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Arkansas SPJ Diamond Journalism Awards entries sought APA Legislative Report
Arkansas Press Association
Publisher Weekly Vol. 16 | No. 05 | Thursday, February 4, 2021 | Serving Press and State Since 1873
Ad conference speaker to offer revenue ideas
Newspaper publishers and advertising managers who are now trying just to keep their heads above water are probably reluctant to dive head-first into something new. That’s why Shannon Kinney of Dream Local Digital stands ready with a life preserver. Kinney said she recognizes the dilemma faced by newspapers with limited resources during a time of economic challenges for the newspaper industry. However, she is confident that working to broaden digital advertising and marketing will be a benefit to even those newspapers who initially are concerned about their ability to do just that. “Even taking a couple small steps can dramatically impact revenue, and when you have more revenue coming in, it’s easier to take on more,” said Kinney, who will be the featured speaker at the 2021 Arkansas Press Association Advertising Conference next month. “Revenue does fix a lot of problems,” she said. Kinney said she expects to help Arkansas newspapers either get started with digital advertising or learn new ways to expand their existing digital advertising and marketing footprints. She will discuss ways to facilitate digital revenue growth and offer some industry trends about what’s happening nationally with digital advertising. Continued on Page 2
Postal service rate increases on the horizon The modest postal rate increases that newspaper publishers absorbed last month may not be stable for long, predicted Matt Paxton of the National Newspaper Association. In a column in the association’s newsletter, Paxton warns that significant rate increases may be ahead. In January, USPS periodicals rates remained “basically unchanged,” Paxton wrote. The rate for unsorted mail increased, but most newspapers use software for pre-sorting and walksequencing their mail. The increase for out-of-county newspapers was around 2 percent.
Paxton warned that the future outlook is not so good for postal rates, explaining that the Postal Regulatory Commission authorized the U.S. Postal Service to raise rates “above the current price cap based on the CPI, to cover the costs of USPS retiree health costs, to address the costs of falling average mail pieces being delivered to each delivery point, and to deal with loss of revenue caused by certain classes of mail not covering their costs of delivery.” Paxton said the allowable increases could be between 7 and 9 percent and marketing mail could increase from 5 to 7 percent. He noted that those increases would be
just for this year, and that newspapers can “expect increases in this range for the next four to five years.”