Fuel the offense in pursuit of advertising revenue
Jim Pumarlo
Jan 1, 2025
Publishers typically enter a new year with a lengthy to-do list. Among the greatest challenges is growing revenue in the fractured media landscape. Long gone are the days when the local newspaper was the premier advertising choice for auto dealers, grocers and Realtors, and the first stop for help-wanted ads.
Newspapers must remind and reinforce the importance of the local press to readers and advertisers alike. I suggest taking a cue from the sports playbook: Your best defense is a strong offense.
In other words, show the business community you have the pulse of local economic dynamics just as you document happenings in local public affairs, schools and sports.
Pay attention to and dedicate resources into everyday coverage of the broad business beat of employers and employees.
I don’t suggest the newspaper becomes a mouthpiece for the local chamber of commerce. That said, do not discount the importance of such organizations as a valuable source of interesting and educational news — and solid content. Create a mind-set to be the first to report news in the marketplace as well as from City Hall.
Brainstorm business coverage, and the standard fare of stories is likely to pop up. New businesses. New owners and significant management changes. New locations and expansions. Anniversaries. Merchants with distinctive products. Strikes and other labor stoppages.
Those stories should be reported, but business coverage is so much broader. The list is limited only by newsroom resources.
HERE’S A HANDFUL OF IDEAS THAT CAN BE PURSUED MOST ANY TIME
- Federal and state agencies regularly release a variety of economic statistics. Identify a handful and publish them. Select those where you can compare local numbers with state numbers; examine figures from a year ago. Expand the package with stories where you can illustrate stats with local faces.
- How important is international trade to your region? Provide a local perspective into the global economy, profiling local companies that are developing foreign markets.
- How are companies combating rising health care costs?
- More high school graduates entering college require remedial courses. What do local employers say about the quality of job applicants?
- How important is e-commerce locally? Are companies hindered by broadband access? How are businesses best delivering messages to customers?
Expanding reports about employers and employees is all about generating ideas. With a few easy steps, newsrooms can alert the business community to their interest in expanding coverage.
FOR EXAMPLE
- Include a notice with all advertising invoices asking for company news. Items can range from a new hire or promotion to a significant change in operations.
- Scour the want ads regularly. Are companies hiring to start up or expand an existing facility?
- Check out building permits for commercial activity.
- Utilities can be another source of business movement. Are services being sought, expanded?
- Tour the town. Take a different route to work or to lunch and pay attention to signs in vacant lots or in business windows. Is there news as yet unreported?
- Connect regularly with business and labor associations. They often have an ear to the ground on workplace activity. You may not be able to immediately report the news, but you’ll have a heads-up and be prepared when it happens.
- Don’t forget the collective eyes and ears of your entire newspaper family when it comes to searching story ideas. Advertising staffs are especially valuable in gathering leads on business news.
Demonstrate your interest in expanding coverage of the local marketplace, and you’ll likely be surprised at the flow of ideas. Package business news so readers immediately identify it as a section. Many stories many prove solid content for the front page, as well.
I hear the immediate pushback. Staffs already are pushed the limit covering the everyday grist. How can we incorporate a business beat? As with any new initiative, take baby steps. Set reasonable, achievable benchmarks.
Improving business coverage is a shared responsibility. Businesses must be comfortable that reporters can get the story right, and reporters deserve to have all the facts including those that may not be so flattering. It boils down to trust. Reaching a common understanding of business coverage is at the foundation of defining the distinction between news and advertising.
Begin a conversation among the principal players within your newspaper and within the community. Develop a plan and share it with readers in a column. Incorporating the marketplace into regular coverage can spell dividends for news and advertising departments alike.
Jim Pumarlo is former editor of the Red Wing (Minnesota) Republican Eagle. He writes, speaks and provides training on community newsroom success strategies. He is author of “Journalism Primer: A Guide to Community News Coverage,” “Votes and Quotes: A Guide to Outstanding Election Coverage” and “Bad News and Good Judgment: A Guide to Reporting on Sensitive Issues in Small-Town Newspapers.” He can be reached at www.pumarlo.com and welcomes comments and questions at jim@pumarlo.com.
