Lecture: John Kimball
John Kimball. Photo: Laurel Angrist. © 2007 Laurel Angrist.
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Readers want local news, and that’s why print journalism isn’t going anywhere any time soon, marketing and media expert John Kimball told an audience of fearful aspiring journalists in NYU’s journalism department on March 21, 2007.
“There will be a newspaper printing my obituary, and I would hazard a guess that they'll print all yours, too,” said Kimball, the senior vice president and chief marketing officer of the Newspaper Association of America. “What will change is how the paper is delivered.”
While The New York Times may yet deliver news in 10 years, Kimball predicts the paper will deliver it via other Times-branded media — webcasts and blogs — not just on the printed page.
“Papers are no longer in the print business,” Kimball said. “People come to information through the New York Times brand more than they ever did when it was just a print publication.”
“There will be a newspaper printing my obituary, and I would hazard a guess that they'll print all yours, too.”
Still, the newspaper business is in flux right now. Wall Street investors are pressuring newspapers to achieve higher profit margins, which in turn has lead many publishers to look for ways to cut costs and increase advertising revenue. Satisfying these financial expectations is increasingly difficult for publishers, Kimball points out: “How do you weigh Wall Street pressures against your true journalistic mission?”
Ultimately, Kimball said, the industry will “shake itself out,” but in the immediate future, the answer lies in thinner publications, slimmer staffs, and an emphasis on local news.
One audience member challenged Kimball’s assertions, arguing that readers can find news on any website. The student wanted to know how a newspaper can ensure that readers will keep coming to its specific brand for news.
“Newspapers are built around communities, and that’s where the strength of the country really is,” Kimball responded. “In Washington or New York, we look at newspapers through the scope of The New York Times or the Washington Post because that’s where we live, but newspapers [elsewhere] provide the issues on their own respective markets very well.”
Kimball pointed to the opinions of the newspaper readers he polls as part of ongoing market research projects at the NAA. The results, he said, are clear: “local news is what the market says it wants.”
To bolster this point, Kimball cited an example: Bluffton Today, a small daily newspaper in Bluffton, S.C., owned by the Augusta, Ga.-based publisher Morris Communications. The print edition and the newspaper’s website, BlufftonToday.com, are distributed free within the community, so Morris Communications earns money from the paper solely through advertising. The paper, with its “intense hyper-local focus” and well-positioned slogan — “It’s what people are talking about” — chronicles everything in Bluffton, including local soccer games and school board news. The website even includes a feature where registered users can share their own news via message boards and blogs.
John Kimball. Photo: Laurel Angrist. © 2007 Laurel Angrist.
According to Kimball, Bluffton residents love the paper — even high school students rush to school in the morning to ensure they get a copy at the library. “It’s where the residents go to read about the things they care about,” he said.
So when a newspaper needs to cut costs, its editors focus on what their market demands and cut back on other content. If, for example, Middle Eastern politics are not of interest to the community, publishers close the Jerusalem bureau. And if readers care deeply about the Philadelphia Eagles, the paper will happily send eight photographers to cover the game.
“If it’s what the market wants,” Kimball said, such extraordinary strategies are necessary. “The more local you are, the less susceptible you are to outside forces.”
But even as newspapers become more locally focused, the role of the reporter is expanding, Kimball said. In an earlier era, reporters simply carried a notebook and pen. Now they are just as likely to film the events they’re covering and produce a webcast. At some papers, including The New York Times, reporters also discuss how they covered the story in a podcast or write about their experiences working on the story in a blog.
Still, Kimball said the newspaper industry must adjust to the challenges posed by a new, multimedia-intensive news experience. Ultimately, though, he is not worried for its future.
“I do have a great deal of confidence in the industry’s ability to deal with the challenges and [to] continue to grow [and find] new ways of reaching new audiences,” he said.