to another. Steve Thurston, a journalism teacher at Montgomery College in Rockville, Md., helped ISWNE organize a “front page blitz” in which The North Scott Press and weeklies throughout the English-speaking world emailed our front pages to the Newseum on April 17, which is the birthday of Huck Boyd, the legendary community journalist from Phillipsburg, Kan.

The front pages rolled in to the Newseum nonstop – more than 130 – and publishers were even more determined when they were told at midday that weeklies weren't welcomed.

The onslaught continued until the late afternoon when the Newseum's senior manager of media relations Jonathan Thompson conceded. “We are going to change that policy. We will begin including weekly newspapers in that exhibit. It’s a conversation the Newseum has been having for quite a while. When people get together like this and feel strongly about a specific issue, and mobilize and make arguments, it does have an impact.”

Barbara Selvin, an assistant professor of journalism at Stony Brook University in New York, summed up the victory with an article for the Poynter Institute, which studies modern media. She quoted Chad Stebbins of Joplin, Mo., the executive director of ISWNE, who said the larger issue is respect for the passion and energy that community journalists bring to their work. “We have forced them to at least start considering weeklies as real, legitimate newspapers that should stand aside their daily counterparts.”

NNA president Robert Williams, a community publisher from Blackshear, Ga., complimented ISWNE for a successful campaign. He recognized that exhibit space at the Newseum is limited, costly, and planned many years out. But he said this is the beginning of a conversation with Newseum officials, asking their help in raising the profile of community newspapering through educational programs on-site and in other locations around the country. Also “promoting speakers who understand and appreciate the role community newspapers play in supporting the bedrock principles of democracy as well as our service as a link between thousands of community businesses and their customers.”

Amen! In my nearly 44 years at The NSP, I've seen how hard the reporters and staff members work to record our local history as it happens, 52 weeks a year, including holidays. The paper you are reading is possible because of their dedication and untiring efforts, and the support of our local businesses who use our pages to communicate with their customers.

Our staffs and budgets are smaller than the big dailies, and it is not as glamorous here as in the big newsrooms, but I've known many a journalist who would trade the buzz of the big city in a heartbeat for the chance to be part of a community like ours where we have close relationships with our readers and they accept us, warts and all. The NSP's Sarah Hayden, for example, worked for USA Today.

You can move to a smaller market without sacrificing journalistic standards, too. Earlier this year, I judged the editorials competition for the large weeklies in Wyoming, which included some of the finest newspapers in America. I was immediately able to understand the complex issues in that state because of their well-researched, hard-hitting editorials. The staffs of these papers include editors and writers who have fled the big-city rat race for a different lifestyle.

That's the part of American journalism which, until now, has been overlooked by the Newseum. I visited the Newseum briefly in 2013 and took a picture of the front-page display. There is so much to see and do at the Newseum that you could spend hours or days. It is a “must see” if you're traveling to Washington, D.C. And sometime soon the community newspapers will have a place there, too.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Go to http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ to check out today’s front pages on the Newseum website, which now includes community newspapers. Send an e-mail tofrontpages@newseum.orgfor specific instructions on how your newspaper can participate in "Today's Front Pages."

Welcome to the Interlink Community!

Welcome to the Interlink community!

Interlink would like to welcome the newest members of the Interlink Circulation community:

  • Record/Stafford Courier (KS)
  • Dardanelle Post-Dispatch (AR)
  • Uvalde Leader (TX)
  • Frio Nueces Current (TX)
  • San Saba News (TX)
  • Cordell Beacon (OK)
  • Mart Messenger (TX)
  • Allendale Sun (SC)
  • The Breakdown (SC)
  • Elkhart Tri-State News (KS)
  • Cunningham Courier (KS)
  • Lebanon Advertiser (IL)
  • Protection Press (KS)
  • Minco-Union City (OK)
  • Wheaton Gazette (MN)
  • Groesbeck Journal (TX)
  • Midwest City (OK)
  • Highland Park Landmark (IL)
  • Beaumont Business Journal (TX)
  • News-Dispatch (TX)
  • Light and Champion (TX)
  • Sabine County Reporter (TX)
  • Wilkes Journal-Patriot (NC)
  • West Side Leader (MO)
  • Teton Home (WY)
  • Senior Perspective/River (MN)
  • Valley News (MN)
  • Carthaginian (MS)
  • Wimberley View (TX)
  • Hill Country Community Journal (TX)
  • Clinton Courier (NY)
  • Baldwin Bulletin (WI)
  • Olympia Review (IL)
  • Manito Review (IL)
  • Islander News (FL)
  • Slavnosti (NE)
  • Enterprise-Tocsin (MS)
  • Wausa Gazette (NE)
  • Osmond Republican (NE)
  • Randolph Times (NE)
  • Albion News (NE)
  • Petersburg Press (Albion) (NE)
  • Springview Herald (NE)
  • Petersburg Pilot (AK)
  • Wrangell Sentinel (AK)
  • Pender Times (NE)
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