Founded and published since 1851, the New York Times has been known as the “Gray Lady”. This nickname originates from the phenomenal longevity of this globally recognized and well respected publication.
Bankruptcy
Not so for the locally available paper published by Brown Media. On the heels of their bankruptcy proceedings where owners walked away from $90 million in debts, primarily to PNC Bank only to re-buy the remaining assets ($22.4 million) and live to publish another day.
Lies (as alleged)
Today it was revealed in the Dayton Daily News that Brown has been overstating their circulation numbers since 2008 by as much as 18% to their advertisers. (the rate charged to advertisers is based primarily on the number of papers distributed and sold)
There was no information provided in the article if these inflated circulation numbers were also being shared with those who continued to loan operating capital to Brown Publishing in 2008-2009. What was most revealing in the article was the candor that publisher Frank Beeson had with the situation where the falsification of circulation data was considered more as a housekeeping function rather than an unethical business practice.
Kick Them While They Are Down
That’s not very nice… It’s easy to sit here behind my digital ivory tower and cast aspersions on how others do business. Knowing that the editors and leadership at Brown Publishing read each and every post that is published here on TippNews DAILY, I guess I have a bully pulpit to speak directly to them, so here goes…
You Should Have Listened
Your readers were sending you messages.
They were telling you that your layout was tired and predictable. They were recognizing that your original content was thin and your syndicated content was abundant. They appreciated your regular deliveries until you ceased making them regular. They noticed when the Sunday edition could no longer line the birdcage a whole week, but now only lasted until Wednesday. They wondered why “Advertise Here” became your unofficial slogan. They were irked when you charged them to read news on the web as well as at the newsstand. They didn’t understand why you couldn’t search for information on your website and why stale and erroneous information was never removed. They never appreciated their favorite writers being laid off or furloughed. They never understood why the Neighborhood Section wasn’t available each and every day.
Your advertisers were sending you messages
Their ads got smaller. The phone stopped ringing. Their ads were made less frequently. The phone stopped ringing. You had to beg and offer deals. The phone stopped ringing. You offered useless syndication to far off lands when their customers are all local. The phone stopped ringing. You first invented and then popularized the advertorial (the print version of an infomercial).
The phone stopped ringing.
Our Relationship
Short lived as it was, TippNews DAILY and the Record Herald (first the Sunday Record Herald and then the Weekly Record Herald) shared hot stories in Tipp City and West Milton, cross promoted each other and even shared a journalist or two. I lost count the number of people who started to buy the Herald once its existence was made known on TippNews DAILY, Get Social! Radio and other popular media venues. I even stood up in a City Council meeting and swung a copy of it in front of council members seeking said recognition.
Then staff started getting furloughed and laid off, reporters became “stringers” and an editor was ‘sent to Siberia’ and replaced with an outsider. Things got cold.. fast. The Tippecanoe Gazette announced its existence and was welcomed to town with vitriolic hatred by Frank Beeson himself in a facebook post.
Calls and emails that I made to Brown Publishing managers regarding advertising opportunities and partnership ideas with TippNews DAILY fell on deaf ears/eyes. Your die was already cast wasn’t it?
On Plagiarism
Just last week the Record Herald published online a story about Saturday’s Ginghamsburg “K2K Sale”. What made it unique was that they included links to Facebook, copied my unique (and erroneous) abbreviations and generally promoted the event in the way that I would. After a quick check using Copyscape, the article that I wrote on Thursday for TippNews DAILY and the one that Record Herald published on Friday were 87% the same, with only two words being different.
My peers in publishing were not surprised to hear this allegation, as it has been a problem in the cut-throat publishing market in the Miami Valley for a long time. When you don’t have a story, you go and copy it. Apparently.
The Rub, (if there is any)
TippNews DAILY has no formalized copy infringement policy. We never intended to need one.
News is provided to TippNews DAILY as freely as the news is read from it. It’s not that TippNews loses anything from a plagiarizing news agency, but that nothing should be gained by an organization who fails to provide attribution.
You will find throughout the nearly 1,000 news posts that when a story or part of a story is fielded from another news agency it is provided attribution both in text, as well as with a link to the original story. We regularly provide attribution to WHIO, WDTN, Dayton Daily News and Darke Journal as well as to their individual contributors/reporters.
I guess that over the coming weeks you will see some sort of policy drafted by our attorneys to protect TippNews DAILY from becoming the ‘stocked farm pond’ for less than ethical news agencies looking for original content.
What Comes Next?
Well, Brown will have to figure out how to make payroll without a huge line of credit from PNC Bank. They will have to work through how to make payments to both capital investments and operating expenses at the same time. They need to let successful appendages like Matt Bayman’s N-75 project work unencumbered and take flight. They need to embrace the electronic world and let news be free and their value added product (the paper itself) be a value. Think of the news as the razor.. Cheap, ubiquitous, found anywhere. The razor blade however is what people really buy a razor for. What will your publication provide to readers and advertisers that adds real and tangible value without “for pay” news?
Who knows what they will do. Even though I have both of my feet firmly planted in the digital world, I do appreciate and continue to encourage local businesses to advertise in publications that make good business sense for them (like the Tippecanoe Gazette). The word as printed on paper does have a defined shelf life, but as long as the publication is relevant, respected and the content is smart and engaging it should be looked at positively by businesses and the community alike.
While the Ugly Lady may continue to breathe another day, there may yet be hope for them.
