During the month of April we held our Employee Update Meetings here at The Herald News, Taunton Daily Gazette and O Jornal. These are meetings when we periodically gather employees to update them on how we are performing financially and operationally, share with them our key upcoming operating priorities and initiatives, and answer their questions about our company and our strategic path.
Our Spring meetings went remarkably well. Our employees, as always, were fully engaged and enthusiastic about our progress and direction. Their questions were thoughtful and insightful, and they offered input and recommendations toward further improving our plans. Exactly as we had hoped.
We shared a very ambitious 2012 plan that promises to further accelerate our company’s multimedia transformation and improve our relevance to our audiences and business clients. We shared seven (7) key drivers, or areas of focus, for our 2012 planning including: Revenue growth, revenue diversification, digital evolution, audience development, product improvement, employee engagement, and productivity. We also shared an outline of the key initiatives that will support these areas of focus. We have an ambitious plan including: Accelerated social media diversification; a build-out of our online marketing services business; improved and modernized customer service operations; a reporter mobilization strategy; development of our e-books product line; a significant rejuvenation of our online automotive platform; an innovation of our advertising pricing and packaging models, and so much more. I look forward to sharing details of these programs in upcoming posts. Stay tuned.
In addition to sharing our performance and operating priorities, this season’s Employee Update Meetings took a bit of a different course. Our management team felt that it was important to provide context to our plans through the articulation of a mission and purpose statement. Our multimedia company, like others, is undergoing significant transformation as a result of technological innovation and changing consumer habits. In such a transformative and disruptive environment, it is critically important to provide employees with a base, a set of core beliefs and principles, that can help to define decisions for them. Either providing context for decisions that I or our management team may make, or to guide their own day-to-day decisions in the performance of their own jobs.
In addition, we feel strongly that a company with values resonates with stakeholders. Employees want to work for such a company and customers want to do business, as well, with a company that stands for something. Articulating these core values and principles for our employees was a first step in communicating for all what our company stands for.
As an introduction to the meetings, we shared this video to lay the groundwork for our overall messaging. Employee Meeting Intro Video
In this spirit, we articulated the following Mission Statement for our company and our employees:
“We believe that journalism speaks for the individual, checks abuses of power, stands vigilant in the protection of democracy, the public’s right to know, and freedom of speech and of the press.
We are committed to our duty to providing the tools necessary to the informed practice of citizenship and empowering and uniting the public in the cause of promoting good government.
We always endeavor to inform and empower members of the community; enhance democratic values; and act as a watch dog on government administration and officials; all while cognizant of our position of advantage and its consequent obligations.
We publish our news in a bold, fearless and independent manner adhering to the highest ethical and professional journalistic standards; independent in all things, indebted to none.
We never compromise our editorial independence or integrity, nor tolerate censorship of any kind. Our news is always of the highest quality, authoritative, informative, enlightening, objective and useful.
We provide provocative news stories, credible investigations, and dutifully record the history of our community and its people. We are fundamentalist in our belief that a community must know itself in order to act in its own best interest.
We serve as a community platform for opinion. We are committed to providing a voice to the people, providing exposure to a greater number of diverse perspectives, and fostering the public discourse that is essential to a functioning democracy.
Our own expressed opinions provide an independent perspective, are sensitive, challenging and intended to provoke active and constructive discussion and debate.
We believe that honest and transparent dialogue leads to direct empowerment of the people, improved responsiveness and accountablility from public officials, and improvement in the quality of life for all residents.
We believe that the best means to acheive our mission is to build an economically strong and enduring company. We pursue our business interests with honesty and integrity through a relentless focus on continuous improvement and delivering value to our stakeholders.
A company dedicated to its financial stability and prosperity stands strong in its independence and is well positioned to deliver its community service obligations.”
These concepts aren’t new to our media organization or to our industry. Much of the mission is borrowed from entities we respect. The important idea for us was the articulation of our purpose for our employees to provide context for our decision making and to help guide their own. This mission hopes to assist our company toward the realization of self-organizing behavior that drives the speed of our organization and value for our customers at every touch point.
We also felt it important to condense these concepts for our employees into a memorable and actionable statement that captures the essence of what it is we do. “Engage. Inform. Empower. Repeat.” is our charge, every day. A to-be ubiquitous statement of a few simple guiding principles, a common point of view, a set of core beliefs built around a common vocabulary, that will drive complex, but coordinated behaviors throughout our organization.
We seek to engage our community, as well, in helping us to fulfill our mission and community service obligations. In coming weeks we will be reaching out to our market to panel a Community Advisory Board to work with us to guide us in the fulfillment of our purpose. If you have an interest in joining us, please drop me a note at sburke@heraldnews.com and I would be happy to provide further information.
Related Reading:
http://www.blogsofsteel.com/paperclips/2011/10/packaging-and-pricing-innovation/
Here at The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette we’ve worked hard over the last five years toward developing an inclusive and participatory management culture that emphasizes input and contribution shared freely across all of the functions of our business. For sure, each of our managers have day jobs: Our editor is responsible for ensuring that our content is relevant, timely and useful; our operations director is directly responsible for managing our manufacturing vendors to ensure the highest quality output and that our distribution operations are operating effectively; our advertising director is responsible for effectively marketing our multimedia products and services; and on it goes across all of the functions that comprise our value chain and business.
But when our management team comes together as a group, we strive to emphasize an “ownership model” where we approach the whole of our business as active owners. Our team feels free to share insight and input into any and all of our operations, and each welcomes the input without defensiveness. It is truly an egalitarian approach that enables our business model to be entrepreneurial, innovative, and adaptive, and to grow through the contributions of all. It is quite easy in most businesses to hunker down into a silo mentality, where operational defensiveness leads to atrophy and stagnation…Not here. We welcome the constructive contributions and participation of all, and use that input to constantly improve our business.
We invite our circulation director to provide his experience and perspective on content. We welcome our editor to assist on rate and pricing strategy; we encourage all of our team to contribute their input toward the betterment of our overall business. We’ve created a dynamic and inclusive culture that values input from all. We’re all owners and take responsibility for our collective success. I couldn’t be more proud of the culture we’ve created, the contributions all have made to our progress, the professional maturity of our leaders, and the advances we’ve made in rejuvenating our business through the contributions of all.
On Friday we announced the promotion of our Editor-In-Chief Lisa Strattan to the role of Associate Publisher. This is, no doubt, an important professional step for Lisa and a well-deserved recognition of her contributions to our success. Lisa has truly embodied our culture of ownership and has made countless contributions, across all areas of our business, toward the improvement of The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette.
As importantly, this organizational change is a statement about our commitment to the full engagement of all of our managers toward our success. Lisa does a terrific job of running our news operations, but has never limited herself to that. She has eagerly transcended the classic editor role and enthusiastically, and respectfully, contributed to our organization on countless levels.
Congratulations to Lisa on her new role and responsibilities. I look forward to her continued contributions to our success, and to those of our entire organization where we will continue to welcome participation from all.
None of us individually are smarter or more capable than we are collectively. A culture that we reinforce every day and one that we expect will continue to drive our business forward.
If you are a business leader, what kind of culture have you developed at your organization? Have you developed an inclusive culture that enables contributions from all of your managers and employees? Has this worked for you or what obstacles have you encountered? Leave a comment here or drop me a note at sburke@heraldnews.com. As always, I welcome your thoughts and input in the discussion.
We are pleased and excited here at The Herald News to announce a new promotional partnership we’ve joined with the Fall River Office of Economic Development and local business to bring an exciting new Restaurant Week event to the Greater Fall River community.
Coming June 8th through 17th, this ten-day location-based event will provide local residents throughout the region an opportunity to enjoy the cuisine of the SouthCoast through specially developed Restaurant Week menus featuring 2-course lunches for $7.99; 3-course dinners for $19.99; and 4-course dinners for $24.99. Participating restaurants will offer several options within each price range. We anticipate terrific participation from local restaurants resulting in a wide variety of styles and options for residents to choose from.
Our Restaurant Week program and participating restaurants will be supported by a full promotional schedule including color print ads in both The Herald News and our Thursday RSVP entertainment magazine; Online display and rich media advertising at both HeraldNews.com and the website of the Fall River Office of Economic Development; Full point-of-purchase marketing and signage; As well, the week will be covered extensively in the pages of The Herald News and through a special Restaurant Week edition of RSVP coming Thursday, June 7th. Look for it in your copy of The Herald News!
Our program will also feature a dedicated and comprehensive Restaurant Week website at DineInGreaterFallRiver.com where you can find a list of participating restaurants, menu selections, video interviews with chefs, directions to participating restaurants, and so much more.
In addition, the program will feature a full social media component including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and FourSquare where restaurant goers can share photos, comments, and reviews about their Restaurant Week experience. The program will also feature a reader promotion where you can enter-to-win a $50.00 gift certificate to one of the participating Restaurant Week restaurants.
There is an abundance of ways in which you can participate and share in your experience with other restaurant goers and the larger community.
To learn more stay tuned to the pages of The Herald News and HeraldNews.com where information about the event will be coming soon. Also, visit our dedicated website to be launched on May 24th.
Our advertising staff held an enthusiastic launch event last Thursday. The program included comprehensive informational packages for each sales rep, an incentive program, and featured dining-themed props designed by our Editor-In-Chief and resident foodie Lisa Strattan. A nice touch. Our advertising staff is underway encouraging local restaurant owners to join our program through a series of marketing program options and the endorsement of the Fall River Office of Economic Development. Early indications are that the program is resonating strongly with local business.
Herald News Multimedia Account Manager Kate Lindia participates in the Restaurant Week kick-off event.
We are very enthusiastic about our new program and hope that is will grow to become an annual event in the Greater Fall River community.
If you are a local business owner and would like to learn more about this exciting program, leave a comment here or drop me a note at sburke@heraldnews.com. I’d welcome an opportunity to share details with you.
Related Reading:
http://www.blogsofsteel.com/paperclips/2011/01/event-marketing-partnership/
Here at The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette we are implementing an ambitious, multi-faceted 2012 business plan that promises to build on our recent successes and to accelerate the pace of our multimedia transformation. I look forward to sharing more of the details of the various aspects of our plan with you in future posts.
One key aspect of our plan that I’d like to share today is our focus on building upon our hyper total audience growth and further developing our relationship with that audience through deeper engagement and interactivity.
Our plan is multi-dimensional, but certainly emphasizes expanded use of social media for the distribution and improvement of our content and engagement with our audience. A first step toward these ends has been the development of social media channels for members of our advertising staff (primarily LinkedIn) and our reporters and editors (Twitter and Facebook.) Our goal is to expand on the engagment and interactivity of our staff with our various audiences including readers and advertisers.
For example, in our newsroom we are looking for our reporters to not only distribute their articles to fans of theirs, but utilize social media further to crowdsource for story ideas; as a channel to identify and engage story sources; and to interact with our readers about their content, among others.
We are also seeking to introduce our own content into social media conversations related to the topics we cover. As well, our interaction won’t be limited to any one social channel, we will look to expand to other channels where our readers can be found.
Be sure to check out our HN Twitter Directory by clicking here and follow your favorite HN editors and reporters.
As a further example, we are also seeking to enhance our Opinion pages across multimedia dimensions focusing on engagement and interactivity. We will look to further engage our audiences in the discussion and debate by creating platforms to enhance interactivity and improve the level of discourse.
We are also expanding our use of social media within our customer service areas to engage with users within the channels they are growing more accustomed to using for intereaction with companies with which they do business. We will be establishing social media channels dedicated to customer service and will look to become more proactive in our efforts, monitoring social channels for service disruptions and responding immediately…Hopefully resolving service disruptions before you ever have to place a call to us.
These areas represent only a few of the ways in which The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette will look to improve our products and services to you through more involvement, engagement and interactivity. We look to evolve our business such that we are defined as a true social enterprise where we are engaged in meaningful conversations with our employees, customers, partners and other stakeholders. We look forward to the mutual benefit of these conversations adding value not only to our products and services, but toward building relationships and trust. We’re excited about the possibilities these new technologies and platforms represent and are eager to leverage them toward the improvement of your experience with our company.
If you have some ideas about how we might further improve our products and services, I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment here or drop me an email at sburke@heraldnews.com. As always, your ideas and input are welcomed here.
Related Topics:
http://www.blogsofsteel.com/paperclips/2011/04/media-2-0/
http://www.blogsofsteel.com/paperclips/2011/02/interactivity-and-engagement/
http://www.blogsofsteel.com/paperclips/2011/02/theheraldnews/
Regrettably, the Paper Clips blog has been down for several months as we’ve dealt with technical issues, but I’m glad to now be back up and sharing again some behind-the-scenes commentary from and about The Herald News and the media industry in general. I’m confident that all of our technical challenges have been resolved and we’ll not have a repeat of the extended downtime we recently experienced. Many thanks to Jon Shubow for all his help in getting us re-started.
It has been a very busy time and I have much commentary I’d like to share on several events that have occurred during our hiatus including an exciting partnership we are developing with the Fall River Office of Economic Development on an upcoming Restaurant Week promotion; Insight on the development of our 2012 Business Plan and some of the new and exciting products and programs you can expect to see from The Herald News in coming months; As well as some background on the very difficult manufacturing outsourcing program The Herald News implemented in early February. More to come on those topics, and more, in future posts.
In the meantime, I am very pleased to share that The Herald News, Taunton Daily Gazette, The Fall River Area Chamber of Commerce & Industry, and Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School are again partnering to bring to you the 2nd annual Bristol County Home & Garden Show. Building on the terrific success of last years partnership and event, this year’s expo promises to be bigger and better yet. With more exhibitors, more product and service offerings, and more workshops and seminars, this year’s event will be informative and fun for the whole family. Please join us on Saturday, March 17th from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School at 251 Stonehaven Road in Fall River to join the fun. Admission is free, but your $1.00 voluntary donation to the HN/TDG Holiday Fund is welcomed and appreciated.
One of the exciting new features of this year’s event is the digital and social media aspects of the program. If you are unable to attend this year’s event you can participate virtually as the event will be live-tweeted…Follow our hashtag at #BCHG on Twitter to keep up with the action and activities. In addition, you can view offerings from participating exhibitors by visiting our Home & Garden Show Pinterest board at http://pinterest.com/hnnow/bristol-county-home-garden-show. Feel free to share with your friends and neighbors interested in home and garden improvement.
In addition, you can visit the Home Show on our Facebook Events page at https://www.facebook.com/events/370404686317066. And, as always, our Home & Garden Show microsite at HeraldNews.com (click here) will provide continuously updated content to help you to see your springtime home and garden project to successful completion.
Look for your copy of the Spring Home & Garden Guide including the Home Show event pull-out section in your Sunday, March 10th edition of The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette.
As always, I invite your feedback and welcome ideas to continue to improve our home and garden show. Leave a comment here or feel free to contact me via email at sburke@heraldnews.com. Your input is welcomed here.
The Herald News is pleased to host a live Mayoral Debate on Monday, October 24, 6:30 p.m. at the Matthew J. Kuss Middle School, 52 Globe Mills Ave., Fall River.
Watch as candidates Mayor Will Flanagan and Cathy Ann Viveiros debate the important issues that will shape the future of our community. This will be a Lincoln/Douglas-style debate that promises to be most informative.
The debate will also be streamed live through our website at www.heraldnews.com and air through our partners at Fall River Community Television and Fall River Government Television.
The Herald News is proud to continue to be the number one news and information source for our community. You can keep up-to-date on all the local political news at our dedicated site at http://www.heraldnews.com/politicker.
The Herald News invites you to join us in participating in the democratic process.
The Herald News, Taunton Daily Gazette, O Jornal and all of our sister GateHouse Media New England newspapers and websites are proud to once again bring our collective energies together, along with readers and local business, to “Paint It All Pink” for breast cancer awareness.
The month of October has become associated with the now-familiar hue, and as we have for the past three years, our company, our employees, and the newspapers and websites we publish have made a very substantial statement with our “Paint It All Pink” program to raise awareness and funds toward the cure of this deadly disease.
In addition to the very visual statement made by our daily newspapers and websites on Sunday (and today to O Jornal), our titles will be filled throughout the month of October with news stories on the latest treatments; profiles on people in the community committed to spreading awareness and offering support to victims; features on groups and individuals contributing to the cause through their fund-raising efforts; and much more. Our most compelling and inspiring content include the personal stories shared by survivors and those touched by someone close to them who has coped with cancer.
This is truly a whole-company effort. Our news staffs have stepped in to provide comprehensive coverage and human interest stories related to this terrible disease; our advertising teams have spread the word and enthusiastically encouraged local business to join us in support of our efforts; our circulation and marketing folks have developed a comprehensive plan to raise awareness, the visibility of the program, and donations; and our press group have managed the myriad logistical details to bring the pink newspapers to market, among others. And most encouraging of all is the many employees who have made individual contributions in their own way.
The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette will donate 10 cents for every copy of our Pink edition sold in stores and, additionally, will donate $5.00 from any new or renewed credit card subscription purchased during the month of October, among other exciting fund-raising activities. Last year GateHouse Media New England donated close to $25,000 to the cause and hope to raise yet more in 2011. We hope you will join us.
We think our newspapers and websites look pretty in pink, but more importantly, we’re offering a wealth of information and opportunities for you to share your stories about this important issue and help us raise money toward a cure.
http://www.heraldnews.com/features/x1461791165/Help-The-Herald-News-Paint-it-all-Pink
Here at The Herald News, like most legacy newspaper companies, we are aggressively transitioning our company to meet the new demands of a world transformed by technology and innovation. We are a 140-year old company historically defined by the means in which we’ve distributed our product: Newspapers. We are working hard to reposition ourselves to our audiences as the true multimedia news and information company that we are.
We still proudly distribute our product through the traditional newspaper channel, but today newspapers represent only one of many platforms we utilize to engage and interact with our audiences including online, mobile, e-books, social media, and more. We are meeting the changing media consumption needs of our readers by diversifying the ways in which they can engage with our news across a variety of platforms.
On the commercial side of our business where we work with local, regional and national businesses to offer advertising and marketing services, we face an equally daunting repositioning task. Where in the past we offered only print advertising options to our advertisers, today we offer a complete line of multimedia business solutions. From expert marketing consultation and creative services, to print advertising, online display, search, and behavioral targeting products; to mobile, events, and direct mail, among others. In addition, we offer a full array of online marketing services including website development, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media marketing, reputation management, and more. And the ability to integrate it all into a cohesive multimedia business solution. We have always been a media company, but today we are a true multimedia company.
Offering these integrated multimedia solutions to businesses is truly just an extension of what we’ve done for generations. We’ve always offered marketing services to business, today we’ve just expanded our product and service offerings as the market’s needs have grown.
The Herald News, and many in our industry, are discovering marketing complications in our multimedia transition related to packaging and pricing and the subsequent communication of a simple value equation to the marketplace. Because each of our products carry their own nuances related to their pricing structures, it can lead to complication in conveying a simple program and price to our advertiser clients. For example, our print display advertising is priced by an historic per-column-inch method; our online display advertising is based on the concept of share-of-voice; our mobile platforms are marketed on a modular/fixed price basis; pre-print and print-and-deliver programs are priced on a cost-per-thousand basis; direct mail products are packaged and priced on a fairly complex set of criteria related to targeting and distribution; and online marketing services are commonly priced on a fee basis, for example.
Our Multimedia Account Managers can integrate these various products and services into customized packages for our clients, but when asked for detail on component pricing, explaining the complicated pricing mechanisms for each of the various media can be cumbersome. This complexity often inadvertantly re-directs the client’s attention away from the value and solutions orientation of the package and into the depth and complexity of the pricing.
A key priority of ours and the next step in our multimedia transformation will include a need to simplify our product pricing strategies. We offer significant solutions to the market, but too often the value gets lost in the complexity.
Our goal is to create a simple manner to convey our advertising and marketing services and their related pricing. I envision a more standardized method for pricing our various products including a consistent modular approach across the various platforms.
On an ala carte basis, advertisers could purchase most of our products in the more intuitive style of quarter, half, and full pages in print, for example, and similar configurations for online display, mobile, etc.
These modular programs would then be supported with an audience-based approach to marketing our products and services. Potentially we could market through a simple audience-based matrix where business decision makers would simply choose parameters such as audience, impressions, targeting, time, and impact, among others, to coney their marketing needs. From there our sales team would create the integrated multimedia programs to meet these business needs. Supporting the package with a more standard and simplified pricing approach across the various product and service categories would lend to a much simpler means to convey value to our clients.
In addition to simplification, we’re also researching successful pricing programs in other industries that may represent innovation to our own. Newspapers and media companies tend to approach pricing innovation in a more incremental manner. We hope our research and testing will lead to more disruptive pricing innovations that offer value to our clients and sound economics for our business.
We’re actively working on these programs, but they are very much in development. If you have an interest, I would welcome your input into this most interesting challenge. Leave a comment here or drop me a note at sburke@heraldnews.com. As always, your contributions are welcomed here.
Related topics:
http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/paperclips/2011/08/05/b2b-multimedia-repositioning/#axzz1ZWvMNZ52
