The Sun-Times Says “Have It Your Way”
Important Details: All of a sudden the Chicago media scene is an uproar. The Tribune Company’s ownership is changing hands, surfacing many questions about the hometown Tribune. Now the scrappy tabloid Chicago Sun-Times is moving forward on a number of fronts, multiplying its offering to customers, all around the familiar Burger King-like theme: have-it-your-way. The Sun-Times slogan is “Let’s get into it.”
Just recently, the Sun-Times (whose Sun-Times Media Group parent company, which includes 100 suburban papers as well, saw a 8.6% decline in overall revenue to $418 million) has announced:
- “Jump2Web”, a feature that encourages readers to move from the print stories to more, deeper and/or more local content on the web;
- The Sun-Times PM Edition, a new print-it-yourself afternoon “e-mail edition” of about 12 pages. Heavy on the stock market close, latest news and sports, and puzzles. The idea is this: open up your browser, print out the latest Sun-Times edition and take it on the bus or train home;
- A new electronic replica of the paper, available for a subscription fee or by single copy price, published on the Olive Software platform;
- Adding to the 17 staff-produced blogs the paper already publishes;
- An expansion of community publishing initiative, NeighborhoodCircle.com. It’s now in three suburban communities and will extend to more. It’s a full-featured product, offering calendars, community posts, classifieds and lots of photos. The product looks much the YourHub family of sites, pioneered by MediaNews and Scripps, which Outsell detailed in the “News Publishers Move to Capture Community-Created Content” HotTopic;
- New two-page feature spreads in the daily paper, focusing on useful information themed by commuting, health, travel, shopping and neighborhoods.
Implications: The Sun-Times initiatives are in many ways symbolic of industry change. It’s the customer who is clearly in charge. Now it’s about trying to understand what that customer is saying. As those customers cool on the one way newspaper companies have offered their products — in newsprint once in the morning through home delivery or single-copy — now it’s about finding new ways to engage. Printer ink on 8 1/2 x 11 paper? On a laptop, through the constantly updating web interface? The day’s paper as printed, but available to read as a digital replica? Sure. Sure. Sure.
As a largely discretionary buy (newsstand sales make up 58% of its circulation as compared to the Tribune’s 16%, for instance), the Sun-Times may have a better feel on the pulse of what sells and what motivates readers. That’s good if the knowledge is quickly processed.
The question here is what will stick. Publishers can throw numerous new products against the wall, and most of the Sun-Times’ initiatives are ones that have been tried by other publishers over the last five to ten years. Determining stickiness very quickly is key. Pick the winners and invest in them. Kill the losers quickly. News publishers need to be careful not to create simply “romantic” products, those that nostalgically recall past print glories with various tweaks.
Growth in revenue will come mainly from advertising, and that’s why the kind of engagement intended by the social publishing experiment should be key. Early results from NeighborhoodCircle look uneven, with numerous photos posted but events and forums lagging. Seeding a community is one thing for publishers; learning how to feed and encourage it is quite another.