Arkansas Publisher Weekly: August 18, 2022

4 8

Little Rock overhauls FOIA handling, mayor appoints Betton Guest Column: A key question: What’s next?

Arkansas Press Association

Publisher Weekly

By John Foust

Vol.17 | No. 33 | Thursday, August 18, 2022 | Serving Press and State Since 1873

Marshall got out of Dodge City, moves to Arkansas Vincent Marshall, the new managing editor of The Villager Journal in Cherokee Village and The News in Salem, is one happy camper.

“I lived in Dodge City, Kansas, for 30 years,” he said. “We are outdoorsy people, and we need trees, lakes, rivers. We hike, we camp and we just started fishing. In Kansas, the closest lake was an hour away. Now we have seven just down the road from us.”

It didn’t take Marshall and his family long to start exploring The Natural State. On the job for only a few weeks, Marshall had a pre-scheduled vacation planned and the family decided to see as much of their new surroundings as possible.

“We checked out Mirror Lake, Mammoth Spring and Cherokee Village,” he said. “All the things that we could do outdoors, we did. I didn’t realize how beautiful Arkansas is. Why didn’t we know about this sooner?”

Marshall had been the managing editor of the Dodge City Daily Globe since 2018. As part of CherryRoad Media, Marshall was privy to job openings across the company.

“In February, I heard that CherryRoad bought nine newspapers in Arkansas and Missouri from Rust Communications,” he said. “I called Jennifer Fisher immediately and asked if I could transfer to Arkansas.”

The Marshalls visited the Villager Journal over the St. Patrick’s Day Continued on Page 2

Vincent Marshall

Register now for newspaper business model webinar

Teri Finneman

APA is hosting a webinar, Redefining Your had to say, and present feedback from the Newspaper Business Model with Research, publishers piloting the proposed memberships, e-newsletters and events model, as well as on Thursday, August 25 from 1:30-3:30 p.m. answer questions about the research project.

Dr. Teri Finneman, associate professor of journalism at The University of Kansas, has Joey Young, owner of Kansas Publishing been leading an 18-month research project Ventures, will also be sharing his perspective to test a new business model based on data as a publisher and research participant during collected from rural publishers and readers to the webinar. help weekly newspapers adapt, survive and The cost to attend is $20 for members and $30 thrive in the 21st century. for non-members. Register at arkansaspress. org/event/APAWebinar. For more information With the study now in its final stages, email info@arkansaspress.org.

Finneman will review in the live webinar what weekly newspaper publishers and readers

Marshall got out of Dodge City, moves to Arkansas

Continued from Page 1

holiday, they toured the house they eventually bought and they got out of Dodge City on June 18. All seven of them: Shauna Marshall, Vincent’s wife of 13 years; and their five children, Peyton, Ethan, Jariah, Xander and Zaibree.

Marshall’s first day as managing editor was June 20, but his story begins long before that.

Marshall got his start in the industry when he enrolled in journalism classes in 2009 at Dodge City Community College. He then applied for his first journalism job at the Daily Globe in 2011.

“I didn’t hear anything from them so I thought that was the end of it,” he said.

He worked odd jobs, not thinking about leaving the town he grew up in. Then three years later, he got an unexpected ding in his inbox.

“In 2014 – out of the blue – I got an email from the Globe,” Marshall said.

“They wanted to send me on a practice assignment. I was assigned to cover a model train show. They must have liked it, because then they hired me as a reporter.

I have no idea how they found my threeyear-old application, but I’m glad they did.”

Four years later, Marshall moved up to managing editor.

When Marshall first started at the Daily Globe, it was a GateHouse publication.

Marshall recalls working with a small staff, but still not alone. After the GateHouseGannett merger in 2019, a hiring freeze was implemented. Marshall had to run the daily newspaper by himself.

“I worked in Dodge City, which had a population of 35,000,” he said. “I lived 20 minutes away in a town of 2,000, so I am used to small-town, community-focused, local journalism. Gannett had us publish a lot of non-local content. The major reason for that is most of these newspapers were so understaffed. It was the business plan.”

In 2021, Gannett sold the Daily Globe to CherryRoad. “When the Globe was sold by Gannett to CherryRoad, we were able to go back to locally-reported news.

That’s something that we really needed in Kansas, and now with a weekly (in Arkansas) that’s even more needed.”

It was a straight job transfer for Marshall to move from the Daily Globe to the Villager

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

The Marshall Family

Journal and The News. However, in this case, the company he was transferring within made all the difference. “We came to Arkansas as first-time homebuyers, which was risky in itself. I don’t know if I would’ve taken that risk otherwise.”

Marshall’s horizontal career move to managing editor also includes working as a team with two other CherryRoad staffers: Renee Janes, editor, and Elaine Brown, reporter. Together, the three of them produce the news content for the Villager Journal, The News and The South Missourian News in Thayer, Missouri.

“I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone other than CherryRoad because of local focus,” Marshall said. “It’s a weird word to say ‘allowed,’ but with CherryRoad we are allowed to do as reporters and editors what is needed to bring news to the community.

We keep everything local—good or bad.

We started doing that when CherryRoad took over in Kansas, and now I can bring that same local energy to the weeklies.

The company relies on the people in the locations who know what’s needed and what the local communities want. They gave us the resources we needed to make that happen.”

2

Marshall said the newspaper in Salem, and the newspaper’s audience, had been neglected for a while, and with the team approach much of his initial attention had been focused there. He also sees opportunities ahead for all three newspapers, and a big part of that is community focused.

“I had put in for my vacation in January for July,” Marshall said. “The vacation was still in the books with the transfer, so we just stayed around here and hiked. During that time off, I went into the DMV, I said my name and everyone knew I was the newspaper guy. People actually read the paper here!”

Marshall is thrilled to get back to the basics. “Editing and assigning stories, press releases, and my own reporting— especially courts and crime, which have always been my specialty. My first week here I had a breaking news story on an ongoing murder case. I am admittedly a true crime junkie. Now I can go out into the community.”

The Kansas transplant is working on resetting his internal clock moving from Continued on Page 4

August 18, 2022

Marshall got out of Dodge City, moves to Arkansas Continued from Page 2

a daily to a weekly, and also learning the Arkansas legal lingo. “Familiarizing myself with tax entities, learning what a quorum court and a Justice of the Peace are.

When a journalist moves, they have to learn different titles and language for all the same things they were covering back in their previous state.”

Updating the websites and software for the three newspapers is also part of CherryRoad’s plans, and Marshall sees this as a great opportunity for him and his teammates to put less effort into the technology and more into reporting.

“Even though we’re a weekly, we can free up more of our time to do more breaking news online with the rollout of software updates. We will be able to upload content onto our websites and social media immediately. The new editing software goes live on Monday, and then the design team based in Kansas will be handling that part of the job. This gives us so much more time to focus on content.”

One old technology he wasn’t used to, however, were newspaper racks. “Gannett did away with newspaper racks,” he said.

“Some gas stations had them. Walmart and a few grocery stores had them, but basically no racks. It’s so nice to see them out in the community and people walking by and picking up our paper.”

Regardless of the new bells and whistles, for Marshall the focus needs to always be on what is best for the community. One public need that he sees that might be in

jeopardy is public notices.

Marshall believes public notices are an essential part of the service newspapers offer to both the community and government. In Arkansas, notices are still required to be published in newspapers, but that isn’t the case in Dodge City.

“As I was getting ready to leave Kansas we got in a fight over public notices with our city government and they won,” Marshall said.

Earlier this year, Dodge City changed the designation of the legal newspaper to allow the city government website to serve in place of the newspaper.

The newspaper went from a TuesdaySaturday publishing schedule to Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, making it a semi-weekly. “CherryRoad changed our publishing schedule from five days a week to three,” he said. “The city’s reasoning was they needed specific published dates on the legal notices per the statute, and our schedule change hurt our ability to accommodate that need. And, of course, they thought this would also save them money.”

Marshall saw flaws with both of those arguments. “There was no reason to do what they did. First, our newspaper website publishes notices daily and all notices continue to be published in a timely manner. No one is going to go to the city website and read all those legal notices, but they come to ours. And second, their budget was $2.3 million going into 2022,

and it was only costing them $10,000 to print notices annually.”

“In the midst of moving here – fighting and losing this battle — it was a lot to deal with, but that’s what journalism is for. We’re the watchdogs.”

For Marshall it’s not about the $10,000 in lost revenue. For him it’s about a lost public service. “My old ad manager always hated me for this—I don’t care about the money,” he said. “It’s the news. I let the ad people deal with the financial side to keep us operational. The public awareness and information is where my focus always is.”

Marshall is also adjusting to the changing public notice platform, but he knows it is a benefit to both the public and users.

CherryRoad publications are adopting the same public notice platform as APA – Column. APA’s Column platform rolls out on August 28, and many CherryRoad publications have already started using it.

“For me it’s just a matter of figuring out what system the company is going to go with, and how we need to adjust on our end to make sure it goes off without a hitch,” Marshall said.

After workdays filled with the adjustments of a move and taking the reins of two new newspapers, the Marshalls continue to fully take in what the natural state has to offer. “This is absolutely the perfect place for our family. I’m so glad I got that callback three years later, and I’m so glad the opportunity worked out to move here.”

ARKANSAS NEWSPAPER CONNECTION

NEWS NEWS

Are you hiring? Let us know!

The Arkansas Newspaper Connection is a weekly newsletter published

by APA connecting freelance and independent writers, editors, photographers and designers with Arkansas newspapers in need. The publication also lists available job openings and other opportunities at Arkansas newspapers and associate member organizations.

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

3

NEWS

NEWS

NEWS

August 18, 2022 NEWS

LR overhauls FOIA handling, mayor appoints Betton Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott, Jr. announced that Chief Deputy City Attorney Alex Betton will lead the newly aligned FOIA Division and ordered an overhaul of the City’s procedures regarding public requests for information.

According to the news release, the city receives hundreds of requests every year for records covered under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. Over the years those requests have grown in breadth and complexity, one of the factors that has contributed to a delay in response times.

“I came into office with a pledge to be accountable, clear and transparent. We’ve done that by making hundreds of city records readily available on our open data website and being accessible to the public through outreach programs and City Hall pop-ups,” Mayor Scott said. “Even so, there are ways we can improve our FOIA procedures to expedite responses and improve communications with requestors.”

City website updates include a web form and link to directly submit a request or to contact the city’s FOIA coordinator. The city will also post frequently requested

records online for public access.

Earlier this year, Mayor Scott approved the purchase of new software to process FOIA requests more efficiently and effectively, but HR has faced delays in its implementation. Known as NextRequest, the software includes tools to help reduce staff time needed to gather and prepare documents, resulting in faster responses to requestors. FOIA requestors will be able to access documents with a secure log-in, which is especially helpful when dealing with large attachments that exceed an email account’s size limits. Chief Deputy Betton will oversee its implementation by Sept. 1.

The city will also conduct FOIA refresher training for all department heads, and Mayor Scott directed staff to eliminate some internal procedural steps that had unintentionally slowed the process of responding to requestors. Betton has also been empowered to discuss with requestors whether the city may need additional time to respond to complex or broad requests.

“We take FOIA requests seriously, and it has always been our intention to reply

Alex Betton

to them completely and promptly. Doing so is a priority,” Mayor Scott said. “I believe these changes will result in a much-improved process, and we will look for additional ways to improve how we respond to FOIA requests as needed.”

PIOs to meet with reporters in free SPJ-hosted event The Arkansas Pro-Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is hosting a live and web event titled Public Information Officers and the Press: Advancing the Free Flow of Information, at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 30.

The discussion-style event is about the relationships between public information officers and the media, and moderated by KATV reporter Brenda Lepenski. Featured speakers include Bill Sadler, PIO for the Arkansas State Police, and communication directors Cindy Murphy of the Arkansas Department of Corrections and Aaron Sadler of the office of Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott, Jr. The discussion will be streamed live from APA headquarters, and participants are welcome to attend in person or join on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public.

Attendees should RSVP to steve@ arkansaspress.com and are welcome to bring a brown bag lunch. Submit questions and comments for discussion to arkansasSPJ@ gmail.com or tweet @ArkansasSPJ.

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICERS AND THE PRESS

Advancing the free flow of information 11 a.m. - Noon

Tuesday, August 30 Attend in person or online Arkansas Press Association 411. S. Victory St., Little Rock https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89982273967 4

August 18, 2022

Southwestern Electric Power Co.

Serving customers and communities in 13 Western Arkansas counties (SWEPCO) serves 543,000 customers in three states, including 123,000 in Western Arkansas, 233,000 in Northwest and Central Louisiana, and 188,000 in East Texas and the Texas Panhandle. SWEPCO’s headquarters are in Shreveport, La. SWEPCO also serves wholesale customers, including the cities of Bentonville, Hope and Prescott, Ark. SWEPCO is a unit of American Electric Power (Nasdaq: AEP), one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, delivering electricity to 5.5 million customers in 11 states.

Customer Service: 1.888.216.3523

24-hour News Media Info Line: 318.673.3060

Outage Reporting: 1.888.218.3919

Information on power outages: www.swepco.com/outages

facebook.com/swepco

twitter.com/swepconews

instagram.com/swepco

SWEPCO.com

youtube.com/swepcotv

Newspaper leaders to tackle the industry’s challenges The America’s Newspapers Senior Leadership Conference for newspaper publishers, owners and leaders will be held Oct. 16-18 at The Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans.

The conference includes interactive discussions on critical issues facing the newspaper industry. Sessions provide opportunities to learn from industry peers and share experiences.

Judi Terzotis, president and publisher of The Advocate/Times-Picayune, and her team will go through a number of their initiatives at their offices.

Topics for discussion include The State of Local Newspapers: What Advertisers Really Think, Life in Community Markets, Dealing with Economic Challenges, Revenue Evolution, a case studies showcase and the business of diversity and inclusion.

The Senior Leadership Conference is open to current newspaper members of America’s Newspapers and their guests.

Guests should not be affiliated with the same organization as the registering attendee, a member of another business serving the industry or an employee of a newspaper organization.

For more information or to register, visit https://events.eply. com/2022SLCNewspaperExecReg

SENIOR LEADERSHIP

C O N F E R E N C E THE ROOSEVELT HOTEL | NEW ORLEANS, LA

Minority-owned media see advertising growth In a report in DigiDay, minority-owned media including Blavity, Black Enterprise and Revolt have seen ad revenue grow since several large agencies made spending commitments last year, and due to the work those publishers have done to develop relationships with advertisers and invest back into content.

In 2021, Publicis Media launched the Once & For All Coalition, a two-year initiative with a three-fold mission: to tackle the removal of barriers to financially support minority-owned media, to invest in a range of content and to create guidelines of best practices to directly invest in them. Fortyfour Publicis clients belong to the coalition.

Separately, Nielsen is part of the alliance, but is also working on its own independent effort to track minority media spending.

Blavity, Revolt and Black Enterprise are seeing increases in ad revenue and new

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

advertisers year over year.

Blavity’s ad revenue has grown 56% in the first half of 2022 compared to the first half of 2021, according to Morgan DeBaun, CEO of Blavity. Blavity is working with more than 50 new clients this year, mostly in the CPG and consumer technology categories. Blavity’s ad business growth is also partly attributable tvo the addition of seven multicultural publishers to its ad network, Blavity Culture Network Black Enterprise’s ad revenue increased 92% since 2021, said Justin Barton, senior vice-president of digital strategy and partnerships, to DigiDay. The company went from having one campaign with AT&T in 2019 that was “a little under a million dollars,” to now running 60-70 different campaigns from new advertisers like Verizon, Bank of America, Citi, Mastercard, Braun, Nationwide, Rocket

6

Mortgage, Estee Lauder, Ben & Jerry’s, Dove and Samsung.

Black Enterprise’s traffic has grown from less than a million monthly unique visitors in 2019, to 6.5 million unique visitors in June 2022, according to Comscore data.

The company has hired 10 new writers in that time, with plans to hire five more before year’s end, Barton said.

Revolt has brought in over $100 million in ad revenue in the past year, which is a five-fold increase since 2020, according to Mike Roche, executive vice president of sales and partnerships.

Read the full story here: https://digiday. com/marketing/agencies-latest-deiinitiatives-aim-to-dig-deeper-intosystemic-challenges-for-diverse-andminority-media/

August 18, 2022

Guest Column:

A key question: What’s next?

By John Foust Gregory talked to me about a lesson he learned in his early days of selling advertising. “In one of my first presentations, the prospect rejected my ideas for a new campaign. Back at the office, my ad manager must have noticed the stunned look on my face. When I told her what happened she didn’t want to know the gruesome details. She just asked, ‘Okay, so what’s next?’

“That turned out to be great advice. I sat there and gave myself a good talking-to.

Nothing could change the fact that my sales presentation had fallen flat. But what I could change was my approach to that reality. Instead of giving up on that new business prospect, I dove back into my notes, reflected on our conversation during my presentation, and developed another campaign proposal. The new ideas were accepted, and I’m happy to say that company became a consistent advertiser.

“What I learned is that it’s important to look ahead,” Gregory said. “Think beyond what is happening right now and be ready to change directions.”

Gregory’s story reminds me of an old Bob

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

Hope line in a movie I saw on TV: “All I’ve gotta do now is figure out what I’m gonna do now.” If we look beyond the doubletalk of that gag, we’ll see some real truth.

Our biggest challenge is often figuring out what to do next.

In fact, I believe one of the most important business questions we can ask is, “What’s next?” These two little words represent a deliberate focus on the future. This is especially true in a profession like marketing, which demands constant evaluation and adjustment. Considering the current situation as a new starting point, what’s the next step? If we expect to make any progress at all, there should always be another step.

Let’s say you make a big sale. I heartily recommend that you celebrate your success and share the glory with your teammates. But after the high fives at the goal line, it’s not a good idea to camp out for a long time in the end zone. Things will not stay like that forever. The game goes on. There’s a next step.

What if consumers don’t respond to the current offer being made in an advertiser’s ads? Do you keep running the offer again

8

and again, hoping that something will change on its own? Or do you analyze the plan and make some adjustments?

If you’re a manager who notices that morale in your department is sagging, what can you do to make things better?

(Please don’t say, “team building activity.”)

Do you hope the situation will go away “when the economy improves?” Or do you take the initiative with a little interdepartment research to get to know your team as individuals? Let them help you determine the next step.

It’s not complicated. It’s simply a matter of evaluating the current situation and asking yourself, “What’s next?” Keep answering that question and you’re on your way. (c) Copyright 2022 by John Foust. All rights reserved.

John Foust has conducted training programs for thousands of newspaper advertising professionals. Many ad departments are using his training videos to save time and get quick results from in-house training. E-mail for information: john@johnfoust.com

August 18, 2022