July 26, 2005

By JOHN KIRKPATRICK
Editor and publisher, The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News

Kirkpatrick

Consumers in central Pennsylvania now have a choice in formats when it comes to their newspaper.

There is the 151-year-old Patriot-News filled with news from around the world, the state, the region, the municipalities and the neighborhoods that make up our community. There is also the brand new Patriot, a compact edition of The Patriot-News, that has no jumps, is saturated with color, and is filled with the important news of the day for time-starved readers who want a quicker read and a tabloid format.

Both cost 50 cents. Both are available Monday through Friday, home delivered by 6 a.m. or at newsstands and racks throughout the region. The readers choose which one they want.

Those of us at The Patriot-News have believed for some time what the entire industry knows: We need to speed up the rate of change to meet the challenges of our marketplace and grow. The alternative is to see our market position erode. The need to try new things is a little more urgent for us because we are in a slow-growth market and can't count on thousands of new people moving into our area each year.

Over the years we have made many changes to our paper to meet the needs of our readers.

Time and time again, however, our experience with the broadsheet showed that when we made changes to accommodate time-starved occasional readers, many of whom read us on Sunday but not during the week, we would alienate our core readers while not attracting new readers at the same rate. We believed strongly that our greatest opportunity for growth and expanding our reach was with this group, many of them in their late 20s and 30s, and predominately women.

We came to the conclusion that giving readers a choice was the path to reaching that group, and would allow us to expand our market and grow. We have seen it work in the food industry in general and at Hershey Foods in particular. For example, you can now buy 10 kinds of Hershey kisses.

The question was how.

Because we were the first paper in the United States to head down this path there was no one else from whom to learn. We realized we were going to have to figure this out ourselves, that we would have to work together as an entire newspaper, and we would have to truly listen to consumers.

We learned many lessons. Among the most important revolved around our staff.

Click on the above photos to view larger versions.

It turns out that "Just because it's always been done this way doesn't mean we can't do it differently" can be a powerful message. It turns out that going to the folks on the front lines, presenting all the available information and being willing to answer any question — no matter how painful — is a powerful tool. It turns out that when you ask each and every staff member to make this "his" or "her" project and to take a leadership role, it actually works. It turns out that taking advantage of, rather than working around, the interdependence of departments not only solves problems but creates opportunities. It turns out that when you put your trust in the staff, they do amazing things.

In the end, our ability to solve myriad problems came down to one thing: the whole paper coming together. Establishing the need by putting the vision out as an idea, not as a mandate; building a consensus among every part of the newspaper and with each person no matter where they fit in the operation; explaining the goals; getting everyone involved;  communicating through department-wide meetings, newspaper-wide meetings (our first), newsletters, individual or small group sessions, and then communicating some more; all were critical to the process. All were time consuming.

But out of that we found we had leaders and managers (often without the formal titles) at all levels who were willing to be bold, to question assumptions, to look past roadblocks and ask "what if?" Our staff in every part of the operation took ownership. They found solutions. They were creative. They found ways to work with each other.

In the end, folks throughout the paper embraced one underlying idea: it was better to forge our own future than bemoan our fate.

Nearly everything changed between our first prototype covers and what is on the street right now — the name, the design, the editorial focus, how we were going to sell, how we would print it, and much more. For a while, any particular decision lasted about a day. A final decision lasted about a week.

What didn't change was hearing from time-starved and occasional readers that they would value a compact version of The Patriot-News. They wanted a paper infused with our values — the integrity of the news columns, the honesty of our advertising, our commitment to the community — but not necessarily bound by the traditions of the broadsheet.

Here are some of the key things we discovered from focus groups and other feedback since our launch on May 19:

1. This group of readers is overwhelmingly NOT interested in a dumbed down "youth publication." In fact, they are resistant and even resentful of one in our focus group sessions and what we've heard since. They don't want fluff. They want real news, especially local news, in a condensed form. Thus this product is editorially driven — which is not only a matter of integrity, it's what we do best.

2. These busy readers were clear that they would not go out of their way to get the paper. Since the launch, they have proved that over and over again. We were planning on single copy only, sold in normal outlets as well as places like health clubs. Instead, they have told us over and over that we almost had to place it in their hands. So that is what we are trying to do. We had been planning to print this at the end of the press run and have a small, additional group of distributors get it out on the street (much work had been done in this regard). We switched to printing it in the middle of the press run, allowing for home delivery along with the broadsheet. At first, we didn't understand how important it is to have the newspaper where these time-starved readers are, when they are there. It is our job to make that connection. It is a lesson we are still learning. We are learning new ways of selling.

3. Advertising needs to be proportional to the news. If it is, it will have great impact. That means getting second ads for the compact, devising complex conversion charts, and much more. It is a huge undertaking. The easy way out would have been simply to reduce an ad until it fits, but we didn't think that would work long term. On the other hand, while both local and national advertisers have had lots of questions, nearly all have been behind the idea of growing full paid circulation with the compact edition. They have certainly been willing to work with us each step of the way. They were hungry for us to try something new, especially if it skewed to time-starved women.

4. Marketing gurus do not get excited by simple, literal ad campaigns but this type of promotion is essential. Our ad agency's first clever and inventive ideas fell flat. Clarity and simplicity were what resonated with potential readers. We are still learning this lesson. Our first set of radio ads were humorous. No one thought they worked. We are now switching to something even more straightforward.

5. Doing this while you are strong, with a strong brand, really helps. We heard over and over that people liked us but simply didn't have time to read the broadsheet. Getting the news in a convenient format from us was far more valuable to these readers than we had imagined.

When people ask us "how did you do it?" often what they mean is: how do we manage the logistics of producing two formats on deadline, five days a week? To make things even more challenging, because we didn't know if it would succeed, we tried to do as much as possible with existing resources. In the end, we added two full-time positions on the desk in the editorial department.  No other positions we created.

Here were some keys to making it work for us:

1. To create time on the press, we collapsed two daily zoned editions (Lebanon and Carlisle) into our final edition. We added two additional pages to Final to accommodate the Lebanon/Carlisle stories, and redesigned our Local/State section to highlight the news from each region. This was a painful move. Our bureaus had worked hard to make these editions competitive with small dailies in Lebanon and Carlisle. We were all concerned. We had heavy financial and emotional ties to those editions. The newsroom made numerous other changes for the compact related to workflow, schedules, news meetings and more. But the zones were the most visible to readers and advertisers. So far, reader reaction has been very good.

2. The advertising side of this is extremely complicated. At one point, the folks trying to work all the details said they should meet on the roof so it would be easier if they decided to jump. That project is almost as big as launching the tab.

3. We were spending more and more money on a smaller and smaller telemarketing pool, as well as other ways of getting new broadsheet subscribers. We decided to move that money to the new project.  That was a big gamble for circulation. Our goal is not to migrate readers or undo the broadsheet; it is to expand the market. But we felt the long term potential was much greater on the compact side. Then, working with hundreds of independent agents, more than 400 single-copy outlets, introducing address-specific home delivery, and keeping the broadsheet moving forward was no easy task. This remains a constant juggling process.

4. IT needed to make sure page pairing and all our systems worked for this project. That meant putting other projects on hold.

5. To save money and make this work, we run our State edition broadsheet in a straight mode. Then we run the compact in a collect mode. We then run Final in a straight mode again, keeping our Final off time the same. It is also a challenge managing the compact's newshole in eight-page increments (necessary because we run collect) — we want enough space to be a valuable news source, not so much that we use filler and defeat the purpose of giving busy readers a tight edit.

We might not have taken the step to offer consumers a choice had it not been for a few things:

1. Watching The Hershey Company, which is in our circulation area, continually expand their market by offering choices.

2. We had already converted our Sports section to a tab and had found that we were attracting new readers — especially women and casual sports fans — to the section. They liked the new format and we were able to sell more advertising into sports than ever before.

3. Our culture had evolved over the years to one in which trying new things, experimenting, and sometimes taking risks to meet the needs of our readers and advertisers is more the norm than the exception.

One of the questions we are always asked is: "Do you plan to discontinue the broadsheet?" The answer is no. We didn't do this to transition our readers from a broadsheet to a tabloid product. We did it to offer our readers a choice. We did it to grow. We did it as another step in securing our future.

In the end, however, it isn't what we want. It is what the consumers want. We'll see what they say and respond accordingly.

Regardless, almost everyone involved believes this has been a worthwhile process.

In his blog First Draft, Tim Porter recently wrote: "Change is hard. Disregarding traditional thinking in favor of new ideas without guarantees of success is hard. Doing journalism differently is hard."

We learned, however, that it can also be fun and rewarding.