Event Review: Advertising Week 2009
The Ad Club of Toronto celebrated Newspaper Day 2009 on January 30th. The best buyers, planners and sales executives in the newspaper advertising industry were honoured with the People’s Choice Awards. A panel discussion also took place to entertain and boost the newspaper representatives during these difficult economic times.
“What is black and white and completely over?”
“Give up? It’s newspapers.” This was Jon Stewart’s response to the spiraling downfall of the U.S. newspaper industry. But, not so here in Canada, according to Ken Whyte, publisher and editor-in-chief of Maclean’s, who moderated the panel of experts on why newspapers are current, engaging and controversial in today’s media landscape.
Ken began the panel discussion by painting a positive picture of the Canadian newspaper industry. “Unlike the U.S., the Canadian newspaper industry is much healthier,” said Ken. “Our revenues are holding up, we have competition here, which is a great thing. We are a more literate culture and have a stronger newspaper industry. All the online news is impressive. We will get through this difficult time and be in good shape. People are passionate about the business and they give me faith for years to come that it is in good hands.”
How does the survival of the newspaper fit into advertising week? It is like National Post’s Duncan Clark said, “The newspaper plays a key role in defining the brand; it speaks to people. People trust the brand, not the printed newspaper.”
How do you build a good newspaper and therefore a strong brand? In our web 2.0 world, a newspaper needs to constantly engage with its readers. It needs to keep a pulse on what they want in order to build and reinforce the newspaper brand.
According to CP24 news anchor Omar Sachedina, “people want to be a part of the process.” He cited iReport, a user-generated news site, as an example of how people want to be heard, especially when there is breaking news (like his show). “In order for print to survive in has to take more effort, it has to be something worth picking up; adapting to changes; a cross pollination between newspaper and web.”
The Globe and Mail’s arts reporter James Bradshaw agreed with Omar and cited the innovative reporting of the recent shooting in Ossington subway on The Globe’s liveblog using Cover It Live software. Although it sparked debate about the privacy rights of the shooting victim and his family possibly finding out of the incident this way, the live dialogue kept it from growing into a bigger issue.
“Take narrowcasting and make it broadcasting,” said Janice Neil, ideas editor for J-source and journalism teacher at Ryerson. A multimedia journalism approach, integrating print, radio, television and internet will help the newspaper industry continue to survive. “It is (also) important to reinforce the values of the craft of journalism, by reporting accurately and having a balanced view.”
“Keep the audience engaged no matter what form it takes,” Duncan said to reinforce Janice’s point on taking a multimedia journalism perspective to strengthen a newspaper’s brand.
“Finding ways of appealing to the sense of the hyper local audience,” added Janice. She cited the success of community papers as one of the mediums that is saving newspapers. Strengthen the brand at the local level.
So, is the newspaper a dying media? According to the panel of experts, the newspaper is not going away as the traditional source of news. “Bloggers still rely on the traditional news organizations for content, so the paper will not go away,” according to Duncan. Apparently, as long as a newspaper has a strong brand (by doing all the above) it will carry on through the current economic crisis—and beyond.
I certainly hope that the newspaper survives. I would miss the tactile feel of it between my fingers. But, when the big wigs in the newspaper industry are transitioning over to more online news and cutting back, such as the National Post and The Globe and Mail, I can’t help but see a big death cloud hanging over the industry. The media landscape is transforming the news “paper” into news “digitally,” whether that is through broadcasting, radio, mobile or the Internet.
Do you think the newspaper is a dying media? Are our children in 10 years going to ask what a newspaper is?
Connecting this back to Advertising Week, does this mean that as long as a newspaper has a strong brand, they will have a loyal readership and therefore advertisers? And, perhaps survive at the local level?
Note: The People’s Choice for Buyer/Planner was awarded to Cynthia Rubino from Cossette and Elaine Dickson at Metro won for Sales Executive.
Maria Koukopoulos has more than 13 years of writing experience in the fields of media relations, public relations and marketing in the technology, corporate, and non-profit sectors. Her first passion is writing, having a flexible skill-set to write for a variety of audiences. Her second passion is promoting Canadian people, events, products and services.
Maria runs her company, Media Scribe, and is currently a member of the International Association of Business Communicators in Toronto and is the Director of Communications for the Alliance of Independent Practitioners.
