Readers of Ohio’s largest newspaper, The Plain Dealer, were greeted with a personal letter from the publisher on Sunday’s front page yesterday. While the overall message was one of warm-fuzzies, it was sprinkled with apocalyptic distress.
Said Terry Egger (PDF), “The changes in our industry make it an exciting time to be in the news business – and a challenging one. We face the most difficult advertising environment in our history, yet remain a talent-, time- and resource-intensive operation, from start to finish.”
Checkout the entire message here.
Opening the Sunday paper – which I mostly read for the coupons – readers were greeted with a two-page, full color spread about the paper entitled, “Making the ‘daily miracle.’” In addition to how the paper is produced and distributed, messages from employees and readers were included. And, of course, we get to hear from advertisers:
“I consider the people at The Plain Dealer to be an extension of my marketing team. They come up with creative solutions to my marketing challenges and help me get our message out in Northeast Ohio,” says the VP of marketing for Dollar Bank. The president of Brunswick Auto Mart adds, “My Ads run in The Plain Dealer five days a week. We attribute some of our success and growth to our consistent presence in the newspaper.”
Big testimonials from some big brands, indeed.
In essence, the message was, “Look people, if you don’t start buying more papers and placing some ads, we could go away. Seriously! And you wouldn’t want a proud, longstanding institution like ours going away, do you? People will lose their jobs! No, seriously!
Civic duty and charity to sell the paper. Good luck with that.
Popularity: 10% [?]
June 30th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Joel as a native Clevelander I am sad that the PD isn’t doing so well but either is any newspaper and either is Cleveland for that matter. But I do remember as a little kid in the 70’s coming out onto our snowy front porch and grabbing our Sunday PD then coming inside. I’d immediately pull out the comics and stick the rest of that huge paper into the fireplace. That Sunday paper generated a lot of heat and some really pretty flames! I guess Clevelanders will have to buy Duraflame logs now.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:01 pm
The idea of civic duty is inseperable with the operation of local newspapers, Joel, and has been for about 150 years in this country. It’s also tied closely to the hip of the entire democratic system in the country. Please tell me these are not new ideas to you. You can argue that the PD (or any paper for that matter) executes poorly on its civic duty, and I’d probably agree with that. But that’s hardly an argument for getting rid of them. We just need institutions that do a better job of the mission.