Good speakers, big trade show make for wild America West

RENO, Nev. -- Does the U.S. newspaper industry really need another technology conference and trade show -- especially one in Nevada, which NEXPO visits every three or four years?

Apparently it does, judging by the reactions among the crowd of more than 400 people at the first America West, held here Oct. 23-25.

On the drawing board for more than five years, America West emulates America East, a popular regional conference held in Pennsylvania for more than 40 years. America West was sponsored by the press associations of 16 western states and provinces, under the leadership of the California Newspaper Publishers Association.

Attendees were enthusiastic about the conference, while at the trade show some suppliers grumbled about sometimes-empty aisles -- and many acknowledged that an inaugural effort would need a few years to pick up steam.

America West's organizers were effusive in their praise for the pioneering exhibitors.

"The vendors really stepped up to the plate," said John Bates, the Cnpa executive director. More than 110 companies had booths, ranging in size from Sysdeco and System Integrators to BMF Newspaper Accounting Systems.

Two compartments
Session topic: "The future of the newspaper industry -- will I have a job in 10 years?"

"I hope so," answered P. Anthony Ridder, chairman and chief executive of Knight-Ridder Inc. "The company's name does bear a striking resemblance to my own last name."

The longtime newspaper executive cautioned his audience at the conference session focused on the years ahead that "my future job prospects hinge on the same factors as yours -- our abilities to serve customers as never before.

"As an industry, we're confronted with change. Technology is changing at warp speed and we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg."

Ridder spoke about readership -- "only one in four Americans pays close attention to news" -- and the non-newspaper options advertisers have gained in the last 25 years. "Direct mail gets 20 percent of all ad dollars and that shows no signs of abating," he said.

But, Ridder said, there's more to the story: "In a given week, 80 percent of U.S. adults read either a daily or Sunday newspaper. Virtually every newspaper company's newspaper division will show record earnings.

"Despite all the sound and fury about the threat of the Internet," Ridder said, "there's been no impact on our core business ... yet."

The former publisher cautioned the audience: "We also have to confront the biggest enemy -- ourselves."

Ridder recited a litany of customer complaints, ranging from late-arriving papers, to jammed coin mechanisms in vending machines, to advertising typos, to zones configured without retailers in mind, to late press runs, to "color reproduction that looks like an impressionist painting."

In interviewing one advertiser, Ridder said, the retailer told him he would take his business away "in a heartbeat" if he could. Doing business with the newspaper was like "walking over broken glass," the retailer said.

"Now, at further risk of sounding like the village scold," Ridder said, "the absences of talking about our core competence -- gathering the news -- is bad. A newspaper of quality must be a strong editorial voice and must be committed to public service."

"Quality journalism and profits go hand-in-hand," he said.

In approaching new media, Ridder said papers should divide themselves into two compartments -- Compartment 1 is the "here and now," Compartment 2 is the Internet and electronic publishing.

Compartment 2, Ridder said, "poses new and disturbing challenges to our industry."

Newspapers "are leading all other media" in the development of electronic on-line media, he said, with more than 400 U.S. papers on the World-Wide Web.

"Our newspapers on-line must be innovative; they cannot merely be our print product on-line," Ridder said.

In closing, the Knight-Ridder chief said, "Will you have a job in 10 years? Absolutely, as long as we're willing to embrace change and serving our customers far more reliably than we ever have."

New media noodling
New media issues dominated the conference Friday morning, with speakers from newspapers and the companies that are supporting newspaper new media efforts.

"I love newspapers and subscribe to three," said Steve Larsen, vice president of business development at CitySearch of La Crescenta, Calif., in preparing to assess the differences between print and on-line products.

Saying that "the Web is expensive," Larsen outlined research his company has compiled and done itself. "Every user group that we survey ends up telling us they are frustrated with the time it takes to find things."

Web penetration is "at best" five to nine percent of the U.S. populace, Larsen said, with 61 percent of users accessing the Web at 14.4 kpbs or slower, which is "quite an unsatisfactory experience."

The new media executive exhorted the crowd to balance the things newspapers are strong at -- content development, advertiser relationships -- with the new media's strengths -- innovative business models, design presentation.

In parting he warned: "Newspapers need to stop defining themselves by their media and start defining themselves as a brand."

Sharon Smith sees the issues from both sides of the fence.

As sales and marketing director for the New Horizons Group in Pottsville, Pa., Smith is responsible for selling new media to newspapers (New Horizons makes the Info-Connect audiotext systems) as well as handling new media for New Horizons' parent, the 29,000-circulation evening Pottsville Republican.

The Republican is one of the first affiliates of InfiNet, the Norfolk, Va.-based Internet service provider, that isn't a paper controlled by InfiNet's joint owners -- Landmark Communications, Knight-Ridder Inc. and Gannett Co. Inc.

"You don't need to be a major metro to be successful in starting and launching a web site," Smith told the audience. With "limited resources and limited staff" the Republican has been able to do "innovative things on the Web," she said.

Smith explained how her publication has leveraged its place in the community in a variety of ways: