The biggest commotion at the AMA Richmond panel discussion today was when Jason Roop, editor of Style, asked Scott Christino, retail and national manager of the Times-Dispatch, about where Brick drew the line between subjectivity and ads disguised as news. The audience, previously subdued, went into a low, humming buzz, whispering “What’s Brick?” We’ll get to that later.
The panel was Christino, (T-D Guy); Aaron Kremer, youthful owner of richmondbizsense.com (Web Guy); Don Richards, vp and gm of Channel 12 (TV Guy); Roop (Style Guy); and Bob Willoughby, general manager of Cox Radio (Radio Guy).
Round 1. Style Guy is thrilled to be in publishing and journalism right now. Good journalism is, like the Colbert Report, truthiness combined with fun. TV Guy yada yada. Web Guy says richmondbizsense has 3,000 daily readers. Radio Guy is all about making marketing work. T-D Guy, who wears a pencil behind his ear the whole time, reminds everyone the T-D is also three websites that offer “electronic solutions.” Advertising is like diet and exercise. Done regularly, your business will have a long and healthy life.
Round 2. Radio Guy says consumers are time-starved and radio is the only portable electronic media. (Huh? Everyone at Panera is carrying laptops and iPhones, not radios.) It has low production costs, offers websites, and client endorsements. (I assume he means all the announcers telling you how much they love their mattresses, or poor Glenn Beck shilling investing in gold. Even the mighty Limbaugh does endorsement ads.) Radio can become part of your story! Even stations with low ratings have loyal, responsive listeners. Style Guy (reading my mind) pipes in with the iPhone KO. Twitter, Facebook…all portable electronic media. Score 1, Style Guy.
TV Guy says they’re always fighting the impression that TV advertising is expensive, when they’re actually “pretty flexible.” (i.e, we’ll take what you got now). “We were wireless before wireless was cool.” Even with all the media available, TV still reaches 80 percent of homes weekly, same as always.
Web Guy says he has a niche audience, and his niche is “salivating” over his website. He gets the who’s who in Richmond business. Plus, he has low overhead. No legacy expenses or pensions. Since they only do web ads, they are the master of web ad technology.
Round 3. T-D Guy says the Richmond Chic column in the Sunday Flair section is barely disguised advertising that produces big sales after an item appears in the column. Radio Guy fesses up that the air talent have deals to promote products. (No kidding?!) They all agree it’s important to keep the news clean of advertising to maintain reader trust. Style Guy crows they have more readers than ever between the paper and online and Style strives for news purity, even though it is sad when adside co-workers lose commissions because of it. So sad. TV Guy assures us that the viewers know it when they see ad placement where it shouldn’t be.
Did we all know it when 30 Rock made the goodness of McDonald’s McFlurries a critical plot point?
Radio Guy backtracked that “people are really not coming to us for news.” T-D Guy moved forward that news is never impacted by advertising. “There’s a wall, but there’s a door on that wall…” conceding that without advertising, nobody gets paid. Style Guy steps in for the take-down. “Brick?” (Which is not above letting restaurant owners write their own reviews at times.)
The AMA audience has never heard of Brick. There is a what-is-this-thing-called-Brick buzz. Is there a magazine that will give them all the editorial support they crave and they didn’t know about it? Where is this Brick? The cornered T-D Guy flounders and turns to his reinforcements, for lo and behold, T-D Director of Product Innovation and Strategic Marketing Frazier Millner is in the audience. She is always in the audience when anyone from the T-D appears anywhere, and they always default to her. She pops up like a jack-in-the-box. “Non-core product,” she declares. (I’m going to use that excuse whenever I do anything unethical from now on. Non-core product!!) I couldn’t hear what else she said because my table was still aroused and rumbling about what-is-this-Brick? Brick should have been at the door, passing out cards. A fortune in advertising and product and story tie-ins was there for the taking!
Score 2 for Style.
Round 4. Audience member wants to know where marketeers can park their good news. Style Guy has two products, Giving and Belle, the latter soon to be a monthly, as avenues for success stories. T-D Guy says there’s not so much good news, except for the Public Squares they host. “I never saw an organization so open and engaged with the community,” he gushes.
Style Guy comes back with Style is a free publication so they know their readership wants it if they pick it up. Advertise with them and you’re “fishing in a well-stocked lake.” TV Guy says TV ads deliver with emotion. The average household has as many TVs as it has people. Everyone is watching what they want. Is TV also a well-stocked lake?
Young Web Guy said he thought his readers were going to be young, you know, with-it Web 2.0 types, but instead they’re older business people. Surprise! We oldies gotz mad web skillz! Web is the only media outlet actually growing. Radio Guy says 93 percent of everybody listens to the radio every week, and 70-something percent listen every day. (I miss the exact figure because a cell phone went off, which meant time-out for a round of cell phone jokes.) Radio advertising can be more creative. (It’s all happening in your mind!)
Cranky audience member says the mainstream media is relying too much on blogs and RSS feeds from dubious web sources for their online content and it’s confusing his clients because the blogosphere is not known for its truthiness. Style Guy says we’re not doing that. We all look at T-D Guy. (Hey, inrich.com, we're talking about you). TV Guy changes the subject. They get swamped with press releases which are useless to them. PR people need to develop a relationship with the assignment editor. Find out what they need. Give them only what they need. Not what you want. (This is the second time I've heard this. Nobody wants press releases.)
Round 5. What does the future hold? Style Guy can’t imagine newspapers will ever be completely dead. Good journalists will always be needed. TV Guy reminds us that 30 percent of people online are watching television at the same time. Web Guy channels Bette Davis. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. People will go to “where [the news] is well-written, well reported and they can trust it.”
Most of them agree that local content is the savior, and putting that local content behind a paid wall will save them. Like a peep show. Put in a quarter and turn the crank. See the local lady take off her clothes. Whoops. Show over. If you want to see more, pay another quarter. Radio Guy says local news is “more impactful to local communities.” I love being impacted. The conclusion: the media outlet that gets that and invests in the community will survive.
I would score this meeting Style: Win. TV: Place. Web: Show.
13 comments:
My God, I can't stop laughing. No one knows what Brick is . . . and it may well be the future of the Dead-Dispatch.
Great write-up, thanks. It sounds like I would've been tempted to make an ass of myself had I been there :)
"Most of them agree that local content is the savior, and putting that local content behind a paid wall will save them. "
Has anyone except porn and the WSJ made money putting stuff behind the paid wall? I'd love to see them try - that'd get me off my ass to really try to figure out how to make some money with CHPN ("get yer truthiness at the source, folks") , it would be so easy to eat some local lunches on that one.
The conclusion: the media that gets that and invests in the community will survive."
I've been saying for a while that the RTD should go completely local. We can all get better national/international elsewhere, but their resources turned to really more fully reporting Richmond-area news would be an awesome and engaging read.
Nice round-up Mariane. I thought about going to this, but I was busy with my own grad program in multimedia journalism. Now I feel like I didn't miss a thing.
RVA blogs aggregates more than 300 local blogs, many of which are not updated and have zero valuable content. But Richmond seems to be OK with RVABlogs. inRich aggregates a few dozen local blogs that they read, like and selected as good sources of information and they're confusing someone's clients. Really? I would rather read local news from trusted sources on inRich than one more post from Jack or Jocelyn any day.
Jason Roop lashes out at Brick and this is a big deal? Roop is just upset that Brick has more ads and more relevant content than Style at this point. Say what you will about the TD. They deserve a lot of it. But let's get something straight about Style and Brick.
Style ceased being a true alternative weekly many years ago. They still pass themselves off as an alt weekly on the reputation of what the publication used to be but the reality is they have aged out of serving that mission in Richmond. Style has aged. It got old. It's now nothing more than a poorly done weekend lifestyle section serving a thin slice of readership consisting of mostly a middle aged white women audience. When you're picking on the RTD let's not forget Style is owned by Landmark which is hurting so much more than MG that Landmark is systematically shutting down operations like Style. Get your resume ready Jason.
If you don't know what Brick is, you're no longer culturally literate of Richmond. I miss the humor of Pete Humes but I have to admit the publication has found itself and is far more connected to an alternative scene than anything else is the city except maybe RVA magazine. Style and Jason Roop along with it have been Bricked.
To the two Anonymice: I picked up a Brick and Style at random and was surprised how close the ad count was. Brick 31, Style 40, not counting ads in the classified sections. But many of the ads skewed to vastly different markets. Brick had mostly restaurants and nightclubs. Having done an entertainment paper for 11 years, I know those ads are hard to get because they can't afford to advertise and probably can't afford Style, or Style insists they pay on time. Or maybe Style insists they pay! So although the gap is definitely narrowing, Style probably has a more solid ad base dollar-wise. A lot of medical and doctor ads, I noticed.
I agree Style is not cutting edge and aimed toward the twentysomething art crowd as much (was it ever, really? Lorna Wykoff wasn't the tattoo type), but that's not a bad thing. It's a different thing. It was "alternative" to the T-D mostly.
I have never understood the adoration of Pete Humes. He is a good writer, but he has led two newspapers into the ground. During his reign, Brick rarely got more than 12 advertisers. Maybe there is such a thing as being too cool and narrow-focused that only 12 people get you. You can't do a sucessful newspaper like that. His editorships never seemed engaged beyond his own column and snarky replies to letters. What Brick still lacks is an editor at the helm (instead of the ad and graphics production department), to put some thought into the editorial assignments.
As for RVA Blogs, I agree it is a socialist concept in that everyone gets equal display, the good, the bad, and the truly bad. No one is passing judgment on what blogs are worthy there, yet the two you cite are strangely the most read. But I am still bemused that Media General doesn't separate out its blog feeds from the "real" news on the inrich.com site, and I can see how it might befuddle non-Web 2.0 readers.
Anonymous,
Were you at the AMA event? I wish you had been because you would have understood the context.
The question was whether the wall between advertising and editorial had changed with economic conditions. The T-D rep said it hadn't. I mentioned Brick as one case where Media General had indeed changed its business model from being an editorial-based magazine (under Pete Humes' direction) to one produced by the advertising department. That's not opinion, it's just the way it is, and Media General would confirm that (as a representative did at the luncheon).
I also said that most businesses enjoyed having a diverse mix of advertising, and that all of us on the panel were a part of that mix in different ways. And from a journalistic perspective, a community like ours should support a daily newspaper.
As for comparing Landmark and Media General's respective health from a business perspective, I'd be curious to know what criteria you're using to make that assertion.
We are proud and fortunate that we have more readers than ever between our print and online editions, and are launching new projects all the time (video features, mayoral forum series, arts exhibits, special sections, producing a CD of local musicians, new publications -- such as Richmond Giving and Belle, which is going monthly) and so on. We enjoy serving this community, and feel honored to do so, and the members of our editorial team continue to receive international, national and statewide accolades for their work bringing important and interesting information to light.
Regarding your criticisms of Style, I am happy to have a discussion with you by phone or in person. We enjoy reaching out to those who read and don't read our magazine. As for "cutting-edge," most genuinely cutting-edge papers would shudder at the word, but we certainly cover the arts and cultural community as well as under-covered corners of our city extensively. Anyone who read our recent Midseason Arts Issue or saw the lines out the door for the Ghostprint Gallery exhibit could testify to the variety and diversity of the crowd.
We are proud that our wide range of 66,000+ (Style Weekly - print) readers are engaged in the community, come from all walks of life -- and, yes, all ages. In fact, 40 percent of our 625+ Facebook friends are in the 24- to 35-year-old range.
Anonymous, I challenge you to sign your name to your opinion. For all I know you are a staff member at Brick Weekly, and that's fine. But if you are interested in discussing our coverage please let me know. You can reach me at 804-358-0825, ext. 323, or by e-mail at jason.roop@styleweekly.com.
Best,
Jason Roop
Editor, Style Weekly
I hope no one got the impression I was anti-Brick. I like Brick. I pick it up every week and read most of it. It's probably the best Help Wanted classified section in town. I'm impressed that Media General has left it alone as far as censorship and have let it survive this long (except they should get an editor for it.) I'm surprised MG hasn't tried launching more niche weekly tabloids because weekly niche tabs are the future of dailies.
To piggyback on what Mariane said, we aren't anti-Brick either. Brick clearly has some loyal readers and we understand the hard work it takes to put out a local weekly.
In fact, I broke the story about Brick's pending arrival in Style Weekly, suggesting at the time that Pete Humes was well-positioned to be editor and likely to be chosen (he was). Of course the model for Brick is different than it was at the time.
Unlike Anonymous, we don't feel the need to bash other media colleagues, and indeed reached out to many local competitors to have them become part of our mayoral forum series last fall.
We stand by our publications but we also support a robust local media scene. Although we don't consider Brick a market competitor, we overlap on some of the same audience. We've also shared some of the same folks who produce writing and photography (one exception being the restaurant that wrote its own review).
Competition for content and quality benefits all of our readers.
So can anyone name one cutting-edge thing about Brick? A story about the staff riding Segways?
This is crazy and should be beyond comment. Comparing Style to Brick is like comparing a spicy burrito to a chicklet. Style muckrakes, investigates and breaks news. Brick is like a hip press release. Even when it comes to arts coverage, I can't imagine anyone thinking Brick superior to Style. Does anyone even know what journalism is anymore?
What is this, the Mariane and Jason show? Style wins rounds? How completely sophomoric and simplistic. It was a panel discussion, not Point-CounterPoint! This pathetic "Style is great and all the rest suck," "their ads aren't as good," is so pathetic. If Style was so great, it wouldn't require so much defending. It would stand on its own merits.
Chip, We do let our publication stand on its own merits. I was happy to be a part of the panel discussion with media colleagues, and was only replying here to an anonymous comment left on this site. We wish no ill will on any print or broadcast outlet in town.
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