Newsletter
Winter 1998-99 Issue
- Scholarships offered to high school seniors
- Great programs, new members highlight our '99 agenda
- '98 saw ambitious programs, stronger ties to NIU journalism
- Building drawbridges?
Newsroom execs stress cooperation -- to a point -- with advertising and marketing staffs
Scholarships offered to high
school seniors
NINA again is offering $500 in scholarships to talented high school journalists in northern Illinois.
Information has been sent to area high schools, and seniors have until
March 12 to return completed applications.
Students interested in a NINA scholarship should contact their high school
guidance counselor, call the NIU Department of Communication at (815) 753-1712
or check the NINA Web site.
Please publicize the scholarships in your newspapers. Feel free to use this
article in part or whole, or simply download a press release from our Web
site.
Great programs, new members highlight our '99
agenda
By Cheryl Wormley
NINA President
There's a spirit of excitement and anticipation among Northern Illinois
Newspaper Association Board members. For the past 18 months, we've been
reshaping the organization, trying out a new committee structure, learning
and having fun. In 1999, we will focus our energy on offering programs that
will meet your needs and on increasing NINA's membership.
I look forward to this year as NINA president, knowing that we have a talented
board and very committed executive officers. Rick Nagel, Press Republican,
is first vice president and will chair the committee that plans the spring
and fall conferences. Mark your calendars. The spring conference is Friday,
April 23, and the fall conference is Friday, Oct. 29. Both will be held
at Northern Illinois University.
Lonny Cain, The Daily Times, Ottawa, is second vice president and chair
of the education committee. The charge for his committee is to offer seminars
that will challenge and re-educate NINA members. Jim Slonoff, The Doings,
will continue as treasurer. The executive board also includes John Etheredge,
past president; Dr. Lois Self, executive secretary; and Dustin Hawkins,
chair of the marketing committee. As you know, John is with the Oswego Ledger
Sentinel; Lois is chair of the NIU Communication Department; and Dustin
is with Press Republican newspapers.
Looking at our membership, the changes that have taken place in the newspaper
industry in northern Illinois and our mission statement, the board decided
that one of our goals for 1999 will be recruitment of new members and renewing
memberships that have lapsed over the past few years. Dustin's committee
will direct the board in reaching the membership goals.
You can stay informed about what's happening with NINA by reading the quarterly
newsletter and by checking the Web site at www.star.niu.edu/nina.
I invite you to be an active member. Call Rick at (630) 513-5050 with suggestions
for the conferences and call Lonny at (815) 433-2000 with suggestions for
seminars and educational offerings. Give me a call at (815) 338-8040 if
you are interested in serving on a committee, being appointed to the board
or with ideas for carrying out our mission statement: NINA is an organization
of newspaper professionals dedicated to advancing print journalism and print-journalism
education and training in Illinois.
Cheryl Wormley is publisher of the Woodstock Independent.
'98 saw ambitious programs, stronger ties to
NIU journalism
By John Etheredge
NINA Past President
Nearly two years ago, NINA's board of directors agreed to begin an ambitious
effort to improve services to our members. Since that time, I think we've
done much to realize that goal, thanks to the efforts of the nearly 20 volunteer
members that comprise our board, and to the NIU Department of Communication.
Consider some of our activities and initiatives we've undertaken during
the past year:
* In January 1998, we hosted an informative, day-long session on interviewing
techniques at The Daily Herald in Arlington Heights.
* Our annual spring conference in April, co-sponsored by NINA and the Kane
County Bar Association, featured a dialogue among reporters, lawyers, judges
and academics.
* In May we again awarded scholarships to outstanding NIU journalism students
and, for the first time ever, granted a scholarship to an outstanding northern
Illinois high school journalist.
* Our fall conference in October examined a controversial trend in journalism:
the mixing of marketing and news. Our panelists included industry leaders
from USA Today, The Daily Herald and Copley Newspapers. A former DeKalb
County State's attorney mediated an informative roundtable discussion that
capped the event.
All of our seminars and conferences were well attended, but I'm especially
pleased to report that the awards banquet at the fall conference attracted
so many registrants that at the last minute we had to move it to a larger
room at NIU's Holmes Student Center.
*Board members also worked with the NIU Department of Communication to update
and improve the department's newspaper contest rules. Look for still more
changes this fall.
* Thanks to the efforts of Jim Killam, adviser to the Northern Star and
our communications coordinator, we were able to keep our members informed
about our activities through the publication of our quarterly newsletter
and the NINA Web site.
Between conferences, our board and board committees met frequently to plan
other events and initiatives. Perhaps most importantly during the past year,
the NINA Board established a solid working relationship with NIU's Department
of Communication. The department, under the direction of Dr. Lois Self,
clearly views its association with NINA as an asset for restoring journalism
education at NIU. Our members ultimately benefit from this relationship
when we seek applications for reporters and editors.
Seeking to build on the successes from this past year, our executive board
decided in December to make building our roster of members a primary goal
in 1999.
A special thank you...
This column concludes my year and a half term as NINA board president. Before
I join the ranks of past presidents, I want to thank my colleagues on our
board for the opportunity to serve as president. It has been an honor and
pleasure to work with a group of newspaper professionals who are so dedicated
to advancing journalism and journalism education.
I also want to thank Dr. Self and the NIU Department of Communication for
all of their hard work over the past year and a half on behalf of our organization.
The working relationship we have achieved should benefit both NIU and our
member papers for years to come. Thank you all!
John Etheredge is news editor of the Ledger-Sentinel in Oswego.
Building drawbridges?
Newsroom execs stress cooperation -- to a point -- with advertising and
marketing staffs
By Jim Killam
The secret behind the success of several market-oriented newspaper companies
isn't so secret after all.
Know your audience.
That was the recurring theme Oct. 30 at NINA's Fall Convention at NIU. Speakers
from Copley Newspapers' Sun Publications, The Daily Herald and USA Today
agreed that without market research, a newspaper has no target.
"Go to each department of your newspaper and ask them to describe your
typical readers," said Melissa Snyder, vice president of marketing
for USA Today. "If all departments don't have the same targets in mind,
you may not get far."
Market research may be as simple as regularly listening to a variety of
voices in your community, or as complex as hiring a research firm to deliver
complex demographic data.
"If you believe you can edit a newspaper without the kind of information
we're talking about today, you will fail," said Doug Ray, senior vice
president and editor of the Daily Herald. "At one time we thought we
were good ... and much better than our customers thought we were."
Copley Newspapers found the same to be true ... and borne out in the fact
that only a small percentage of new residents in upscale subdivisions subscribed
to Copley's daily newspapers.
"Essentially, the really hot, new markets were not saying we were vital,"
said Art Wible, president of Fox Valley Press Inc.
Copley hatched the idea of identifying those "communities within communities"
and targeting them with free, weekly publications that really are more magazine
than newspaper.
The first was targeted to the 60504 zip code: inside the Aurora city limits,
but more often referred to by upscale residents as "Near Naperville."
Readers in focus groups were shown a prototype, filled with lifestyle features,
calendar listings, entertainment guides and color photography ... all based
on Claritas research about those readers' incomes, habits and interests.
The focus groups told Copley executives, enthusiastically, that they would
find time to read such a publication.
More than a dozen community publications later, Wible believes them.
"I have a different interpretation now of what 'I don't have time to
read' means," he said. "It's a signal that what you're putting
out is not very good."
Or, in some cases, that what you're putting out may be valuable but just
isn't presented well.
"Let's not call it packaging. Let's call it respecting readers' time,"
said Monte Lorrell, managing editor-sports for USA Today. "A lot of
times, we've already provided much of what readers want. They just didn't
know it because we didn't package it right."
For example, USA Today's target audience includes a lot of people who play
golf. So, the paper organized the golf coverage it already provided into
a Golf Extra page that's been a hit with readers.
All of this talk of giving readers what they want and only what they
want, of marketing determining news content, doesn't play well where the
walls between news, advertising and circulation are well-protected. The
Daily Herald's culture sure didn't change overnight, and it didn't change
completely.
"Before, if ad people walked onto the newsroom floor, news people wondered
what they were doing to upset the journalistic standards we had worked so
hard to establish," Ray said.
"Bridging the gap is an institutional value now," he said. "But
credibility in news coverage comes first."
Later, at the afternoon forum, Ray expanded on that.
"I'd been doing the business of journalism for a long time, from an
editorial perspective," he said. "So we went in with some credibility.
We were not going to prostitute ourselves. The canons of journalism were
alive and well."
At the same time, the Daily Herald newsroom is forced to know its readers
better. A list of subscription cancellations is distributed periodically
to reporters, who are responsible to make five calls each. Readers' comments
are turned into an electronic newsroom memo.
Sometimes, the walls remain. A ski-shop advertiser, for example, wouldn't
have a say in who gets quoted in a travel-section feature about skiing,
Ray said. "We draw the line every day based on circumstance,"
Ray said. "We've broken down some walls, but there are some that are
perfectly legitimate that we don't want to see crumble."
But, being territorial doesn't fly anymore, Ray said.
"If you're so afraid to take something on for fear that that line may
someday be crossed, then the newspaper and your readers are not being served."
Back to NINA Home Page