By Joel Thurtell
Instead of the usual stack of Detroit Free Press atop New York Times, only a Times in a blue plastic sleeve greeted me at the mailbox this morning.
So the Free Press really did go threely. I’ll find it only on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.
Now, the only newspaper I’ll receive seven days a week is based in New York City.
In fact, I won’t be receiving the Free Press at all unless I take action. I felt sure I’d be telemarketed, but nobody from Gannett-owned Detroit Media Partnership has tried to sell me a subscription to either the Free Press or Detroit News.
I try not to take it personally. My blog occasionally has taken a swipe at the Free Press. Could it be that they don’t want me as a reader?
More likely their sales operation is poorly-organized, under-staffed, under-funded or maybe just non-existent. I know they contracted that work to some out-of-state organization long ago. Maybe Detroit just forgot to tell its farflung minions they need to sell subscriptions if the papers are going to survive.
Big question is, How many people out there are like me, wanting to subscribe but not knowing how?
Another big question: How many people were cut off today and, upon reflection over morning coffee, decide they don’t give a rip?
Do I really want to read my news from a computer screen?
That’s not a big question for my sons, both in their twenties and both long in the habit of reading news online. For me, it could prove a short step between paying for on-screen news I wind up not reading and killing the subscription.
A subscription I don’t yet have.
As we know, newspapers don’t make their living by selling subscriptions. But they have to persuade advertisers, whose fees really do pay the bills, that they’re reaching enough readers to make newspaper ads worth the trouble.
Newspapers are great at cutting costs. They easily buy out or fire staffers, subdividing the increased workload among those who remain.
They have not been so great at proving the effectiveness of their advertising product. This has been the case for years, but only in the past decade or so has it been possible for advertisers to quantify how effective — or not– newspaper ads are. That ad in craigslist — did it find a buyer? That eBay auction, did it sell the product?
That ad in the newspaper — how many calls did you get?
For many, many years, newspapers sat fat and happy in their monopolized local markets. They were money trees, often paying 20 percent and more when other industries were happy with five.
Who could challenge them? Got something to sell? Put an ad in the paper. No alternative. If it doesn’t sell, must be you’ve got a faulty product.
Now, with people selling curbside trash on eBay, the results are stark. Internet ads work. Newspaper ads work — sometimes. And often, they fall flat.
I saw this coming in the 1990s, when the Detroit papers started giving news away free on the Internet. It happened that I was not working at the Free Press then. I was on strike, starting on July 13, 1995 and for me this period of non-employment by the Free Press lasted till October 1997. During that time, I started a business. I bought and sold old tube-style ham radios.”Classic radios that work!” That was me.
I advertised in the main print media, including QST, CQ and Electric Radio. Every two weeks, I’d fax an add to the Ham Trader Yellow Sheets, classified ads mailed to subsribers.
Print avertising was a real hassle. I had to remember all those deadlines and different costs-per-word and woe unto me if I missed a deadline.
My younger son, Abe, insisted that I needed a website. I tried a site through Observer & Eccentric newspapers. It was a bust. They insisted on keeping control, right down to uploading images of my products. One day, Abe offered to build a site for me. That was when radiofinder.com started taking off.
By the time I went back to the Free Press, I had scrapped all but one of my print ads. The website was driving my business, and I gradually realized the print ads were poor producers.
In the end, I had one ad in the biggest ham radio magazine, QST. One ad, one word: www.radiofinder.com.
That single word drove people to my site, and on radiofindre.com I did the rest, listing radios, posting photos, telling yarns, and I sold radios.
It didn’t mean I spent less money on ads. It meant I stopped spending money on ineffective ads. Customers responded directly and immediately to my website.
Gone were the pain-in-the-neck telephone calls at dinner time. Instead, I responded to customers’ e-mails in my own time.
The ham magazines are still around, because they fill a niche. But their classified ad sections are pretty skimpy.
The Yellow Sheets classfied mailing list disappeared long ago, swamped by the Internet.
Now it’s the newspapers’ turn to see just how relevant and useful they really are compared to what’s online.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
