E&P 04'22

THE FEW — Veterans are finding a place in America’s media, but their numbers are low

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E&P Quick Reads E&P In-Depth KID SCOOP

Promoting news readership in the classroom......................................p. 6

GETTING TO KNOW GEN Z

News publishers need to meet Gen Z where they are, according to a study by the News Media Alliance..............p. 7

STONEWALLING THE PRESS AS POLITICAL STRATEGY

Limiting access to lawmakers is politically expedient, but press advocates say it violates the First Amendment.................................p. 9

THE CARDINAL NEWS

The new voice for rural Virginia......p. 10

PHOTO OF THE MONTH

Greg Little, editor and co-owner, Mariposa Gazette, Mariposa, California.......................................... p. 14

THE FEW Veterans are finding a place in America’s media, but their numbers are low . . . . . . . p. 28

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E&P Extras OPERATIONS

Rent-a-Pressman program allows papers and printers to get jobs done when staffing issues hit...................p. 26

CYBER THREATS TO MEDIA PROFILES COMPANIES ARE ON THE RISE Keeping up with Rex Hupkke........p. 60 Organized crime and state-sponsored bad actors pose a real risk, but simple measures help safeguard systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 36

New hires, promotions and relocations across the industry..........................p. 62

CHANGE IS COMING TO SECTION 230

I pledge allegiance… ....................... p. 74

NEWSPEOPLE

SHOPTALK

Pressure mounts as news publishers, politicians and even Supreme Court justices ponder the platforms’ future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 42

E&P SALUTES YOUR BUSINESS PARTNER POWERHOUSES. . . . . . . . . . . . p. 44

E&P Voices AD SALES LIFE

Three steps to engineer a better sales system with CPR.............................. p. 16

THE CORNER OFFICE

Getting to “no” — Sales skills are management skills........................... p. 18 editorandpublisher.com

NEWS MEDIA

Commentary through comedy — David Fitzsimmons........................ p. 20

INDUSTRY INSIGHT

The power and value of exclusivity....................................... p. 24

DIVERSITY SPOTLIGHT

Building better newsrooms — More consistent momentum is needed..... p. 22 APRIL 2022

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editorial

About our cover

S

pring! Here working in the industry in Florida, versus the 7% in our it’s my last audiences) is not only hope of some bad for the veterans, temperatures that it’s a negative for our don’t remind me of industry. In reading the hinges of hell. For our cover story, I hope much of our country, the takeaway is that it means budding trees military veterans bring and sprouting bulbs. knowledge, training In our industry, as in and life experience that many industries, spring we shouldn’t ignore. also brings conferences Raychel Youngacross the country. Mike Porter, the woman (my husband and our on our cover, is a } Raychel K. Young-Porter is publisher) and I recently out of uniform and ready to photojournalist capture life. attended the Borrell on a mission. You Miami 2022 conference. have only to visit If I had to give you a one-word her website, “Thrive in Chaos” synopsis for the conference, it would (https://www.raykporter.com), to be “influencers.” Influencers are more experience that mission and glimpse important than ever in our culture, but what she is all about. Originally from the influencers of years past are not Foster City, California, Raychel joined necessarily today’s influencers. Ask a the Marine Corps specifically to be a Gen Z friend or family member who combat photojournalist. She graduated spends a portion of their day on TikTok in 2017 from the Defense School of who the influencers are they follow. It Information in Fort Meade, Maryland, probably won’t be anyone you would as a photojournalist with the United have guessed (or maybe even know).

States Marine Corps. She attended the The young woman on our cover this Eddie Adams Workshop, was awarded month isn’t an influencer, but she could the Colton Family Award and recently and should be. She’s the face of our had one of her images featured in the cover story, “The few,” an in-depth look National Museum of the Marine Corps. at U.S. veterans in journalism. Mary She will soon join the speakers bureau Reardon wrote a riveting account of the for Military Veterans in Journalism. We journalism and public affairs training were so excited when Raychel agreed that many of our veterans receive to be on our cover. She’s a shining during their service, the skills they example of the possible benefits the learn and the paths they take (or not) military offers to the news media upon leaving the Armed Forces — and industry. We hope you enjoy learning why. The dedication and commitment about the wonderful veterans in our of the veterans who end up working in cover story as much as we enjoyed our industry to their craft are needed bringing it to you.  now more than ever.

Robin Blinder is The Military Veterans in Journalism E&P’s Associate is an organization you will meet in this Publisher and article. It was formed in 2019 to attract V.P. of Editorial. more veterans to our industry. Just as She has been any minority sector of our population, with E&P for the fact that military veterans are two years. under-represented in our industry (2%

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PUBLISHER Mike Blinder 406-445-0000 ext. 1 mike@editorandpublisher.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/VP OF EDITORIAL Robin Blinder 406-445-0000 ext. 0 robin@editorandpublisher.com INDUSTRY NEWS EDITOR Cindy Durham cdurham@newspapers.org CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Gretchen A. Peck gretchenapeck@gmail.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Rob Tornoe, Doug Phares, John Newby, Richard E. Brown GENERAL MANAGER Peter Conti, Jr. 804-852-5663 405-445-000 ext. 9 peter.conti@editorandpublisher.com BILLING AND ACCOUNTING 406-445-0000 ext. 0 office@editorandpublisher.com MEDIA JOB BOARD 406-445-0000 ext. 4 jobs@editorandpublisher.com SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES 406-445-0000 ext. 7 circ@editorandpublisher.com DESIGN AND PRODUCTION DESIGN2PRO Howard Barbanel 516-860-7440 howard@design2pro.com www.design2pro.com

BUSINESS MAILING ADDRESS Editor & Publisher Magazine 19606 Eagle Crest Drive Lutz, FL 33549 www.editorandpublisher.com 406-445-0000 Editor & Publisher is printed in the U.S.A.

America’s Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry With which have been merged: The Journalist, established March 22, 1884; Newspaperdom, March 1892; The Fourth Estate, March 1, 1894; Editor & Publisher, June 29, 1901; Advertising, June 22, 1925.

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E&P Quick Reads VOLUME 155

FOR THE MONTH OF APRIL 2022

ISSUE 4

Kid scoop

Promoting news readership in the classroom

V

icki Whiting taught her third-grade class during the 1990 school year and realized there was no social studies curriculum to teach children about their local community. When she asked her students how to learn about their community, they answered, “Newspapers.”

“I met with the publisher of the local newspaper and offered to provide social studies content for kids,” said Whiting. “My students were very, } Vicki Whiting, very excited when founder, publisher and the newspaper editor of Kid arrived. When Scoop children read newspapers, their reading levels improve, and they understand how to be active participants in their community. That was the motivation to create Kid Scoop.”

More than 30 years later, Kid Scoop’s content is published weekly in more than 300 newspapers as an ROP full-page or half-page. They can also serve as another revenue stream as there is space to sell to local businesses that want to show their support for local schools. Whiting writes all the content herself, and Jeff Schinkel creates the pages appropriate to second through sixth-grade students.

“The value of Kid Scoop for newspapers is they can deliver their papers to schools and create an interest

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} The 3rd and 4th grade class at Keya Paha County Schools, Springview, Nebraska

with Mrs. Aimee Schrader, teacher, back row left, and Amy Johnson, publisher of the Springview Herald, back row right.

} Cover of February 2022 issue of Kid Scoop News

among students to read newspapers,” said Whiting. “Newspapers also help to promote literacy and demonstrate their community leadership.”

Kid Scoop is also available as a monthly, 28-page package called Kid Scoop News. It’s filled with fun and games to develop literacy and many other skills. Currently, 60,000 donorsupported copies are distributed in California, Louisiana and Nebraska.

The Nebraska Press Association is one of the pilot programs Whiting and the nonprofit arm of Kid Scoop initiated at the beginning of the 20212022 school year.

Dennis DeRossett, executive director of the association was familiar with the ROP version of Kid Scoop. The association decided it would be a valuable member benefit. DeRossett worked with Whiting and Dan Dalton, sales director, to develop a program for the association. The board and executive committee responded editorandpublisher.com

E&P Quick Reads enthusiastically and approved the program.

“We launched the monthly Kid Scoop publication in the northeast and north-central portion of the } Dennis DeRossett, state first,” said executive DeRossett. “We director of the partnered with Nebraska Press White Wolf Web Association printers, which prints most of the local newspapers in the region. It prints Kid Scoop and then delivers it with the local

newspapers, and the newspaper brings Kid Scoop to the schools.”

Keya Paha County Schools in Springview, Nebraska is one of the local } Amy Johnson, publisher of schools receiving the Springview Kid Scoop for its Herald dual classrooms of third and fourth graders and fifth and sixth graders.

“We take the monthly Kid Scoop package to the school, and with the very first edition, students and

teachers were excited,” said Amy Johnson, publisher of the Springview Herald. “Students enjoy Kid Scoop during their downtime at school, and they also take it home as a non-digital activity with parents.”

According to DeRossett, the association plans to double the distribution of Kid Scoop by the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year to schools in south, southeast and south-central Nebraska, representing 9,000 students.

The Kid Scoop program also includes a website with additional content for download, including a teacher guide.—BS

Getting to know Gen Z News publishers need to meet Gen Z where they are, according to a study by the News Media Alliance

T

he point of naming and quantifying generations — Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and now Gen Z — is to better understand them, to wrap context around their collective experiences in the world. For news publishers, understanding generational nuances is essential to effective marketing and growing audience. An evergreen challenge they face is how best to appeal to younger readers, listeners and viewers. The ideal, of course, is to endear young audiences, to keep them engaged and informed, proving the news publisher’s value proposition, day in and day out. The goal is to earn trust so that the relationship between news source and subscriber is galvanized and lifelong.

The Pew Research Center defines Generation Z as people who were born in 1997 and after, citing 1996 as “a meaningful cutoff between Millennials editorandpublisher.com

and Gen Z for a number of reasons, including key political, economic and social factors that define the Millennial generation’s formative years.” This is a generation that is “always on,” according to Pew, referring to Gen Z’s relationship with technology and social media.

Gen Z is also a generation maturing during adversity. Though they seemed destined to inherit a strong economy and opportunity, the COVID-19 pandemic toppled those notions, Pew Research Center’s Kim Park and

Ruth Igielnick reported in their 2020 reporting, “On the Cusp of Adulthood and Facing an Uncertain Future: What We Know about Gen Z So Far.” A March 2020 Pew Research Center survey had shockingly reported that half — 50% — of Gen Zers (ages 18 to 23) said they or someone in their household had either lost a job or taken a pay cut as a result of the pandemic.

But this generation — notably more diverse than the previous ones — still aspires. Pew Research reports, “They APRIL 2022

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E&P Quick Reads are less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to be enrolled in college. Among 18- to 21-year-olds no longer in high school in 2018, 57% were enrolled in a two-year or fouryear college. This compares with 52% among Millennials in 2003 and 43% among members of Gen X in 1987.”

Gen Z also has a different perspective on the world’s problems and the role of government in solving them.

“Fully seven-in-ten Gen Zers say the government should do more to solve problems, while 29% say government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals,” Park and Igielnick reported.

Gen Z is connected, digitally savvy and concerned about social and policy issues, but what does this generation desire or demand from a news provider? What steers them to a news source? What inspires them to pay for news content? What does it take to earn their trust?

News for the Next Gen Much of what we learned about Gen Z from Pew Research’s findings proved out in a recent study by the News Media Alliance (NMA): “The Key to Gen Z: Insights and Ideas to Build Lasting Relationships.” NMA commissioned Springboard Market Research to study 424 U.S. adults, ages 18-29, to better understand the relationships “twenty-somethings” have to news.

} Generation Z is more concerned

about social causes than preceeding generations.

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“About half of Gen Z consumers (51 percent) report reading news daily,” NMA staff reported in a summary of the results. “The majority (60 percent) say they would likely to use local news products, while one-third (33 percent) say they would be likely to pay for local news. Not surprisingly, twentysomethings prefer to get news online via social media apps and web searches rather than in print. They want to ‘snack’ on news that has been customized to their preferences throughout the day.

Motivators to subscribe to local news outlets include free trials and special content targeted to them.”

Newsletters are one way news publishers can create a curated, personalized news experience for Gen Z subscribers. In recent years, publishers like The Economist, The New Yorker and The Washington Post launched newsletters related to climate change and the environment.

Social media plays an exceedingly important role in how Gen Z seeks out or is exposed to news. The NMA study revealed some patterns in which platforms they turn to and at what points throughout the day. For example, 42% of Gen Z respondents reported that they use Facebook in the morning and shift to other social platforms later in the day.

This generation also has a preference for “striking visuals, video and an easy-to-navigate app and site,” they reported.

The study also revealed how important it is for Gen Z news consumers to see themselves represented

in news coverage and coverage of the issues that matter to them most: social justice, civil rights, racial discrimination, the environment/climate change, finance, and health and wellness.

Informing the Gen Z audience depends on meeting them where they are, NMA surmised. Podcasts are a good example. News publishers have capitalized on audio as a new means to tell stories to audiences on-the-go. Some have created podcasts around the topics of importance to Gen Z listeners — climate, social justice and practical, factbased reporting, like CNN’s Coronavirus Fact vs. Fiction podcast.

“For local news, they are interested in weather, events/arts and entertainment, and other news about their town,” NMA’s staff explained.

This knowledge — about how Gen Z wants to discover news and the topics most important to them — allows news publishers to invest smartly in reaching them.

“The findings from the study are exciting in terms of the opportunities they present for news outlets,” Rebecca Frank, NMA’s vice president, research and insights, explained in the summary.

“Gen Z places an emphasis on credible, accurate and fact-checked news, which is exactly what our members provide.

News outlets that apply the insights in this report will have a distinct advantage over other content providers because the quality of their content already meets Gen Z’s expectations.”

The complete study is available to NMA’s more than 2,000 news organization members.—GAP editorandpublisher.com

E&P Quick Reads

Stonewalling the press as political strategy Limiting access to lawmakers is politically expedient, but press advocates say it violates the First Amendment

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he pandemic made us all appreciate face-to-face interactions — the ability to have personal, close and even candid conversations. While it’s something many of us take for granted, reporters know how vital it can be to query a source in person.

Take, for example, reporters working at municipal and state government seats all across the country. A phone call or even a video interview with a legislator can never wholly substitute a conversation had in person, even during a press gaggle, or by way of a

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chance encounter in the hallway. When that ability or access is impeded for journalists, it makes the reporting more difficult, certainly, but it also potentially harms the public’s ability to know what their elected officials are up to.

The case of the Iowa Senate’s “repositioning” of journalists garnered national attention. In late 2021, the state Senate decided that the 2022 session would begin with a new rule for journalists: They’d be moved from the “press bench” and relegated to the upper-level gallery, reserved for the public. Reporters can still see and

hear the proceedings down below, but they no longer have the opportunity to ask immediate follow-up questions of debating legislators. As the Washington Post’s Kim Bellware pointed out in her reporting on the move, the rule change “breaks with a more than 140-year tradition at the Iowa Capitol.”

Legislators lauded the new rule as a way to separate the journalistic wheat from the chaff, so to speak, suggesting they needed to tamp down on the number of non-traditional or alternative media reporters and bloggers freely roaming the chamber.

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E&P Quick Reads But the Iowa Press Association was suspect of the justification.

In December 2021, the Iowa Press Association became a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds over freedom of information violations. In context to the filing, the new gallery restrictions seemed retaliatory.

Something similar is unfolding at Utah’s statehouse, where credentialed reporters are restricted from the House and Senate floors and now need “permission” to interview lawmakers.

In early February 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed a lawsuit against the state’s Attorney General (AG), Todd Rokita, on behalf of a journalist — Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, who’s covered state government for nearly two decades. He is the editor-publisher of the Indy Politics website and a radio show host. In October 2021, he was banned from attending the AG’s press events. Rokita alleged Shabazz was a “gossip columnist.” The ACLU explained in a statement: “The actions taken by the Attorney General came after Shabazz was selected to moderate a Republican Senate debate in 2018, in which then-candidate Rokita was participating. It is reported that

then-candidate Rokita objected to Mr. Shabazz moderating the debate and stated that the debate should be moderated by conservatives, not ‘liberal media figures.’”

Fortunately, these incidents are anecdotal and not widespread.

Laurie Hieb, executive director for the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, reported to E&P, “Our capital has been closed for business for two sessions now, so it has been even more difficult for anyone to get to lawmakers. I know some states have been open the entire time. When we are open, we don’t have the problem you describe, or at least I haven’t heard of them from my members.”

California government reporters still enjoy access to state legislators.

However, only lawmakers and their staff are allowed directly on the floor, Brittney Barsotti, general counsel for the California News Publishers Association (CNPA), pointed out.

“If you wish to speak with a member, you are allowed to have the sergeant at arms pass a business card to the member, or reach out to staff, and the legislator can leave the floor to talk to you. It has been that way for a while here, and it applies equally,” she told E&P in an email.

Things are different in Kansas, where new restrictive rules are in place.

“This was pretty out of the blue for us,” Emily Bradbury, the executive director of the Kansas Press Association, told E&P. “There really wasn’t much advanced warning. … It breaks an almost 150-year tradition here in Kansas.”

Proponents contended that reporters have more access to the statehouse than ever through live streaming — access the association had lobbied for, incidentally. They also questioned press credentials.

“We feel that access to lawmakers immediately, whether it’s during a vote or debate, allowed our reporters to make things even more transparent, to get clarification, to make their reporting even better because they were able to ask those questions in real time,” Bradbury explained to E&P in our follow-up. The association offered to help lawmakers fairly revise the rules.

No one took them up on the offer.

Bradbury said Kansas is notorious for being “one of the most secretive states.”

“We are by no means the poster child for transparency,” she added, “and we really want to make sure this doesn’t go any further.”—GAP

The Cardinal News The new voice for rural Virginia

L

uanne Rife, a longtime journalist with The Roanoke Times, needed new inspiration for her career, so she left the Times in early 2021 as the staff and coverage continued to contract. (The Times had been purchased the year before by Lee Enterprises, who is currently in a

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battle to save its papers from takeover by hedge fund Alden Global Capital.)

She wasn’t sure what would come next, but quickly she was involved in launching The Cardinal News.

Living and working in the Roanoke region of Virginia, she recognized the need for in-depth local news coverage that The Roanoke Times couldn’t

offer. Her timing was excellent as the mostly rural area of the state The Cardinal News covers — what she calls “Southwest and Southside Virginia” — was evolving from its coal, textile and tobacco stereotypes to embracing the technology sector.

“The reinvention of our area of Virginia had many interesting stories, editorandpublisher.com

E&P Quick Reads but they weren’t receiving the coverage they deserved,” said Rife, executive director and chief development officer of The } Luanne Rife, Cardinal News. executive director and chief “News media and journalism was development officer of Cardinal also evolving across News the country with more online-only entities primarily focused on local coverage and using a nonprofit business model.”

When Rife left The Roanoke Times, a nonprofit interested in supporting quality journalism approached to ask her opinion about the viability of an online-only news outlet. This led to a $100,000 grant. The grant and a matching amount were the seed money to develop The Cardinal News, which launched in September 2021.

The journalism of The Cardinal took a significant step forward when Dwayne Yancey also left The Roanoke Times after 38 years. He had been the Times’ editorial page editor for the last seven years. He was also motivated by newsroom and coverage contraction — especially political reporting — his

} Cardinal News covers “Southwest and Southside Virginia” — an area that is evolving from coal, textile and tobacco to embracing the technology sector.

interest as a student and a journalist.

“We discovered a county government in the coal country was involved in a blockchain project, } Dwayne Yancey, which certainly executive editor doesn’t fit the of Cardinal News traditional view of the area,” said Yancey, who now serves as executive editor of Cardinal News. “It is expected to become the first courthouse in the United States to put its records on a blockchain. That’s the kind of interesting story that attracted me.”

Rife had to transition from a journalist to a business leader. She speaks to local groups to promote the

} Reporter Megan Schnabel interviews county supervisor Trey Atkins in floodravaged Hurley, VA. (Photo by Lakin Keene) editorandpublisher.com

Cardinal brand, writes grants and seeks donations from larger companies.

“As a nonprofit, we are answerable to our board,” said Rife. “Two-thirds of the board members, however, are former journalists who understand both sides of the operation as well as the intricacies of working in the nonprofit world.”

The Cardinal News has a staff of five journalists, all of whom work remotely. Yancey has also tapped into his network of freelance journalists who have experience reporting in that region of Virginia. Although the news outlet has had some challenges — such as a lack of broadband internet coverage at the editor’s home — Cardinal News is making a real impact in their community and attracting more local readers.

“The e-commerce channel has worked very well for us. People opt-in for our newsletter, and many donate small, monthly amounts,” said Rife.

“We are surprised by how quickly the Cardinal News has become known throughout the state. Richmond has the second-largest number of our readers, and many say it’s because they are looking for different coverage.”

Rife welcomes inquiries about The Cardinal News’ nonprofit business model. She can be contacted at luanne@cardinalnews.org.—BS Catch the “E&P Reports” vodcast featuring E&P Publisher Mike Blinder, Luanne Rife and Dwayne Yancey at editorandpublisher.com/vodcast.

APRIL 2022

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E&P Quick Reads Tornoe’s Corner

From the Archive

From the archive January 6, 1917 — An advertisement for The Goss Printing Press Company states, “We have just completed shipment on 10 Goss “High Speed Straightline” Quadruple Presses.

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“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

— Mahatma Gandhi

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PAGE Cooperative – Membership Drive Still Growing savings and revenue for newspapers

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Perhaps this is because publishers of all sizes are pro-actively examining their invoices and checking whether their prices from the same supplier, are lower by buying through PAGE. The PAGE Cooperative was established in 1984, and rapidly attracted newspapers as well as key suppliers who understood the advantage of a centralized payment organization that removed credit risk and streamlined accounts payable and receivables.

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Gary Blakeley, who was appointed CEO in 2019, has taken steps to renew and grow PAGE with initiatives which are timely and beneficial, and all newspapers should visit PAGE to learn how they can save and benefit.

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photo of the month

 Greg Little, editor and co-owner Mariposa Gazette, Mariposa, California Shown is a view from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, one of the most popular destinations for both visitors and locals alike in the world-renowned park located in Central California.

The prominent feature in the photo is Half Dome, one of the most iconic rock formations in the world, located at 7,214 feet of elevation. One of the most popular hiking destinations in Yosemite is to Glacier Point via the Four Mile Trail.

Send us your photos! E&P welcomes reader submissions for our Photo of the Month.

Send to robin@editorandpublisher.com

ad sales life

Three steps to engineer a better sales system with CPR

By Richard E. Brown

I

t is 4:20 PM on a Friday, and one of your largest advertising clients calls and tells you that they want to promote a special for an upcoming holiday in two weeks. They have a six-figure budget, and they need you to present it to their board members the following Tuesday. What do you do?

Call a quick huddle with your leadership team? Gather every promotional flyer and email over an outline of where you will place those ad dollars? This scenario happens relatively often with large and small advertisers alike throughout the year.

There may not seem to be an issue with an advertiser wanting to turn an ad campaign around quickly. However, how confident are you in the functionality of your in-house processes to ensure that all ad campaigns are communicated and delivered correctly, efficiently sustained, sized, and systematically consistent for volume and annual retention across your sales floor? It may seem minuscule, but this has remained somewhat of a lingering and mysterious issue across sales departments that could lead to missed revenue if not addressed.

The opportunity, however, I believe, is slightly fun and straightforward to solve. That said, it does involve collaboration across departments, time and monetary investment, and a thorough understanding of sales workflow logistics.

I am not simply referring to prospecting and needs assessments but instead suggesting an in-depth evaluation of the effectiveness of the entire system for your sales

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staff. As a senior leader, how have you engineered the approach and methodology of generating new opportunities into a sales funnel, delivering, and selling optimal solutions to your advertisers, and retaining those clients year after year?

If you are curious about how to put your current technique to the test, compare them against these three suggested pillars of a successful and functional system to help breathe some life and opportunity into your existing structure with CPR. “C” is for communication, and it is by far the most vital construct pillar to jump-start your sales system immediately. As the department leader, take a moment to evaluate how you consistently communicate with current advertisers and prospects.

Leverage your marketing department to share your organizations’ brand, community involvement, services, testimonials, offers and specials to regional businesses and current advertisers. As a leader, make the monetary investment into an applicable email marketing software and stay tethered with your sales team in the communication sent to their clients and prospects. The premise

is to establish additional market share and brand awareness about your company’s features, benefits and promotions to yield higher quality incoming call activity and close ratios for your sales teams.

Traditionally, this approach has been an interdiction because some sales executives and managers prefer total control over communication with the account. Strategize with your team leaders and collaborate with your marketing department so that you can be strategic and targeted in your approach while still generating sales and revenue growth opportunities with new and existing advertisers overall.

In addition, any new, current, or old prospect email acquired should be placed into an email communication journey specifically designed to engage and enhance the propensity of those prospects to do business with your organization.

“P” is for process, and it correlates closer to the traditional sales sequence, but there is a significant modification that you must inject.

Suppose it is your sales team’s responsibility to take a new lead through the needs assessments, proposal delivery and commitment follow-up. In that case, it is your responsibility as a sales leader to engineer a system that makes proposal requests and creative development elementary, expeditious and effective.

Take advantage of software services or online forms to develop a proposal request workflow with your design or marketing department that delivers compelling and convincing advertising proposals within one to two editorandpublisher.com

editorandpublisher.com/revenue

business days. These should include all advertiser objectives, suggested product solutions, applicable discounts, perennial special sections, and ad creative so that your sales team and leaders can maximize their time in the field.

Furthermore, be sure to invest in cloud-based electronic agreement management software to streamline and organize your advertiser contracts.

Agreement software can help keep business compliance consistent, outline and affirm campaign deliverables easier and simplify the signature process.

“R” is for retention, and it is the Achilles heel of your department’s sustainable growth and longevity.

Identify and automate touchpoints and essential communication followup. Think of your advertisers as brand advocates of your organization. Keep them informed on how their campaign is delivered and performing, but be sure to provide critical insight, tips and feedback on amplifying their efforts. Build a trusted partnership and remind your clients of how your organization is helping them achieve their goals, any applicable benefits they are receiving and upcoming events or promotions. Be sure that they are part of a communication journey and mitigate the timeframe between points of engagement so that you better establish your organization as a go-to media partner.  Richard E. Brown is a News Media Alliance Rising Star recipient, the former director of renewals and digital sales strategy at LPi and the former director of digital operations and sales of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He currently serves as head of digital subscriber churn for Gannett | USA TODAY NETWORK.

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the corner office

Getting to “no” Sales skills are management skills

By Doug Phares

S

ales can get a bad rap, but there are fundamental elements of selling that can be useful at any level in an organization. In fact, I’d argue that many of the core tenets of sales are really just good management

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skills. And the higher up the corporate ladder you are, the more essential sales skills could be for you.

A long time ago, when I was running a basic sales route, I came into it with virtually no sales-related skills. I had to learn fast,

and thankfully I had people around me who were generous enough to impart some much-needed sales wisdom upon me.

But of all the things I learned, the one that I got the most mileage out of (and still use to this day)

was the importance of getting people to a “no.”

Obviously, that’s counterintuitive, especially from a sales perspective.

But the answer isn’t always a no — the important thing is to always direct someone toward a clear, final answer. editorandpublisher.com

editorandpublisher.com/voices

Instead of selling someone, you should think of yourself as facilitating their final decision by providing them with clear, pertinent information. Otherwise, you’re leaving someone with a “maybe,” and that’s not in your best interest or theirs.

From the perspective of the person you’re selling to, a maybe is a waste of time.

It’s time spent reflecting, reading reviews, consulting with a spouse—and it can still end in a no. And if you’re the salesperson, you have to circle back to get a final answer and go through your spiel an extra time.

The real value of getting someone to a “no” is in the time you save. And I know you want every conversation to end with a sale, but no matter how much you believe in your product, it just isn’t going to be for everyone. And the more time you waste trying to convince someone who doesn’t want to buy, the less time you’ll have to give information to a customer or client who could actually make a purchase.

So, what does this have to do with management?

Following the rules above, a good salesperson can size up what information a person needs to make a decision and then deliver it.

Coincidentally, management is primarily the same — ensuring that people have the correct information to make good decisions. And in a corporate environment, being able to help people make informed, quick choices can save you and your organization a lot of editorandpublisher.com

time that could be spent working toward your goals.

With that in mind, I’ve got some sales tips that also make for good management practices. Some of them sound a little goofy, but if it’s on this list, it’s because I still use it regularly all these years later.

One common sales tactic is to ask, “This or that?”

Instead of asking if they want to buy, you ask if they want the red one or the blue one. “Do you want to buy” means a hard choice, but choosing between red or blue is much simpler.

But offering an easier choice isn’t just applicable in sales—I use this all of the time to set up meetings. For example, instead of asking “What time works for you,” I’ll ask, “Does X time or Y time work best for you?”

Just like getting a potential customer to a no, this is the fastest way to get a clear, final answer from someone in your organization.

Another valuable skill that I learned during my time in sales was asking the little question instead of the big one. If you’re trying to get a signature on a big contract or get your boss’ final approval on something, don’t keep reminding them that you’re waiting on a decision. Instead, ask a smaller question that’s easier to answer.

For example, instead of asking for final approval on a project, ask, “This thing in paragraph three, does that look okay to you? Is there anything else that’s an issue?” If they say no, then congratulations, you just

got the answer you’ve been waiting for — hand it over for their signature.

Another strategy to get a decision is to ask what the decision-maker would change. Instead of asking for a final decision, by asking for their thoughts, you make it their responsibility instead of yours. If they make a change, that’s an intellectual investment, and you can consider them sold.

Some of these might sound sneaky or dishonest, but they’re just skills. And they can help you distill critical information, make sure it’s understood, and get a decision as quickly as possible. Life, sales, and business are all about making decisions, and the quicker you can get someone to make a choice, the more effective and efficient you’ll be. 

Doug Phares is the former CEO of the Sandusky News Group. He currently serves as managing director of Silverwind Enterprises, which owns and provides management services to small businesses. He can be reached at doug@silverwind.biz.

The digital revolution, changing media habits, technology and now Covid.

Many companies are still reacting—cutting something here, adding something there and trying to make this month’s budget work.

Stop Reacting. Break the Cycle.

It is hard to find the time to have ‘big thoughts,’ to understand your data and to assemble a business plan that makes sense for today and the future. That’s what WE do. We work with you to understand how to structure your business for today—and tomorrow.

Get beyond Reacting “There’s a lot of meat on that bone” -David Dunn-Rankin, CEO, D-R Media after a strategy session with Phares

“The material was really good, and what people needed to hear.”

-Terri Cobb, Director, Arkansas Press Association attended a Silverwind Enterprises workshop

Doug Phares

CEO, Silverwind Enterprises

silverwind.biz 727-350-2051 | doug@silverwind.biz

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news media

Commentary through comedy David Fitzsimmons, local editorial cartoonist, endears himself to generations of readers in Tucson

By Rob Tornoe

D

oes your news organization publish local editorial cartoons?

Chances are really good the answer is no.

According to a study done by The Herb Block Foundation released in 2012, there were about 2,000 fulltime editorial cartoonists employed by newspapers in the U.S. at the start of the 20th century. As recently as 2000, there were upwards of 250. Today, by my count, there are less than 20.

Obviously, a lot of that attrition has been caused by the same forces that have ravaged every newsroom department over the last 15 years.

After all, how many staff movie critics remain employed by newspapers?

But editorial cartoonists are different. It’s an art form and type of commentary birthed by newspapers, from Ben Franklin’s famed “Join or die” cartoon decades before the Revolutionary War to Thomas Nast’s famed takedown of corrupt New York City political boss William M. Tweed.

While about every newspaper in the country still publishes nationally syndicated cartoons (as they do with movie reviews), engaging local visual commentary is hard to come by these days.

That takes us to Tucson, where one-time Pulitzer Prize finalist David Fitzsimmons has been drawing six cartoons a week about his sun-soaked corner of the country for the Arizona Daily Star since 1986. Avoiding the fate of many of his contemporaries, Fitzsimmons has managed to remain a vital part of his newspaper and the community for the past 35 years and

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} Editorial cartoons were birthed by newspapers, exemplified by Ben Franklin’s famed “Join or die” cartoon decades before the Revolutionary War.

only recently decided at the age of 66 to begin to slow things down and go part-time.

“My pen just got heavy as a boulder,” Fitzsimmons said. “I started } One-time Prize to feel really finalist David Fitzsimmons has ancient in the been drawing six newsroom cartoons a week because I’d draw about his suna cartoon and soaked corner of go, ‘Hey, I think the country for the Arizona Daily Star this is maybe the in Tucson, 40th cartoon AZ since 1986.

I’ve drawn about our looney legislature this year.’”

The Star is owned by Lee Enterprises and Gannett in a complicated arrangement that stems back to a joint-operating agreement

after the closure of the Tucson Citizen.

As a result, the newspaper has faced the same economic headwinds and corporate demands as other chain-owned newspapers, resulting in waves of layoffs and furloughs.

But Fitzsimmons, whose work is also syndicated by Cagle Cartoons, survived all the cutbacks and remains an important voice and reason Star readers renew their subscriptions.

In addition to drawing a daily cartoon that places more focus on local events than national politics, Fitzsimmons took it upon himself to engage directly with the community.

He does a lot of public speaking appearances around Tucson, a mix of events at schools and local clubs like Rotary and Kiwanis with cartoons and jokes — all while promoting the newspaper.

“I just endeared myself to the community as a public figure, which I have to admit really made me feel editorandpublisher.com

editorandpublisher.com/exclusives

} Examples of David Fitzsimmons’ work that has appeared in the Star as well as in syndication through Cagle Cartoons uncomfortable at first because I was a shy, normal human being,” Fitzsimmons said. “But then when I saw how it endeared me in the community as sort-of a mascot for the newspaper, I was grateful for that gift.”

Fitzsimmons also drew a local comic strip called Arroyo Cafe, which he turned into a fundraiser and annual radio show in the spirit of A Prairie Home Companion. He also writes a popular weekly humor column for the newspaper that began roughly 10 years ago when the editorial page had a hole on a Saturday that needed to be filled. And he regularly interacts with fans on Facebook, including videos where he films himself listening to angry voicemails left by readers who disagreed with the day’s cartoon.

All that to say, Fitzsimmons has been able to connect with and retain the interest of generations of readers just because he took the time to engage with them off the printed page. In fact, when he announced his semiretirement in March, readers flooded his Facebook page with caricatures he had drawn of them over the years.

“A person would walk up to me with gray hair and say, ‘Hey, you came to my school and drew a caricature of me.’ Were you a teacher? ‘No, I was in kindergarten,’” Fitzsimmons recalled.

“People also send me pictures of their children I had drawn who died later editorandpublisher.com

in life. Widows, that sort of thing. It’s very touching.”

Despite a devoted and supportive readership, Fitzsimmons has also generated his fair share of controversy during his 35-year tenure in Tucson.

In 2020, a cartoon he drew comparing Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, to slaveholders and Klu Klux Klan members was used in a local high school assignment. The National Fraternal Order of Police criticized the cartoon, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called for the teacher to be fired.

“This cartoon was my response to the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police officer, diagramming the historic roots of our systemic racism,” Fitzsimmons explained at the time. “Perhaps it requires too much moral courage or honest clear-eyed reflection for the National Fraternal Order of the Police to funnel their fury at the few racist police officers who disgrace their oath and their badges by disproportionally murdering African Americans.”

While a cartoon like this is designed to touch a nerve and call out injustice, Fitzsimmons said sometimes he was surprised by the reaction a cartoon with no connection to politics could garner. After legendary singer Frank Sinatra died back in 1988, Fitzsimmons drew the beloved crooner in hell

because “it’s the only place you get a hooker and a martini.”

Readers certainly engaged with the cartoon, but they didn’t see the humor.

“I had drawings made of myself being hung, lynched, and shot,” Fitzsimmons recalled. “The hate mail was just a flood.”

Fitzsimmons said his suggestion for aspiring cartoonists and editors interested in running local cartoons is to focus less on political commentary and more on topics that resonate with the immediate lives of people in your community.

“The pothole on Bronze St, or the beautiful spring weather — the kind of cartoons that I hated doing when I was young,” Fitzsimmons said. “For me, it was in the form of a quail and a javelina eating jalapeños and talking about snowbird tourists… People will want to turn to the page or click to find the cartoon because they might see a little bit of themselves there.”  Rob Tornoe is a cartoonist and columnist for Editor and Publisher, where he writes about trends in digital media. He is also a digital editor and writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Reach him at robtornoe@gmail.com.

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diversity spotlight

Building better newsrooms News publishers need more consistent momentum toward DEI goals

By Gregory Lee Jr.

I

t’s been two years since George Floyd died — his murder sparking a global conversation about race and racism. Journalism hasn’t been exempt from the discussion.

More publications across the nation used 2020 to make an aggressive push to diversify newsrooms. Numerous Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) positions were created to help improve news publishers’ hiring practices.

There is a reason this might feel familiar. It’s because journalism has done this before and finds itself still seeking answers it should have found years sooner.

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Leon Carter and Sandy Bailey (now Rosenbush) sought to change the way sports departments and press boxes looked across the nation. They were experienced journalists who wanted to see change. Carter was the chairman of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Sports Task Force. Bailey was the first woman to be president of the Associated Press Sports Editors. Together, they founded the Sports Journalism Institute.

Their SJI initiative was created at the 1992 National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Detroit with a grant from the Freedom Forum.

SJI’s mission is to help women and minorities work in sports journalism by placing students through “boot camp.” From there, they are provided paid summer internships at newsrooms across the nation. As SJI approaches its 30th class, the program has had more than 350 student journalists.

I am among those individuals to go through SJI, graduating among its second class, and since then, I’ve served as the program’s co-director. Our talented alums have included: • Kendra Andrews, Warriors reporter, ESPN editorandpublisher.com

editorandpublisher.com/diversity

• Malika Andrews, NBA Today anchor and reporter, ESPN • Zolan Kanno-Youngs, White House Correspondent, The New York Times • Isabelle Khurshudyan, Moscow correspondent, The Washington Post • Christopher Lopez, Senior Programming Editor/Gambling, FOX Sports • Soraya McDonald. Senior Culture Reporter, Andscape (formerly, The Undefeated) • Thuc Nhi Nguyen, Sports reporter, Los Angeles Times • Marcus Thompson, Columnist, The Athletic • Shemar Woods, Editorial Director, SI.Now, FanNation At the time, SJI was just the start. The four major journalism associations were thriving. UNITY: Journalists of Color was created in 1994. So, what happened? How did all this promise lead our industry to ask some of the same questions we asked back then?

Many of us remember the economic recession of the 2000s.

Several industries suffered — journalism among them. Diversity went from a necessity to a luxury item. Social media and the rise of several new startup organizations began making an impact, creating a kind of “instant visibility” journalism never had before. Still, it brought something else to our attention: newsrooms are not diverse.

This is a problem I’ve dedicated my whole career to solving. It is one of the reasons why I returned to The Boston Globe. My current position is a newly created masthead role of senior assistant managing editor, talent and community.

As we approach the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death, we must still ask where we are headed with diversity efforts. The momentum is inconsistent; some have continued to build while others have slowed. We’ve seen this before. Look at the figures

from the latest APSE 2021 Sports Media Racial and Gender Report Card: • 79.2% of the sports editors were white, and 83.3% were men.

• 77.1% of the columnists were white; 82.2% were men.

• 77.1% of the reporters were white; 85.6% were men.

Diversity takes work and commitment and must come from the top of an organization. Without that, your company will never have an effective long-term approach to recruiting and retention.

Here are some best practices: • Hiring managers should go to the minority journalism associations’ conventions — in person. This is critical to building relationships.

Recruiting should not start when you have an opening.

• During the interview process, make sure candidates see diversity in your newsroom. The interview process is a window into your organization.

• Stop looking for “the next.” Many managers want candidates to be

similar to other journalists, but candidates have different skills, talents and voices. Embrace that.

• Hire Black women to cover sports, especially at legacy newspapers.

There is one Black woman sports columnist at all these institutions — The Washington Post’s Candace Buckner, a 2001 SJI alum.

Social media has made it easier to find talent. All we have to do now is make sure another 30 years don’t pass while we’re still asking the same questions.  Gregory Lee Jr is senior assistant managing editor, talent and community at The Boston Globe.

He was the president of the National Association of Black Journalists from 2011 to 2013 and the 2013 recipient of the Missouri Honor Medal.

industry insights

The Power and Value of Exclusivity

By Michael Shapiro

A

s digital advertising spending increases, publications need to set themselves apart from the crowd. One great way to do so is to provide exclusive offerings to marketing partners that are effective and will enable them to set themselves apart from their competitors.

the fold” and selling that exclusive spot to a business that has a professionally produced commercial. If they have such a commercial, they have spent a lot of money developing it, and you can provide the audience to watch it. As an exclusive spot at the top of your site, everyone who visits your website will see the video.

Exclusive Website Offerings

Exclusive Newsletter Offerings

Digital publishers should think about offering exclusive marketing options on their websites.

For example, creating an exclusive sponsorship for every section of your news site. Your real estate section could be sponsored by a local realtor or mortgage consultant. Your police and fire section could be sponsored by an insurance agent or a criminal defense attorney. The sponsorship could include their logo or ad in the section and all articles, with a clickthrough back to their website. Not only is this a great branding opportunity for them, but it will also enable them to be the dominant player in their field on your site.

Consider having a dedicated video ad spot on your website “above

Consider offering exclusive sponsorship and advertising in your newsletter(s). Enable a marketing partner to be front and center in your readers’ inboxes every morning and fence out their competitors. And it’s trackable so that you can demonstrate performance for your marketing partner.

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Exclusive Email Offerings Beyond your newsletters, think about offering exclusive promotional emails for advertisers. It’s a great way to get in front of your audience and not be in a coupon envelope with 30 other companies. And it’s trackable — you will be able to tell the advertiser how many people opened the email, how many

people clicked on it and even where they clicked!

That’s accountability and transparency that few other marketing vehicles can match. Of course, you should limit them so that your readers open and click on them and do not unsubscribe.

Other Exclusive Opportunities Think about other exclusive opportunities you can offer. One suggestion is to hold a monthly roundtable with your reporters on Zoom that you can invite your audience to attend and offer a marketing partner an exclusive sponsorship.

Also, put together a “best of ” series and offer an

exclusive sponsorship of the series.

With COVID restrictions loosening, consider holding live in-person events for which you can offer exclusive sponsorships and speaking opportunities.

Lack of creativity is your only barrier to success when it comes to developing exclusive opportunities that are effective and provide real value for your marketing partners. As you think about the digital space and the clamor for ad dollars, think about how you can set yourself apart and break out from the crowd to capture the hearts and minds of potential marketing partners with exclusive opportunities to market with you. 

Michael Shapiro is the founder and CEO of TAPinto.net, a network of 80+ franchised online local news sites in New Jersey, New York and Florida.

These sites often represent the only daily news source in their respective communities. editorandpublisher.com

®

SEPTEMBER 17-23, 2021 / VOL. 43 / NO. 45 / LAWEEKLY.COM

A1

MARCH 2020 | EDITORANDPUBLISHER.COM

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SAN DIEGO BUSINESS JOURNAL

Vol. 42, No. 34

August 23 – 29, 2021 • $5.00

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MVP Launches Fourth Fund FINANCE: VC Firm Recruits Investors to S.D.

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STAFF PHOTO BY JOEY BUNTON Moore Venture Partners (MVP), has Members of the Owatonna and Austin varsity soccer teams get a wet surprise in stride during their game Thursday night at Lincoln Elementary School in Owatonna. As they launched its fourth fund (MVP IV)were to chasing the ball around the field, the sprinkler system came on giving everyone an unexpected shower. See sports section for more details on the game itself. continue backing companies in the life science and technology space across all stages of

BY KAY FATE the 2003 event. handmade quilt for a “I think it’s very safe er intended to become It’s never stopped their growth.

STAFF WRITER This year, the Bloomgrand prize – passed the to say we broke our a yearly tradition in growing.

Coughlin began the ing Prairie Cancer million-dollar mark last Paint Blooming Prairie Blooming Prairie, but As one of San Eunice Coughlin fundraising as a way Group auction raised weekend.

Pink (one-year) record,” “they made me out to be Diego’s oldest would be proud. to honor her daughter, $22,000 alone on Friday Coughlin’s first event she said Monday. such a hero,” Coughlin The fundraising Darla, who died of cannight, said organizer raised $1,700 to donate Krejci estimated said at the time, that she traditional vencer in 2000. She passed event she started 20 Cheri Krejci. They to the annual Eagle’s about 200 people turned did it again. ture capital firms, the torch to others in years ago with famraised $53,000 over both Cancer Telethon, held out each night – but emThe following year, it See IN 20 YEARS on A3 ► the community after ily members – and a nights. in Rochester. It was nevwas $6,400. it continues to grow the fund by Terry Moore tens of millions Founding Managing Partner of dollars, accordMoore Venture ing to Brady BeauPartners champ, who joined the firm earlier this year. The size of the BY KAY FATE the big things, what STAFF WRITER are you doing about the fund has not been disclosed. little things?”

“Moore Venture Partners has beenWhen Gwen and Ed The sign is a mural,

In 20 years, Paint the Town Pink tops $1M mark

Photo Courtesy of The Century Club of San Diego

The Century Club of San Diego will welcome fans back to the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course in January.

The Fans Will Be Back in 2022 TOURISM: 120,000 Attendees Expected at Farmers Insurance Open

By MARIEL CONCEPCION The Century Club of San Diego is welcoming back fans to the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open, the annual professional golf tournament held at Torrey Pines Golf Course each January.

Last year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit which supports local charities and drives civic impact, held the Farmers Insurance Open as a made-for-TV-only, no spectator event,

said The Century Club of San Diego’s NBC as well. If you ask the San Diego CEO Marty Gorsich. Next year (Jan. 26 Tourism Authority, we also have a masthrough Jan. 30), when it allows guests sive impact on tourism. Our last economback on the green, it is projected to at- ic impact report conducted a few years tract roughly 120,000 attendees and have ago showed it was at $34 million annually. an economic impact of over $34 million, But when you look at some of the other he said, just slightly more than in 2019. elements, it is hard to say. How do you “We help the city and also have an eco- measure something like broadcast? There nomic impact via tourism,” he said. “We are other economic impact measures that are the only event on national and inter- come into play.” national TV for San Diego - we are on Kerri Kapich, chief operating officer at ¨Century Club page 37 the Golf Channel a couple of days and on

ResMed Reports $3.2 Billion in Revenue

Ellendale mural is up for debate

Reiss opened Two Doves

¨Moore page Boutique 36 on Ellendale’s

Lawn Love Sold To Austin Co. TECH: Acquisition Creates

Strategic Powerhouse

BIOTECH: Demand Growing; New Product Launched

1 (1)

2 (2)

3 (3)

4

5

914,488 9

(7)

9

CBRE

544,352 5

Vantage Point

Pomerado Business Park

North County Corporate

Center

Joshua Way & Progress St., Vista 92081

Sorrento Mesa

530,850 2

Poway

511,344 9

Poway

493,898 5

Vista

THE LIST

3 (3)

4

(NR)

5 (4)

6 (5)

7 (6)

8 (7)

9 (8)

10 (9)

Source: CBRE

Ryan Spradling

JLL

Mickey Morera

Kidder Matthews

leasable square footage

Gross leasable sq. ft.

Squire Family Trust

Cushman & Wakefield

Barings

Building class

Listing agent

UTC

B

Scott Diggs

989,096

Rancho Bernardo

7

844,559

6

B

UTC

A

Center

16397, 16399, & 16409 W Bernardo Dr., San Diego 92127

808,419

6

La Jolla Commons

4707, 4727 & 4747 Executive Dr., San Diego 92121

724,000

Rancho Bernardo

2

619,241

8

B

UTC

Alexandria Tech Center

10065, 10121 & 10151 Barnes Canyon Rd; 9605, 9645, 9685-9725 & 9855 Scranton Rd; 5505 Morehouse Dr, San Diego 92121

593,988

A

Sorrento Mesa

B

Brent Wright Scott Diggs,Rachael Eckardt

This program is funded by California utility customers under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission.

footage as of August 8,

Listing company

The Irvine Company CBRE The Irvine Company

Brad Black

CBRE

Matt Carlson, Mike Hoeck, Jeff Oesterblad, Ryan Egli

CBRE

Cushman & Wakefield

Brian Starck

4

UTC

5

Del Mar Heights

3111 & 3131 Camino Del Rio N., San Diego 92108

506,816

2

Mission Valley

A

Scott Diggs

15051, 15073, 15253 & 15333 Avenue of Science Avenue of Science, San Diego 92128

The Irvine Company

471,937

8

Rancho Bernardo

B

Jay Alexander, Tim Olson

Jones Lang LaSalle

Kilroy Centre Del Mar

3579-3811 Valley Centre Dr., San Diego 92130

540,693

Centerside I & II

Innovation Corporate Center

To the best of our knowledge, this information is accurate the list, omissions and typographical as of press time. While every effort is made to errors sometimes occur. ensure the accuracy and Business Journal. Eric Alderete, Please send corrections thoroughness of or additions to the Research ealderete@sdbj.com. This Department at the San Diego list may not be reprinted in whole or in part without prior written permission from the

A

Scott Diggs, Tyler Jemmett

A

Rob Merkin, Matt Nickels

When: Tuesday, Sept. 28 from 3-5 p.m.

Where: Owatonna Foundation, 108 West Park Square, Owatonna

The Irvine Company CBRE

Jay Paul Company The Irvine Company

Swift Real Estate Partners

American Assets Trust

Alexandria Real Estate

The Irvine Company Kilroy Realty The Irvine Company

Ascendas-Singbridge Group

AREA DEATHS John Dillemuth, 85, Owatonna Glen Stark, 83, Owatonna

Serving Blooming Prairie and Steele County since 1893

2021 BLOOMING PRAIRIE EDUCATION FOUNDATION BANQUET

2021

Owner

The Irvine Company

editor. Some companies have declined to participate or or to imply a company's size or numerical rank indicatesdid not return a survey by press time. It is not the (1) intent of this list to endorse its quality.

Previously listed as Executive the participants Square

Commercial property owners and managers can earn cash incentives with the Comprehensive Energy Management Solutions (CEMS) Program. Visit www.SavingWithCEMS.com.

507-583-4431 | bptimes@frontiernet.net

See OWATONNA on A5 ►

RETIREMENT OPEN HOUSE

INSIDE Business ............................... A6-A7 Farm Living ................................... B9 Public Notices .......................... B12 Calendar........................................ B8 History ............................................ A5 Public Safety.............................. A4 Classifieds .................................. B13 Hometown Living .................... B6 Sports ...................................... B1-B5 Community................................. A12 Opinions ........................................ A2 State Fair....................................... B11 Faith................................................. A13 Owatonna School Page ..... A8

 Ranked by gross leasable square

as of August 8, 2021

Submarket

La Jolla Square(1)

4225-4275 Executive Square, San Diego 92121

Clarion Partners Deutsche Bank AG

Cushman & Wakefield

Aric Starck

24

$1.00 | Volume 130, No. 8

Irvine Co.

Ted Cuthbert

# of buildings

1,389,411

The Plaza

4320-4380 La Jolla Village Drive & 4365 Executive Dr., San Diego 92121

Rancho Vista Corporate

Warehouse

See ELLENDALE on A10 ►

Resler served as executive director of the Steele County Historical Society for 13 years before joining the Foundation seven years ago.

“Through my work with the Historical Society, I got to know some of the trustees,” said Resler. “I was looking for parttime work and the Foundation

2021

TIAA

BentallGreenOak

editor. Some companies have declined to participate or or to imply a company's size or numerical rank indicatesdid not return a survey by press time. It is not the intent of this list to (1) its quality. endorse the participants Also located at 1224-1225 Exposition Way and 1222 Innovative Drive.

LARGEST OFFICE PARKS LARGEST OFFICE PARKS Ranked by gross

Eastgate Technology Park

4755-4875 Eastgate Mall, 9515-9890 Towne Centre Dr,, San Diego 92121

Summit Rancho Bernardo

16620 W Bernardo Dr, San Diego 92127

STAFF PHOTO BY DEB FLEMMING

Those who work with Laura Resler, executive director of the Owatonna Foundation, describe her as very disciplined, diplomatic and caring.

Traits and qualities, they say, will be missed when Resler retires later this month.

“Dealing with trustees can be like herding cats,” said David Einhaus, past president of the board and a current trustee. “At one time, there were more than 30 trustees

and her ability to get that many people – who often have strong opinions – behind projects is amazing.”

Resler brought a steady hand to the organization, said Einhaus, who served as president when Resler was hired.

And he said her work at the History Center positioned her well for the post.

Owners

Suberry Properties Square One Development

Healthpeak Properties

Light, Manufacturing Warehouse, Light, Industrial, Manufacturing Warehouse, Light, Industrial, Manufacturing

Join the hundreds of publishers who’ve eliminated 50–75% on their production expenses

but said she’ll leave the choice up to the public.

Either way, it will require money, which requires fundraisers and donors.

‘I’ll miss the people’

Murphy Development Company

JLL CBRE Irvine Co.

Rich Danesi

Rank

(1)

CBRE Cushman & Wakefield

Bill Dolan Tyler Jemmett

R&D

Name (Last Year) Address

1

footage as of August 8,

JLL

Erik Parker

This is the artwork commissioned by Gwen Reiss to replace the existing mural. It was hand-drawn by Albert Lea native Chandler Anderson, and would be photographed, scanned and printed onto panels that are then attached to the building.

representation of 1900s Ellendale.

Reiss has commissioned Albert Lea native Chandler Anderson to create the new look – and the new format –

 Ranked by gross leasable square

Listing companies

Joe Anderson

Barry Hendler Andy Irwin, Joe Anderson

R&D, Ligh5t, Manufacturing

Source: CBRE

(2)

Warehouse Warehouse

Miramar

To the best of our knowledge, this information is accurate the list, omissions and typographical as of press time. While every effort is made to errors sometimes occur. ensure the accuracy and Business Journal. Eric Alderete, Please send corrections thoroughness of or additions to the Research ealderete@sdbj.com. This list may not be reprinted Department at the San Diego in whole or in part without prior written permission from the

2

Listing agents

Warehouse, Light, Industrial, Manufacturing

Vista

Mission Gorge

Torrey Pines

Lavelli Way, Poway 92064

(9)

(10)

Building Type

Manufacturing, Warehouse Manufacturing, Distribution

Otay Mesa

Otay Mesa

651,279 5 623,228 11 588,795 8

Park

14400-14500 Kirkham Way, Poway 92064

(8)

10

895,495 9 679,090 26 665,229 3

Park

Canyon Ridge Technology

Pacific Technology Park

Waples St., San Diego 92121

11

Submarket

Otay Mesa

Center

Park

Brown Deer, Carroll Park Dr., Carroll Road, San Diego 92121

N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla 92037

Torrey Pines Science Park

(6)

LARGEST RETAIL CENTERS Page 20

Gross leasable sq. ft. # of buildings

Frontera Business Park

9255 Customhouse Plaza, San Diego 92154

Ocean View Hills Corporate

1450, 1424, 1462 Corporate Center Drive,(1) San Diego 92154

Rancho Vista Business

Poinsettia Drive & Business Park Drive, Vista 92081 The Campus

2001, 2055, 2065 Sanyo Ave., San Diego 92154

Mission Trails Industrial

Mission Gorge Road, San Diego 92120

(4)

(5)

7 8

mural faded about three years after it was last repainted, Reiss said.

She’s on a mission to remedy that but said she would like a more “authentic” looking

NEWS EDITOR

Laura Resler will be retiring as executive director of the Owatonna Foundation later this month. An Open House to celebrate Resler’s retirement will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 28.

LARGEST

INDUSTRIAL PARKS LARGEST Ranked by grossINDUSTRIAL leasable square footage as of August PARKS 8, 2021

THE LIST

Rank Name (Last Year) Address

(NR)

6

LARGEST OFFICE PARKS Page 18

Save Today.

Secure Tomorrow.

an early resident and generous community benefactor.

These days, though, the once-bright sign looks more like an overused whiteboard – the

BY DEB FLEMMING

¨Lawn page 36

THE LISTS ¨XX page xx

LARGEST INDUSTRIAL PARKS Page 18

LEADERS: Nonprofit and Corporate Citizenship Finalists Announced

SUBMITTED PHOTO

SUBMITTED PHOTO

The original mural of Ellendale was a vibrant depiction of an early-1900s street scene. The colors faded significantly about three years after it was last repainted, said business owner Gwen Reiss. She’d like the public to vote on whether to keep this mural or replace it with a new one.

LawnStarter, the leading provider of on-demand lawn and outdoor care, has acquired San Diego-based Lawn Love Inc. for an undisclosed amount in a cash-and-stock deal.

The acquisition will allow both businesses to better capitalize on the growth of on-demand services, said Lawn Love CEO Jeremy Yamaguchi, adding that it will

¨ResMed page 40

DEVELOPMENT: East Village Becoming ‘The Downtown of the Future’

about 16 feet by 16 feet, painted on metal and hanging on the side of the building that houses the Ellendale Caf?, run

by Russ Goette.

It’s a full-color street scene featuring a train chugging through several townspeople and bustling businesses and a representation of Dr. E.Q. Ertel and Ellen Dale, after whom the town is named. Ertl was

Owatonna Foundation’s executive director retiring

By FRED GRIER

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By NATALLIE ROCHA

P.12 P.24

Main Street last year, it was with an eye toward maintaining a vibrant downtown in the Steele County town of about 800 people.

But something bothered Gwen, and she could see it every day, out her front window.

“That sign looks bad,” she said, “and if you don’t take care of

Saturday, October 2

Blooming Prairie Servicemen's Club

The Honorees: Distinctive Service

Doug and Judy Myers (1960)

Honored Staff Member Julie Naatz (1974)

Athletic Hall of Fame Andrea Herdina Simon (1986) Sheila Lembke Wiese (1986) Dave Oswald (1951) Jeanne Kruckeberg Ide (1986) Heather VanRavenhorst Larson (1987) Lori Kruckeberg Mattson (1984) Heidi VanRavenhorst Bell (1989) Amy Noble Seitz (1986) Sue Ulrich Cook (1984)

Tickets available at New York Life Office, BPEF on Facebook

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operations

If you need a press operator, it’s a RAP Rent-a-Pressman program allows papers and printers to get jobs done when staffing issues hit

By Mary Reardon

I

n Spring 2018, Ketchikan Daily News Publisher Tena Williams found herself in a jam.

Her lead pressman was being prepped for a medevac from Ketchikan, Alaska, to a Seattle hospital. Along with the stress of having a sick employee, she was left with no pressman since the only other person at hand able to run the Goss Community/DGM press was also waylaid by medical issues.

She turned to some hometown boys. Her brother suggested she call Jerry Loesch, brother of Tom Loesch, president } Tom Loesch, and owner of president and owner imPRESSions of imPRESSions worldwide, worldwide a provider of single-wide newspaper and commercial presses. The Loesches grew up in Ketchikan, and their father, C. F. “Budd” Loesch, worked at the paper in the 1970s.

As Williams remembers, she reached Jerry while he was on a bus to the Seattle-Tacoma airport about to board a jet for Anchorage. He and a co-worker had a press installation scheduled in southcentral Alaska.

Jerry instead got a ticket for one of the few flights from Seattle to Ketchikan, which brought him in town in time to run the press that evening; the

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} C.F. “Budd” Loesch running the Ketchikan Daily News press in 1974. pressroom gets the last page for the next morning’s edition at about 10 p.m.

“It was a really close call. But it worked out,” said Williams.

Jerry stayed in Ketchikan for two weeks until the Daily News pressman could return to work on the six-day-aweek paper with a nightly run of about 2,700.

And so, the Rent-a-Pressman (RAP) program was born, as Tom Loesch recollects. The program dispatches pressmen to newspapers, large commercial printers and other operations who need them in a pinch. It’s a growing offering for imPRESSions, headquartered in Burlington, Washington, with a facility in Tupelo, Mississippi. “COVID had a

lot to do with it really taking off the way it did because so many of our customers were finding themselves with nobody to run their press,” said Loesch.

Facing COVID outbreaks, some press operators quit, leaving publishers with no options, said Loesch. “In a lot of cases, the little shops, especially some up in Alaska, Montana and places like that only have one person who really knows how to run the press.”

Loesch said imPRESSions would like to hire more press operators for the program. Loesch has seven people able to work as rented pressmen.

About half of them are stationed at the headquarters in Burlington. One is stationed in Tupelo, two are in Las Vegas and one is in Oregon. editorandpublisher.com

EditorandPublisher.com/Operations

The Newport News-Times (Oregon), the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, the Aiken Standard (South Carolina) and the Daily Chronicle (Bozeman, Montana) are among those who’ve used the service. A positive COVID test and vacations have led the Ketchikan paper to dip into RAP several times again, said Williams.

The RAP jobs usually last around two weeks but sometimes go as long as six. The printer or paper pays for travel and expenses. RAP is more like a courtesy service or loss leader for imPRESSions, as the rates are discounted, said Loesch, now ranging from $45 to $65 with OT at time-and-a-half. It’s around 50% of imPRESSions’ usual press service rate.

Among the presses the imPRESSions team has run are Baker Perkins, Hantscho, Goss Community, Goss Urbanite, Goss Sunday, DGM 440 and Heidelberg Mercury. Job types include newspapers, books, magazines, and in California, ballots for independent printers working for the State of California.

RAP AT BEAR RIVER Also turning to the Rent-a-Pressman (RAP) was Bear River Publishing, Preston, Idaho, a printing and packaging facility and part of Adams Publishing Group.

On its DGM 400, Bear River prints The New York Times, The Herald Journal (Logan, Utah), the Idaho State Journal (Pocatello), the Post Register (Idaho Falls), the Bingham News Chronicle (Blackfoot, Idaho) and commercial } Patrick Nealy, print work. general manager “I’ve known at Bear River Tom Loesch Publishing for 25 years, (a division of Adams Publishing Group) and I know editorandpublisher.com

} Robin Smith (right) and Clint Portnell

working in 2020 in Bozeman, Montana, on a DGM 440 press.

lots of the guys on his staff,” said Bear River general manager Patrick Nealy.

“When I saw that they were offering that program, I was really struggling to get especially my night crew out of the building for any vacation time, so I reached out.”

RAP dispatched Robin Smith, who is “very skilled,” said Nealy, and was almost plug-and-play, with just a slight learning curve as presses differ in configuration. He stayed for three weeks in fall 2021 and returned in January 2022, operating the press by himself for a week.

Meantime Nealy’s been focused on replenishing his staff. Bear River was put in place as a central location to replace aging press equipment in Logan and Pocatello. Press people from those sites converged on Preston when the plant opened 20 years ago.

They hung around for the most part, but Nealy saw the plant’s situation change in the past year when two of Bear River’s older pressmen retired and another broke his back in an ATV accident.

The plant had been searching for replacement press people for well over a year. “It’s very difficult to attract skilled talent into a small town, especially if they’re coming from a place like Boise, Reno or Denver,” said Nealy. Preston’s population is about 5,600.

Bear River recently hired two new people. A woman who worked for Bear River about a decade ago has returned to the fold. The other hire resulted from Odgen Newspapers’ fall 2021 purchase of Swift Communications, which included Pressworks Ink in Carson City, Nevada. Nealy was able to glean a hire from the closure of that plant. The new hires put the Bear River facility at eight press operators.

Despite the new hires, Nealy may still use RAP since he oversees production for Adams’ Western group, with locations in Cheyenne, Wyoming; Nampa, Idaho; Bozeman, Montana; Klamath Falls, Oregon and Mount Vernon, Washington.

Loesch says imPRESSions, which he founded in 1995, has worked in 52 countries and completed around 1,800 jobs. They sell used presses of various makes as well as new equipment from Goss Graphic Systems China and Contiweb.

Asked to identify broader trends, Loesch said he sees newspapers going away from very large presses and positioning themselves with smaller presses. “They can put in a smaller, more versatile press that has really nice print quality and opens the door for them to do commercial work when they’re not printing their newspaper.

You don’t drive an 18-wheeler to the corner 7-Eleven to get a gallon of milk,” he said. 

Mary Reardon is a writer and editor based in Wisconsin.

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Veterans are finding a place in America’s media, but their numbers are low

W

hile the first data analysis from saturationMilitary Vets in coverage war in Journalism (MVJ), years unfolds a group founded in Europe, many may look in 2019 with a to journalists with military mission to attract backgrounds for context more veterans to the grounded in experience. Yet the industry. Veterans } By Mary Reardon ranks of vets in the U.S. media haven’t flocked to are thin. Around 7% of Americans the field despite their have served in the armed forces. proximity to current events and the Still, only 2% of media workers are developed skill sets and specialized veterans, according to a Census knowledge many possess.

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} Altasia Johnson,

a former Air Force sergeant, is now planning a career in journalism.

Journalism is a challenging field to break into is a common refrain from veterans moving into and already ensconced in the U.S. media.

“There was a time where I

editorandpublisher.com

} Altasia Johnson on a military

aircraft on her way to Afghanistan.

Later in life, Johnson turned toward a career and journalism and connected with nonprofit Military Veterans in Journalism. MVJ linked her with mentor David Kishiyama, a founder of the Asian American Journalists Association. Johnson is studying journalism at the University of South Carolina. (Submitted photo)

didn’t want to be a journalist because I was getting people saying it’s hard to get into and it’s cutthroat,” says Altasia Johnson, a former Air Force sergeant now building a career in journalism.

“Journalism is a really hard field to break into no matter who you are,” says MVJ co-founder and president Russell Midori, a former Marine.

“It’s a professional job that pays low, especially in the beginning, and it costs a lot of money to build the degrees and what you need to build bona fides in the industry.”

The U.S. Army pays its employees an average of $64,000 a year. The Marine Corps is at $52,000, the Navy is at $69,000, the Air Force is at $65,000 and the Coast Guard average base salary is $77,000, according to PayScale. The average salary for a journalist is $41,000.

“I think a lot of times, veterans just give up and say, ‘Well, I’ll become a cop, where my skills are valued,’ or ‘I’ll go do another job where I can at least editorandpublisher.com

} Military Veterans in Journalism co-founder Russell Midori reporting on a refugee caravan in Mexico in 2019. (Submitted photo)

} Russell Midori, a former Marine

with a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia, now works as a photojournalist for WPIX Channel 11 in New York.

start at $50,000 a year and have a 401(k),’” said Midori.

In Johnson’s case, she couldn’t turn away. “This is the only thing that I’ve ever been passionate about or ever wanted to do. So I’m fully invested.

Now I can’t go back.” After two deployments to Afghanistan, where she worked as an executive assistant, she’s now getting a bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of South Carolina. She’s also working as an

analyst for Huntington Ingalls at Shaw Air Force Base outside Sumter, South Carolina. Johnson has done freelance work for the North Carolina National Guard Association, the Tarheel Guardsman magazine and AmeriForce Media for their Reserve & National Guard Magazine. She’s interested in on-camera reporting.

That passion for journalism is reflected among others who served.

Like many in the media, these vets carry a feeling of doing something significant, of pursuing a calling.

Lucretia Cunningham is among those who long dreamt of a journalism career. Cunningham was an Air Force medic for ten years and trained as an allergy and immunology technician.

But she found it hard to make rank in that specialty, heavily reliant on the flu season as the “big show.” In 2016 she got an ultimatum from the Air Force: either get out or train for flight medicine. She got out of active duty and went into the Air National Guard, lingering in the medical field.

“I figured ‘I’ll go to nursing school,’ even though I didn’t even want to work in a hospital. I think I was watching a APRIL 2022

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documentary or something about a reporter. And I was like, what would it take for me to just do that?”

She decided to cross-train } As well as serving as a journalist as a public affairs and studied at specialist for the the Defense 926th Wing, an Information Air Force Reserve unit, Lucretia School Cunningham works (DINFOS) at as a reporter with Fort Meade, KUNR public radio in Maryland. She Reno, Nevada. used the GI Bill to get a bachelor’s in communications from Old Dominion.

On Facebook, she found Military Veterans in Journalism and the group connected her with mentor Alex Sanz, deputy director of newsgathering at The Associated Press. They trained remotely, with phone calls once or twice a month. “To talk about what I was doing, what I was working on.

How I could make my stories better or the goals that I had.”

After being featured in an MVJ event, Cunningham landed a job in 2021 as a reporter with KUNR public radio in Reno, Nevada. She’s also working as a public affairs specialist for the 926th Wing, an Air Force Reserve unit.

Journalism represents a way forward } Jordan SartorFrancis training with for New Yorkinfantry Marines as a based Jordan midshipman in 2014 Sartor-Francis at Camp Pendleton, after being Southern California. medically (Submitted photo)

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} Tech. Sgt. Lucretia

Cunningham, public affairs specialist with the 192nd Wing, Virginia Air National Guard, on her state’s mission at the U.S. Capitol in response to January 6.

Cunningham carries her camera equipment, helmet and gas mask. “Like a lot of guardsmen at that time, we, the Virginia Air National Guard, had sent security forces to the area around the Capitol in D.C. to have a presence there because of the heightened threat level after January 6.

My role as a public affairs specialist was to tell the story of the guardsmen in my unit — what are they doing, how are they contributing to this?”

Cunningham joined the Air Force in 2006 at age 19 and served as a medic for a decade. She had also considered the Peace Corps. “If you talk to a few veterans, they’ll tell you they always had this desire or need to want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.”

(Submitted photo)

} Jordan Sartor-Francis, a graduate of

the United States Naval Academy, was medically discharged from the Navy in 2018. He is currently targeting a career in broadcasting and plans to go to grad school at CUNY's Craig Newmark school.

discharged from the Navy in 2018.

A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, he planned to remain in the Navy for at least five years, perhaps as long as two decades. Casting around

for a post-Navy career, he found himself unsure. He did some modeling and acting, going from gig to gig. He then Googled veterans in journalism and found MVJ. “Oh, this is perfect,” he thought.

MVJ connected him with mentor Lynn Smith, who had a 15-year career as an anchor on NBC News, MSNBC and CNN Headline News, and launched consulting firm Rylan Media. “I think I would probably be just sitting in bed all day, dreaming about becoming a journalist instead of actually taking steps to do so if it weren’t for Russell and Military Veterans in Journalism,” said Sartor-Francis.

Sartor-Francis, targeting a career in broadcasting, plans to go to grad school at CUNY’s Craig Newmark school. editorandpublisher.com

} Sam Kille is a former Marine and

spokesman for New York-based nonprofit Report for America, which places journalists into local newsrooms with a stated mission to report on under-covered issues and communities.

WHY SO FEW? Why are so few vets in the media?

“It’s hard to say for sure,” said Sam Kille, former Marine and spokesman for New York-based nonprofit Report for America (RFA), which places journalists into local newsrooms with a stated mission to report on undercovered issues and communities.

“Especially when you consider that a lot of military veterans do tend to gravitate towards jobs that have some kind of service component to them.”

“I think military vets find it difficult to transition to any job when they leave the military. Among big challenges that they face: they might be older, and they may have less education than some of their peers,” he said. “The problems with journalism itself can make that even more difficult,” he said, citing the often low pay and barriers to entry.

Since launching in 2017, RFA, co-founded by GroundTruth Project Executive Director Charles Sennott and journalist/entrepreneur Steven Waldman, has seen 385 journalists chosen for newsroom positions.

Twenty-seven veterans have applied to the program since the group began tracking veteran status two years ago, while five U.S. military veterans and one Israeli vet have gone into the reporting corps. “This, of course, is less than 2% of our corps to date, and we would like to see this number grow,” says Kille. editorandpublisher.com

} Sergeant Anthony Vazquez awaits the arrival of personal and cargo helicopters

at the landing zone of Forward Operation Base Kajaki in Kajaki, Helmand province, Afghanistan, in 2013. Vazquez served as a landing support specialist in the Marine Corps, handling the movement of supplies. He recounts an incident in 2012 during his first deployment of two in Afghanistan where an Afghan national was hit with an IED, blowing off part of his leg. He was being brought in to be medevaced to Camp Leatherneck for treatment. “Behind him on the stretcher was his brother, just crying, sobbing, trying to keep up with the Afghan national in the stretcher.

And he’s in sandals, trying to run on like river rock because that's what our landing zones are made of,” said Vazquez. “He and his brother were innocent civilians.”

That scene served as a motivation to get into journalism. (Submitted photo)

Kille points out that RFA doesn’t make the final decision on the hiring of any of the members of its corps. RFA pays about half their salary, with the other half covered by local news outfits with help from local donors.

RFA recently called for more veterans to apply to its journalistic corps in a post titled “Report for America seeks military veterans.” The group is working with MVJ on the effort.

MAJOR, SERGEANT-MAJOR It’s not hard to identify the value military experience brings to news.

Beyond the obvious — knowledge of equipment, operations and “being the only journalist in a newsroom who knows the difference between a major and a sergeant major,” in the words of Russell Midori. Johnson, SartorFrancis and others said that military experience can foster a self-direction that civilians may not associate with top-down operations such as the armed forces. “Start with independence.

Being able to do things on your own without having anybody tell you how to carry it out to your best ability because that’s kind of ingrained in us.

You don’t need full directions to know how to get the job done,” says Anthony Vazquez, a Marine vet who worked as a landing support specialist and is now a photojournalist with the Chicago SunTimes, a job he got through RFA. Vazquez, who spent more than two years as an Associated Press stringer in Mexico City, also cites communication.

“In the military, you have to have great communication, especially if you’re not speaking to somebody in your own branch.”

Talking to people around Chicago communities struggling with gun violence, Vazquez draws on his two deployments in Afghanistan and “knowing what PTSD is and what they’re going through because you have friends and others who have dealt with it in the military.” Having that knowledge equips him to connect a bit more, he said.

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Cunningham, who reports on general assignments along with military-related material, believes her military experience is useful to KUNR in part because she knows who to contact. “I’m working on a story right now about the Guard working in non-traditional roles, supplementing the workforce with struggles that we’re having,” she says.

“They are resourceful; they’re excellent problem solvers. They kind of have a healthy distrust of the government,” says Midori of veterans.

They can be hardy, he adds. But Midori is hesitant to characterize vets given the lack of uniformity in their experience and outlook. “Veterans are valuable to newsrooms for the same reason that people of different ages are valuable to newsrooms and people of different racial backgrounds or different religious backgrounds. It’s really about diversity, and they bring a diversity of experience.”

} Anthony Vazquez, a Marine vet who worked as a landing support specialist, is

now a photojournalist with the Chicago Sun-Times, a job he got through Report for America.

IN THE MILITARY CITY Many would agree that one doesn’t have to be a vet to be a solid military reporter, nor should vets be pigeonholed to cover war or military issues.

Johnson, for example, would like to cover military or vegan/vegetarian food trends.

One who provides a rare level of military affairs insight at the local level is retired Air Force officer Brandon Lingle, who secured a job at the San Antonio Express-News through RFA and now sits on the editorial board.

Lingle dedicated 20 years to the Air Force, primarily working in public affairs after receiving training at DINFOS. He retired in 2020 as a lieutenant colonel. He writes in a city that hosts Joint Base San Antonio, a city so dedicated to a military identity that in 2017, it registered a trademark for the moniker “Military City USA.” The paper has a longtime military reporter, Sig Christenson, and Publisher Mark Medici was interested in adding a voice with

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} Brandon Lingle dedicated 20 years

to the Air Force, primarily working in public affairs after receiving training at DINFOS. He retired in 2020 as a lieutenant colonel.

military experience to the editorial board, says Lingle.

“I’ve found myself increasingly frustrated with the lack of transparency from the military, at least in my time in this position on the opinion side. A lot of FOIAs (Freedom of Information Act requests),” says Lingle. He says the Defense Department stripped away information going back to 2014 that had been public on defense.gov, in an

effort, Lingle posits, to protect Afghans who worked with the U.S. He brought attention to the scrub-out in a piece headlined “In purging archive, DOD transparency takes a step back.”

“I still have contacts and lots of sources. But I’m outside of the institution now, so I don’t have the insider knowledge and tools available to me that I did when I was still in the military. There have been times where it’s been hard.” Nevertheless, Lingle manages to spotlight topics that don’t typically get much sophisticated coverage in the non-military press.

The first time he reached back to people he knows in the military was for a February story titled “An Air Force senior general just got candid about mental health in the military.”

Lingle had worked with that general in the past, and he was very open to having the conversation, said Lingle.

“It was his first media engagement since taking command in October, so I thought that was really cool that he was willing to talk with me and trusted me with his story.” editorandpublisher.com

INFO ON DINFOS

} Air Force Major Brandon Lingle

supports Army Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen during an engagement with Iraqi media at the Besmaya Range Complex outside Baghdad in October 2011.

Today Lingle writes for the San Antonio Express-News. (Submitted photo)

The story reads: “Gen. Mike ‘Mini’ Minihan, who is responsible for about 107,000 people and nearly 1,100 of the military’s cargo and refueling aircraft, } Brandon Lingle currently writes for tweeted a the San Antonio photo of his Express-News, schedule that where he has showed an been looking into upcoming trends concerning embedded reporters, mental health saying that the appointment military embedding with the words practice has faded ‘Warrior heart. over the years.

No Stigma.’”

Lingle also recently wrote on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“I was able to, on the column and opinion side, have a little bit more leeway than on the hard news side.

I was able to incorporate some more literary approaches to talking about Afghanistan, whether that’s weaving in memories or other stories from my experience there and using that as a filter to look at what’s happening now.”

Lingle’s February article, “Ukraine’s story may inspire; still, it’s one of horror,” addressed the war in Ukraine. editorandpublisher.com

Veterans have varying experiences in the military and varying pathways into journalism. Some get training at DINFOS, the Defense Information School, a DOD’s Defense Media Activity component, at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. DINFOS trains more than 2,600 military, DOD civilian, international military, and interagency students across 19 basic, intermediate and advanced public affairs and visual information courses, says its website.

“There are some who did go into journalism,” said Report for America spokesman Sam Kille of his DINFOS peers. “The ones who tended to stick with it went to jobs covering the military, working in places like Military Times. But a number of them, like me, found themselves in communications roles.”

Some pair DINFOS training and military public affairs experience with a GI Bill to pay for college as they launch into a post-military media career path.

When he originally left active duty in 1999, Kille used the Montgomery GI Bill towards an associate’s degree. When he went back to school to finish a bachelor’s degree, he had served in the reserves through 2003 and was activated for a large part of that time, making him eligible for a percentage of the post-911 GI Bill. “The post- 911 GI Bill has made it much easier for all military veterans to pursue education afterwards because it pays up to 100% of the tuition.”

Brandon Lingle went through DINFOS in 2003. He said that many of his DINFOS/public affairs peers left the military before he did due to reductions in force and cutbacks over the years. Many of his peers ended up in different branches of the military. The ones who remain in the military are largely still in public affairs. Some have gone to the civilian sector, as a government civilian or into corporate. A lot land in civilian government roles in the Defense Department or other government departments because of the stability, said Lingle.

“We don’t understand the war in Ukraine,” it read. “We should keep a healthy skepticism of government statements and bold headlines. They may be factual. They may be grounded in fact and embellished. They may be false but emotionally true. They may be nonsense. Each may be true in its own way. We need to be smart consumers of the information and realize each bit that trickles onto our screens may be trying to manipulate us,” he wrote.

He has also been looking into trends concerning embedded reporters, saying that the military embedding practice has faded over the years. The issue has come to the fore. The Military Reporters & Editors Association is calling for the resumption of embeds.

It is lobbying the DOD to allow journalists to embed with U.S. troops chosen to deploy to NATO’s eastern

flank, according to a February 6 press release from the group.

The Express-News editorial board also had a March piece concerning a fatal crash of two T-38C Talon training jets at Laughlin Air Force Base near Del Rio, Texas. They have called for the end of Operation Lone Star, Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security mission that has mobilized thousands of Texas National Guard members.

“The veteran and military community is not a monolith,” said Lingle, reflecting on his approach. “There is the classic narrative of the broken veteran and struggling veteran. I’m more interested in the stories of veterans who are stepping up to challenges and living with their past and growing and becoming stronger and more resilient.”

Mary Reardon is a writer and editor based in Wisconsin.

APRIL 2022

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THE FEW MISSION GROWS FOR MILITARY VETERANS IN JOURNALISM “Journalism needs veterans more than veterans need journalism,” declares Russell Midori, president of Military Veterans in Journalism. The professional association, launched in 2019, has gotten mentors for hundreds of people, gotten people fellowships and gotten people jobs. It’s a busy group.

“But as we’ve grown, we’ve seen ways that our work is providing a service to journalism itself, not just veterans. The media is widely distrusted by a growing number of Americans right now. And veterans’ reputation for selfless service is one of the ways that we can help restore public trust in the news,” said MVJ co-founder Midori, a former Marine with a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia who works as a photojournalist for WPIX Channel 11 in New York.

“The number of veterans that we have working in news media is out of step with the number of veterans in the audience, and that’s inherently bad for journalism. And it’s inherently bad for freedom of speech,” Midori told E&P. Midori sees the gap in veteran representation as especially wide in newsroom leadership.

Most of MVJ’s funding comes from grants, including the Knight Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies and the Wyncote Foundation. The nonprofit association, which Midori says has 500-plus members, has recently gotten grants from the Ford Foundation and News Corp Giving.

With the News Corp grant, MVJ plans to provide, via an online portal, standards and guidance for reporters covering military issues. As part of the grant, MVJ is also developing a style guide along the lines of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Cultural Competence Handbook, published in 2020.

“Our community of military veterans in journalism has deep and personal knowledge of the issues affecting the military and veteran communities. We

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} Zack Baddorf,

MVJ’s co-founder and executive director and a Navy veteran.

He believes that a stronger understanding of all aspects of military life and nuance is needed in coverage on topics such as PTS/PTSD and military sexual trauma.

} Dustin Jones,

a former Marine who completed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, is now working for NPR and writing for Black Rifle Coffee’s Coffee or Die magazine.

Here he relaxes in 2019 in Encinitas, California, with pooch Swayze.

(Submitted photo)

want to share our expertise and best practices with other journalists doing reporting on these issues, hopefully leading to stronger and more nuanced news coverage across the nation,” said co-founder Zack Baddorf, MVJ’s executive director and a Navy veteran.

A stronger understanding of all aspects of military life and nuance is needed in coverage on topics such as PTS/PTSD and military sexual trauma, said Baddorf. “More simply, reporters mix up military terminology, like ‘commander’ and ‘officer,’” according to Baddorf.

Also in the works is a subject matter experts directory. The style guide and experts directory are due to launch through the portal on Veterans Day — November 11, 2022.

The $200,000 Ford Foundation grant aims to improve news coverage of disabled vets. In partnership with Disabled American Veterans and the Disability Media Alliance Project, MVJ is launching a speakers bureau and will train eight military veterans on best practices in disability reporting.

The veterans will go on to do their own training and presentations in local newsrooms. The program got more than two dozen applications.

The group has established fellowship programs with outlets such as CNN, The Washington Post, Task & Purpose and Military Times. Also among MVJ initiatives: developing a web portal for job seekers, holding a 2022 in-person convention in Washington (likely in early October) and producing a podcast, Sword and Pen. MVJ is working to expand its services to vets who aren’t members, says Midori.

EARLY ADOPTER One who was an MVJ member from the beginning is Dustin Jones, a former Marine who completed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jones, who knew Midori as a fellow alumnus of a documentary program at Columbia, was the first Military Veterans in Journalism intern at NPR in 2020. “I had been working at Home Depot for four or five months leading up to that because that was the only job I could find. I was working overnights unloading tractor-trailer trucks and stocking shelves 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.” He interned as a producer for All Things Considered and a reporter for the Newsdesk.

There were more than 20,000 applicants for fewer than 30 NPR internships in fall 2020. “Instead of having to compete against those kinds of numbers, I applied for the MVJ internship, which was one slot, but my chances were one in 35 or one in 40.”

Jones, operating out of Southern California, is currently on-call for NPR and writes full-time for Black Rifle Coffee’s Coffee or Die magazine, aimed at military vets, first responders and coffee lovers.

“The fact is that it will take a very long time before the industry truly recognizes veterans as a community worthy of inclusion in editorial decision making,” Midori said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever see veterans represented in newsrooms at the same rate they are present within our population, but at least through these grants, we can help them to punch above their weight in terms of newsroom influence.”  editorandpublisher.com

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CYBER THREATS TO MEDIA COMPANIES ARE ON THE RISE

Organized crime and state-sponsored bad actors pose a real risk, but simple measures help safeguard systems 36

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editorandpublisher.com

} By Gretchen A. Peck

W

hile Editor & Publisher was speaking to news publishers about their cybersecurity concerns in preparation for this feature, several significant events unfolded. Russia went on the offensive against Ukraine, invading the country and launching a war of choice.

At deadline, Russia’s war crimemounting offensive was beginning its fourth horrific week, threatening to further destabilize the European continent and draw in the rest of the world, especially allied NATO nations. The televised and tweeted war put on worldwide display the bravery of journalists and the vital nature of information, especially in dire situations. At press time, three journalists have been killed reporting on the war.

On March 14, 2022, international news outlets reported that Israel’s government systems had been disrupted by a cyberattack — a “digital denial of service” or “DDoS” attack.

These aren’t particularly sophisticated hacks; they occur when the volume of traffic overloads servers. The source of the attack, if known, wasn’t disclosed, but news agency Haaretz reported that Israel’s ministries of health, justice and welfare were impacted.

What it meant for the public: every government site with the gov.il extension was out of service for over an hour, The Times of Israel reported that same day.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) categorizes a number of cybercrime threats, from business email hacks to identity theft, spoofing and phishing scams, and ransomware. editorandpublisher.com

} As the E&P April issue went into production, this message appeared on

PressReader’s site after a cyberattack hobbled their operations and those of more than 7,000 international magazine and newspaper titles.

Cybercrime recently came to the digital doorsteps of news publishers worldwide when PressReader, the digital supplier of more than 7,000 international magazine and newspaper titles, was hobbled by a cyberattack.

In the days following the outage, the developer reported, “We can now confirm that the network issues we experienced were caused by a ransomware attack. Immediately upon detection, our team implemented a comprehensive response plan to assess the threat and respond accordingly.

As a defensive measure, we disable certain administrative and publicfacing systems, which included taking Branded Editions sites and apps, as well as PressReader, offline.” The company added that they had no evidence that any customer data was compromised nor that partner systems were impacted.

As our April issue was in production, “An Update On the Release of New Content” ran in stark white text across a black background on PressReader’s site. Thankfully, it reported that content processing was “fully operational, with all newspapers and magazines we have received from publishers since March 6 now published.” Still, they were in the process of restoring other issues and noted that readers may find the reading experience inconvenienced by “minor issues with Text View and Listen functionality.”

“We’re still working hard on getting operations up and running,” a company spokesperson told E&P. The PressReader attack, the disruption in Israel, and the start of a war being waged by one of the world’s most notorious state sponsors of cyber warfare all came within just a month’s time. If you’re getting the feeling that cyberattacks are occurring more frequently and hitting closer to home, you’re not wrong.

Daniel Tobok is the CEO of Cytelligence, one of the largest forensics and cyber-incident firms in North America. In 2020, the company was acquired by Aon. “We handle, on average, about 100 investigations per month, from ransomware to theft of intellectual property and extortion,” Tobok said.

Tobok also reported that attacks on media companies are escalating.

“Before the Ukraine-Russia conflict, they were about 5% of the crimes, but we’ve seen double-digit growth in [attacks on] news outlets and various media firms from what I call, ‘undetected sources,’” he explained.

It’s hard to pinpoint whether cybercriminals strategically target media companies or whether the criminal net is just so widespread that it ensnares news outlets almost incidentally. But news businesses around the world have found themselves on the receiving end of APRIL 2022

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CYBER THREATS TO MEDIA COMPANIES ARE ON THE RISE

hacks, breaches and ransomware demands, perhaps the most insidious of them all.

In January 2022, Amedia, a Norwegian news company, disclosed it had suffered a cyberattack that shut down its subscription and advertising systems in late 2021. “On the night of Tuesday, December 28, several of Amedia’s central computer systems were shut down. The production of online newspapers is going as normal, but no paper newspapers will be published on Wednesday. This is because systems for publishing paper newspapers, advertisements and subscription management do not work as normal,” the company said in a statement.

In early February, News Corp reported that its email systems had been hacked, citing China as the culprit.

Jim Waterson, media editor at The Guardian, reported, “The cyber-attack affected a limited number of individuals working for outlets including News UK — the publisher or the Times and the Sun — as well as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.”

Waterson had access to an internal News Corp email that described the attack as a “persistent nation-state attack,” he disclosed.

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} Daniel Tobok, CEO of Cytelligence The year before, in June 2021, ABC-affiliated TV stations in Orlando, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Pittsburgh — owned by Cox Media Group — were knocked offline by a possible ransomware attack, though Cox Media didn’t disclose the nature of the attack to the press.

Reporter Amiah Taylor explained ransomware — aptly named because it holds data hostage — in a February 17, 2022 article for Fortune.com.

She cited research by SonicWall, an internet cybersecurity company, and its 2022 Cyber Threat Report, which

offers some alarming statistics about ransomware attacks, in particular.

“Governments worldwide saw a 1,885% increase in ransomware attacks, and the health care industry faced a 755% increase in those attacks in 2021,” Taylor summarized the report.

“Ransomware also rose 104% in North America, just under the 105% increase worldwide,” the study indicated.

Naturally, news publishers — E&P’s readers — are concerned about what it might mean for their organizations in the future and if they’re well-guarded against cybercrimes.

BEING PROACTIVE IS A MAKE-OR-BREAK MEASURE “Ransomware has become the weapon of choice for various threat actors around the world,” Cytelligence’s Tobok told E&P. Tobok said that two factions most often commit cybercrime: organized crime and state-sponsored criminals.

The state-sponsored threats are primarily coming from Russia, Ukraine, China, North Korea, and lately, areas of the Baltics, he noted.

“It’s a fairly easy crime to commit,” he continued. “It’s low cost, and the profits are extremely high. To give you just a little bit of a fun fact, North Korea, in 2021, collected about $5.6 billion in proceeds from ransomware crime. When you think of a place like North Korea, which doesn’t really have anything to export, yet they’re able to generate $5.6 billion on this, you can understand why it’s attractive to criminals.”

Besides the financial motives, there are the strategic motivations that should concern news publishers, as well.

“What we’re seeing, especially when we get conflicts around the world and the geopolitical climate changing, they’re doing this in order to cause disruption,” he explained. Typically, the crooks are on the hunt for money, but some also steal data. Only a editorandpublisher.com

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CYBER THREATS TO MEDIA COMPANIES ARE ON THE RISE

deep-diving forensic investigation can reveal whether data has been compromised, Tobok noted.

In the aftermath of an attack, victim companies will have two primary paths to take — “civil” versus “criminal,” Tobok calls them. On the civil side, the organization will need to investigate the breach, learn how hackers got in, make sure those doors are permanently closed and then endeavor to repair and restore systems.

As they go down the criminal path, the “three-letter agencies” get involved, and Cytelligence has relationships with all of them, Tobok said. A criminal investigation will be more concerned with saving “artifacts” that provide clues to the origin and scope of the crime.

“When we come across a client that has been hacked or breached, our first and foremost activity is preservation,” he said. “That takes a little bit of time. We preserve all the artifacts in a forensically sound manner and only then are we able to put the puzzle back together.

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“But unlike the crime-scene investigations you see on TV — I have to warn you — we’re not as goodlooking, and we don’t walk around in white coats and solve the crime in 28 minutes,” he quipped.

In other words, it can take a while.

“I chuckle sometimes when there is a national incident and some so-called cyber expert goes on TV and declares, six hours after the incident, that they know where the guys are from. It’s impossible,” he noted.

And Tobok noted that only about 25% of the time are the origins of the attack revealed, and that’s because cybercriminals have become adept at using spoofing and phantom servers.

Asked how news publishers might better protect themselves, Tobok offered some sage advice: • Be proactive. Engage a cyber expert who can guide you and test your systems.

• Be cognizant that the way cybercriminals get into systems can be innocuous, often by way of a phishing email to an employee or

someone with administrative access.

Educate your team about the risks and red flags.

• Do periodic assessments of your systems and challenge them with mock hacks.

• Make sure your entire staff is using complex passwords and authentication solutions.

• And the most important tip of all: Encrypt your data.

“When threat actors come across a server that’s encrypted, they will actually not touch it. It’s wasting their time, and for them, time is money,” he said.

“The doom and gloom is — it is happening, and it is real,” Tobok stressed to E&P readers. “It’s not a question of if, but when. The good news is, by being proactive, you can minimize your chances of being breached, and that’s critical.”  Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher.

She’s reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com. editorandpublisher.com

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CHANGE IS COMING TO SECTION 230 Pressure mounts as news publishers, politicians and even Supreme Court justices ponder the platforms’ future

I

n the simplest of Other folks want to terms, Section 230 — be able to sue the platforms or, more formally, for the content they do Section 230 of the allow on their apps and Communications Act of sites — content deemed 1934, enacted as part of the or proven harmful, like Communications Decency misinformation about Act in 1996 — distinguishes } By Gretchen A. Peck the global COVID-19 platforms from publishers. pandemic and vaccines, or Publishers can be held liable for content disinformation campaigns intended to they produce and disseminate, but the undermine U.S. elections. large tech platforms have successfully You can imagine the lawsuits argued that they should be exempt from that would rack up if Section 230 such legal risk, because they’re merely protections were repealed. It would pipelines for information and shouldn’t force the platforms to moderate possibly be held liable for the content its content, to become fact-checkers — users create and share. publishers, in earnest — and to censor Colloquially referred to as the “the their users more often rather than less. law that made the internet possible,” A full repeal would seem antithetical Section 230 unquestionably allowed the to what some members of Congress platforms to grow, flourish and reach say they’re advocating for. A year the epic proportions they enjoy today. ago, Congressional Republicans on Meta, for example, made $39.37 billion the House Energy and Commerce in 2021 alone, according to Statista.

Committee said they had a plan for Section 230 has more recently been retooling Section 230. They wanted the scrutinized, especially by members of platforms to make a more concerted Congress and a certain former deeffort at detecting and censoring platformed President. criminal activities, like selling drugs It seems, no matter political or exploiting children, but they also affiliation, everyone wants to sue sought to prevent the platforms from the platforms, or at least have the censoring “political speech” — itself a option to sue them. Some critics broad and subjective definition. want the platforms to be held

By July 2021, House Republican liable for subjective censorship and Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Jim deplatforming. They contend the rules Jordan had a draft bill in hand that that Twitter, Facebook and others would require the tech companies adopt are subjective, politically biased, to disclose to the Federal Trade and amount to censorship in the digital Commission quarterly about rules on “public square.” content and how they’re being enforced.

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Former President Donald J. Trump was a vociferous proponent of doing away with Section 230, but that was before he got into the social media business himself, with the launch of his TRUTH Social platform — with an interface that happens to look a lot like Twitter. In an op-ed published

by The Week in February 2022, authors Nicole Saad Bembridge and Trevor Burrus wrote about the rockand-a-hard-place position in which TRUTH Social found itself almost immediately. Users are promised a “family friendly” experience, requiring moderation, removal of “hate speech, spam, pornography and bullying,” and even — gulp — the banishing of users who don’t abide by the rules, just like the platforms he criticized for deplatforming him.

Though the former President is now occupied with flirtation with a future run and his new business venture, for which he put former Congressman Devin Nunes in charge, lawmakers left in D.C. carry on the quest to cancel Section 230.

To get a sense of how laser-focused D.C. lawmakers are, consider these statistics, courtesy of Quinta Jurecic, a Brookings Institution fellow in governance studies, who penned a feature for Lawfareblog.com on March 15, 2022: “In the 116th Congress, lawmakers formally introduced more than 25 bills to amend or repeal the statute. The 117th Congress has already seen almost 30 such proposals. editorandpublisher.com

Arguments over technology policy and internet regulation pull in a number of different directions, but almost everyone seems to agree that something should be done about [Section] 230 — even if nobody can agree what that something is,” she wrote.

And that, of course, is the most important question: How to amend it so that platforms can still exist but also be held more accountable?

As the president and CEO of the News Media Alliance (NMA), David Chavern advocates for the interests of the group’s more than 2,000 member organizations. He’s been a proponent for retooling Section 230 and penned an op-ed on the topic for Wired magazine in 2020 titled, “Section 230 Is a Government License to Build Rage Machines.” In it, he argued, “It’s time for strong amendments.”

E&P recently followed up with Chavern to learn more about how news publishers stand to gain if Section 230 gets an intelligent Congressional overhaul.

“At a very macro level, you have what is a pretty extraordinary exemption from liability that started out as a pretty simple idea, which is, the platforms are not responsible for what their users post on their services,” he explained.

“But what that really means is, even if you do bad things [as a platform], you’re not liable,” he added.

Chavern acknowledged that when Section 230 was conceived, it was a different time, when the internet was still fledgling. But the way platforms now operate is no longer like a public utility, or a “passive, dumb series of pipes,” he said. Now,

editorandpublisher.com

} David Chavern, president and CEO of the News Media Alliance

they are “extremely active pickers and choosers of content.” He’s referring to the notorious proprietary algorithms that the platforms designed to deliver customized experiences to users and big-but-targeted audiences for advertisers.

“The reason why news publishers care is because our content ends up being in competitive environments on these platforms — Google and Facebook, in particular,” he said. “The incentives for the platforms are really warped by the fact that there is no liability. Out of the billions of pieces of content out there, Facebook gets to decide which content you’re exposed to on the platform. They do very editorial things.

“Their incentives are to pick the things that keep your attention, not the things that have quality. The trouble for news publishers is, we actually invest a lot in quality, expensive content. It’s actually a lot cheaper to just make

things up. … But the bottom line is, if Section 230 allows platforms to not care about information quality, we’re in a bad place, because our primary value is quality,” Chavern stressed. “Now, we end up competing for people’s attention on these platforms against straight-up made-up garbage.”

Chavern suggested a good starting point for amendment: Legislate away the proprietary algorithms, forcing more public transparency about how the platforms operation and allowing users to directly choose the content they experience online.

“All of the sudden, they would care more about quality,” he said, though he acknowledged that it would impact the platforms’ relationship with advertisers. “Facebook chooses, individually, for people what they will see, and they’re rewarded for this, because that is the key to their advertising business.”

If content-curation power was handed over to users? “You could see a world in which there would now be a premium placed on quality content from news publishers,” Chavern said.

At least one Supreme Court Justice seems ready to take up cases challenging Section 230. In early March, Justice Thomas wrote an opinion about the denial of certiorari in the Doe v. Facebook, Inc. case. He affirmed the denial, but concluded, “We should, however, address the proper scope of immunity under §230 in an appropriate case.”  Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher.

She’s reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.

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N } By Robin Blinder

ow more than ever, news publishers need to be supported by suppliers and vendors that help create content, build audience and monetize every eyeball for the best return on investment. A business partner is a company that takes the time to get to know the challenges of a news media business and becomes a partner who works directly with teams to implement transformational applications, solutions and strategies. Imagine what our industry would be like without these critical partner companies and their devoted representatives — those that truly help our media businesses win in increasingly competitive marketplaces. That is why we at E&P decided to launch this salute to “Business Partner Powerhouses” — those superb companies that excel at supplying our industry with the products and services that make us sleep better a night, knowing they have “our backs” every day.

In alphabetical order by company name

A Marketing Resource www.amr-advantage.com

A Marketing Resource (AMR) was founded in 2001 as a marketing agency with one call-center location.

It has grown to support services for newspapers, cable, utilities, environmental services, telecom, healthcare and small to medium retailers in multiple locations worldwide.

Since their inception, AMR has provided consistent, reliable and costeffective services and have become the “single-source” sales, service and marketing partner for many clients.

AMR has partnered with over 500 newspapers in the areas of customer care, classifieds, audience retention and marketing programs.

AMR is most excited about the recent launch of a new program —

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} Barry O’Rourke, sr. vp marketing and sales, at the Great Western Audience Alliance conference (Photo provided by AMR)

the Cash Discount program — for the newspaper industry. They are looking forward to partnering with more publishing groups to help eliminate expensive credit card fees.

In his nomination for AMR, Aaron Kotarek, senior vice president of audience and operations, Oahu

Publications, Inc. (OPI), said, “AMR has partnered with OPI for over two decades and has been a strategic thought leader and collaborator as OPI continues to embrace emerging technologies, revenue diversification strategies and a relentless quest toward transformative innovation. AMR has been a key cog in our innovations, as they recently delivered cutting-edge financial technology to OPI in order to implement a robust Cash Discount Program aimed at eliminating our exorbitant credit/debit card interchange fees. This initiative was a roaring success and helped shave $1.2 million in expense off of our bottom line…. AMR has embraced our recently employed Premium Digital Content Strategy and now sells digital subscriptions to prospective subscribers at greater frequency.

“I personally view AMR’s Stop Saver Program as an industry leading best editorandpublisher.com

practice. Retention is the name of the game, and AMR’s customer service representatives are empowered at the point-of-contact to retain subscribers utilizing a predetermined array of stop save rebuttals, negotiation techniques and pricing/frequency options. Their work in this area has helped OPI to maintain churn rates which are some of the lowest in the major metro peer group.”

AMR’s response to the notification of their E&P Business Partner Powerhouse award was, “We are honored to receive this award and are extremely grateful to all our newspaper publishing clients for allowing us the platform to launch dozens of innovative industry firsts. We could not be more appreciative to all our clients for over 20 years of professional and gratifying partnerships.” said Ed Spagnola, AMR founder and CEO.

} Joe Cooper, general manager Pacific division, at the Great Western Audience Alliance conference (Photo provided by AMR)

} The Column team enjoying Florida weather.

Column Software, PBC www.column.us

Public notices have been center stage in many states lately, so it didn’t editorandpublisher.com

surprise E&P that a partner like Column Software, PBC (Column) would receive several nominations.

The company provides publishers with a public notice software platform to streamline operations and deliver a modern customer experience to

local governments, legal services and businesses required to place public notices. From scheduling to proofing to pricing to affidavits, Column is an extra pair of hands for automating the timeconsuming parts of a newspaper APRIL 2022

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E&P’S 2022 BUSINESS PARTNER POWERHOUSES

staff ’s workflow. And who doesn’t need an extra pair of hands?

Column also provides an elegant billing and invoicing system for publishers and their clients. They even cover credit card fees for online transactions — putting money back in the publication’s pocket, notice-bynotice. Column empowers publishers and their clients with custom-branded self-service order entry tools and sends them automated updates of proofs, invoices and affidavits.

Columns’ customers gave them ringing endorsements for customer service, innovation and dedication.

Kevin Zepezauer, president and publisher of Restoration News Media, said, “Column’s responsiveness to our questions or concerns have made for

a smooth and successful transition process for us and our clients. We have also really valued their innovative approach. They bring such creativity and energy to every new idea or product enhancement.”

Marco Coppolla, legals clerk at The Daily Territorial in Tucson, Arizona, stated, “Column has revolutionized the process of publishing legal notices for my newspaper. They’ve created a userfriendly platform that has empowered my clients to submit legal notices, view and pay invoices and obtain affidavits all online.”

“Column is also a dedicated group of problem solvers,” said Carla Asmundson, the advertising sales manager for the Southern California News Group. “We have thrown

eType Services

www.eTypeServices.com Small community papers often struggle with getting everything done with minimal resources. eType Services is there to help. The company is a leading provider of digital products and services for over 500 community newspapers across the U.S. eType Services specializes in news websites, e-editions and news apps. They also help papers with circulation and production. eType Services’ easy-touse, affordable solutions help eliminate the barriers to entry for small- and medium-size newspapers seeking to reach more readers and increase revenue by uniting their digital and print strategies. They provide service matched with state-of-the-art software and act as a digital team for papers too small to afford a digital team on-site.

J.D. Meisner, publisher and owner of Cimarron Valley Communications in

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} Thad Swiderski,

president of eType Services

Oklahoma, told us, “I have been a client of eType since 2013 and have watched this company grow and evolve… by adapting to its customers’ needs.

Knowing you can’t put all newspapers into the same box, Thad (Swiderski, founder and president at eType), along with his capable staff, is willing to listen to our needs and create what we

plenty of challenges their way, and they routinely work hard to deliver a creative solution or new approach. The Column team is a group of innovators that really believe in helping publishers and our communities improve the public notice process.”

Jake Seaton, founder and CEO of Column, said, “We are so proud to serve an incredible network of publishing partners across the country. From small family-owned operations to major enterprise media companies, Column’s tools have been built directly from publisher feedback and have scaled to new capabilities from publisher enthusiasm and ideas. We are deeply collaborative partners that believe in building technology that makes the lives of a newspaper staff better.”

are looking for. He is willing to invest his company’s time and resources into what might be, at times, my hairbrained schemes to see if we can make them work…. Response time when we have a problem has always been sameday — most of the time within the hour.

Thad’s dedication to his customers is unmatched, and when he says, ‘See you at the convention,’ he means it.”

“Day-in, day-out, they support our three weekly newspapers with reliable print and digital production support, which allows our small staff to focus on newsgathering and telling the stories of our communities,” said Kay Ellington, publisher of The Texas Spur. “eType is responsive and quality driven.

Their motto is, ‘We’re not a technology company; we’re a newspaper company.’

Many of their staffers are former newspaper employees who understand and respect our industry. For dozens of small newspapers, they are a vital resource for our sustainability.

We appreciate them every day. They help us sleep at night.” And that’s what a business partner powerhouse is all about. editorandpublisher.com

Software Consulting Services, LLC

INNOVATION. LONGEVITY. SERVICE. Thank you to the many customers who nominated us and to our amazing staff.

“I value most the quality of staff we have built at SCS; without them and our customers, none of the magic happens.”

- Kurt Jackson, Managing Member/Owner

(610) 746-7700

newspapersystems.com

Advertising • Production • Newsroom • Digital Asset Management

E&P’S 2022 BUSINESS PARTNER POWERHOUSES

Modulist

www.modulist.news Modulist’s tagline and mission is “Publish life’s stories.” Life’s stories such as obituaries, business announcements, paid letters to the editor and other milestones like weddings, retirements and birth announcements can be submitted on Modulist’s worldclass online portal directly to one or multiple media outlets with one, single transaction. They are a media services company that specializes in the processing of user-generated, paid content submissions for any media type, regardless of size, frequency or distribution platform.

Modulist collects the payment upfront from the consumer, builds the ad in their intuitive, user-friendly portal and do quality assurance on the order.

} The Modulist team

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} Modulist’s graphic shows how their program works.

They provide a .pdf file for printed publications and a digital file into the publication’s content management system. Their process ensures that the community content stays on the publication’s platforms.

Simply put — Modulist processes the work on their client’s behalf, providing white-glove service seven days per week, produces a qualitylooking product for all platforms and lets the client keep the revenue.

Modulist’s mission is to establish a long-term partnership with clients, helping to position them for the future by decreasing production costs and increasing revenue in integral content

categories. Their driving factor is to provide top-notch service on the publication’s behalf so that they help build the brand reputation. They want to reduce local newspapers’ production costs to make newspapers viable again.

Modulist received so many nominations that we can’t include each one, but every one sang out with similar endorsements. Kelly Boldan, editor of the West Central Tribune in Willmar, Minnesota said, “This company gets the newspaper business.

President Devlyn Brooks has an extensive background in newspaper newsrooms…. His entire staff has strong newspaper backgrounds, as well. The company also simplifies the process for funeral homes by providing one-stop placement opportunities to multiple newspapers…in a 24x7 portal that customers can access at their leisure.”

Diann Drew, publisher of Echo Press, said, “Having Modulist as our partner allows our staff members to focus on other aspects of the newspaper while having the confidence that our customers are treated as we treat them. We view the Modulist team as a valued extension of our team.” And Crystal Miller, publisher of the Albert Lea Tribune and Austin Daily Herald, stated, when talking about making changes with new platforms, “The Modulist team did the heavy lifting to get us to change the way we accepted, published and billed obituaries. Using Modulist continually saves staff time, improving our bottom line each month.” A shout-out for saving time and improving revenue! editorandpublisher.com

THANK YOU to our partners and customers for making the Public Notice Illinois platform an Editor & Publisher Business Powerhouse!

The Public Notice Illinois platform: EVERY public notice published by the state’s newspapers in ONE PLACE. Accessible. Easily navigated and searchable.

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New ProImage

www.new-proimage.com New ProImage has been developing solutions for publishers and printers for more than 25 years. They are dedicated to serving their customers’ needs by providing new solutions as their businesses and technology evolves.

ProImage’s latest workflow automation and output management software, NewsWayX, is now offered in the cloud. The hosted solution provides custom workflows on provided cloud servers. Local sites like Anchorage have logons just as if the servers were local to softproof, approve and track pages and plates. Plate-ready tiffs will automatically be sent to local CTP devices for output or .pdf pages will be sent to contract printers. ProImage maintains the servers, Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and software so versions are always current, eliminating costly upgrades and the need for software and hardware support contracts.

ProImage’s OnColor and OnColor ECO cloud solutions are already helping newspapers and publishers reduce costs by automatically color correcting and toning images, removing the need for the operator to manually touch-up images. While ECO ink optimization software reduces color ink consumption and cost up to 30% by applying different levels of GCR to color pdf pages.

} This graphic shows before and after ProImage’s OnColorECO.

} Rick Shafranek, vp of sales and marketing for New ProImage

Mary Steiert, systems editor for the Anchorage Daily News, told E&P, “NewsWayX cloud-based software

Public Notice Illinois www.illinoispress.org

Public Notice Illinois (PNI) was unique in the fact that the company was nominated for E&P’s Business Partner Powerhouse award by 15 state newspaper associations — Alabama

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saved us when the pandemic started, and we instantly turned into a remote workplace. The creation of layout templates for plate output is super simple, and the support is great. The ProImage folks are always able to support whatever workflow I throw at them.”

Rick Shafranek, vice president of sales and marketing for ProImage, said, “We’d like to thank all our customers using our cloud solutions that help streamline production and reduce operating costs. Our hosted workflow solution is now processing over two million pages annually for various newspapers.”

Press Assoc., Georgia Press Assoc., Oregon Newspaper Publishers Assoc., Missouri Press Assoc., Minnesota Newspaper Assoc., Mississippi Press Assoc., Montana Newspaper Assoc., Nebraska Press Assoc., Nevada Press Assoc., North Carolina Press Assoc., editorandpublisher.com

Publish Life Stories Partner with our selfserve platform to increase obituary revenue, record history, and empower readers

Thank you to all the publishers who nominated us.

Set up a demo. devlyn@modulist.news 701-241-5545

Connect with us.

Modulist.News

E&P’S 2022 BUSINESS PARTNER POWERHOUSES

South Carolina Press Assoc., Tennessee Newspaper Assoc., Utah Press Assoc., Virginia Press Assoc., and Washington Newspaper Publishers Assoc.

PNI is a public notice website and platform developed by the Illinois Press Association to contain all public notices published in their state’s newspapers. Launched in 2011, it was so effective that, by the end of 2012, a state law went into effect that requires all public notices published in Illinois newspapers to also be posted to one site — PNI. The accessible, easy-tonavigate platform has been shared with and replicated by many other state press associations, with significant impact in those states.

Don Craven, president and CEO of the Illinois Press Association, said, “The real beauty of PNI is that it’s operated by state associations and their newspapers, which have the most direct relationships with the people served by their local city councils, county boards and school boards.

It puts all of our state’s notices in one, easily accessible and searchable site — all at no cost to the local government and its taxpayers.”

Laurie Hieb, executive director of Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, spoke to the need for PNI for state associations, “This platform allows state associations all across the country to have a place where its newspaper members can upload public notices onto a statewide website. The ability to do this is critical to each state’s list of reason to their legislators

Schermerhorn Bros. Co.

www.schermerhornbrosco.com Schermerhorn Bros. Co. is a nationwide master distributor of premium quality packaging products.

They supply the industry with the world’s finest bags and poly products, cord and rope, rubber bands, strapping, stretch film, tape, thread, twine, wire,

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} The Illinois Press Association works as a team to make the Public Notice

Illinois website and platform a Business Powerhouse. Pictured at the IPA office in Springfield, Illinois, are (from left) Sandy Pistole; director of revenue; Cindy Bedolli, member relations; Ron Kline, chief technology officer; Lisa Bouvet, IPA Media Services; Don Craven, president and CEO; Lisa Sisti, IPA Media Services; Tracy Spoonmore, chief financial officer; and Charlene Frank, IPA Ad Services.

(Photo submitted by Illinois Press Association)

as to why public notices should stay in newspapers and their websites…

(This ability) is, in some cases, the difference between a newspaper staying open or closing.”

“PNI is constantly being upgraded, modified and tracks everything that’s happening with our site,” said Carol Daniels, executive director of

Tennessee Newspaper Association (TNA). “In short, this innovative platform has allowed TNA to manage our statewide public notice website efficiently, provide support to our member newspapers and partner with another press association to keep public notices in Tennessee’s newspapers.”

workwear and rain gear. They provide innovative distribution programs that save their customers time and money, while making the job easier. Their website lists the tenets that have helped them deliver on their mission since 1893: quality, service, convenience, integrity, value, experience, stability, flexibility and confidence. editorandpublisher.com

Congratulations to PNI on your E&P Business Partner Powerhouse recognition Your dedication to helping us all keep public notices in the hands of newspapers and their digital platforms are critically important to the work we and our members do every day. Your ongoing dedication, unwavering loyalty and adaptability are what put you above the rest.

Your press association customers are more than appreciative of our partnership with you.

WE ARE 19 STRONG AND GROWING

Alabama

Oregon

Georgia

South Carolina

New Jersey

Tennessee

Massachusetts

Utah

Minnesota

Virginia

Mississippi

Washington

Missouri

Illinois

Nebraska

Ohio

Nevada

Pennsylvania

North Carolina

ASSOCIATION Serving newspapers since 1865

E&P’S 2022 BUSINESS PARTNER POWERHOUSES

Five warehouses nationwide help them get products to their customers quickly and economically, with same day shipping on all stock items.

Rob Jenney, the circulation director for The Courier in Findley, Ohio, nominated Schermerhorn Bros. Co. with this salute: “Schermerhorn

Social News Desk

www.socialnewsdesk.com Social News Desk (SND) is the leading provider of social media

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Bros. provides a quality product and excellent knowledge of those products. Tom Warwick is the reason we do business with Schermerhorn.

His customer service and knowledge of his products and the newspaper industry are excellent. He works hard to service our needs and has a

great balance at serving us and his company. Schermerhorn as a company has always been excellent to work with. They see to it the customer is informed of industry trends for the products we use. Their concern for our industry is evident in how Tom works with us.”

solutions for newsrooms. Founded by journalists, the company excels at creating best-in-class solutions to real challenges facing today’s newsrooms — both through organic social tools like SND Dashboard and paid social tools like SND Promotions.

The SND Dashboard platform helps thousands of newsrooms optimize content distribution through organic social media channels by virtue of its suite of secure publishing, automation

and analytics tools, which rely on AI and data to help journalists make better decisions in less time. SND Promotions is a tech-enabled service focused on audience acquisition for newsrooms. It’s built on the foundation of SND’s proprietary ad technology — Dynamic News Ads — which leverages AI to find a newsroom’s best content and turn it into the best social media ad in real time. editorandpublisher.com

SND’s nominations were full of praise for their platform and service. Brandon Omohundro, vice president, digital operations at Gray Media Group, Inc., said, “Social News Desk provides a single point of entry to post to multiple social media platforms from a single interface that is geared toward publishing. It } Kim Wilson, founder and president saves time, allows of Social News Desk for centralized support and guidance and allows for easy additions and removal of user access.”

Ian Hill, sr. manager of digital audience development at TEGNA, stated, “TEGNA is one of America’s biggest independent broadcast companies, and for at least the past four years Social News Desk has been our solution for engaging our 30 million Facebook, Twitter and Instagram fans. While other social publishing tools were created by and for marketers, SND was designed to meet the unique distribution and engagement needs of the news industry by its team of former journalists. Other social media tools were built to help brands listen to feedback about their product; SND helps the news industry quickly and efficiently distribute important content while also listening and responding to their communities. The SND team’s background in journalism also has helped them be more responsive when we’ve needed technical assistance or requested new features. In recent years, they’ve recognized the need for TEGNA to secure its station social media accounts, and they have collaborated with us to roll out new features that help TEGNA become best-in-class at social media security. Their efforts have allowed the SND team to become a Business Partner Powerhouse for TEGNA.” Kim Wilson, founder and president of Social News Desk, told E&P, “The partnership we build between Social News Desk and our newsroom clients is the most important thing we do. We listen to their needs, ask for their ideas and truly make every decision with our newsrooms in mind. Thank you to all of our partners who have helped Social News Desk build technology that matters in newsrooms across the planet.” editorandpublisher.com

AMR-A Marketing Resource would like to thank our 500plus newspaper partners for helping us grow our business since 2001.

We’re grateful to our partners from the St Paul Pioneer Press for helping us launch our �irst call center in St Paul, Minnesota, and to the hundreds of newspapers that have helped us grow into a worldwide company with multiple call centers in the United States and abroad.

A special thanks to Oahu Publications for partnering with us on our new Cash Discount program, and for the E& P Business Partnership Powerhouse Award and recognition.

We are excited about the recent launch of our Cash Discount program and look forward to partnering with more clients to help eliminate credit card fee expenses.

The �irst award AMR ever received was also for a business partnership with Comcast Cable & newspapers back in 2004.

We’ve only had a successful run for 21 years because of our excellent newspaper partners and their willingness to take some chances with new ideas.

Thank you for your business and your trust. It has been our pleasure to work with you.

— Ed Spagnola & the AMR Team | www.4amr.net

E&P’S 2022 BUSINESS PARTNER POWERHOUSES

} SCS Staff photo (left to right) Jonathan Ebling, Kimberly Brown, Martha Cichelli, Phil Curtolo, Dan Rinehimer, Frank Warnke, Nick Beliveau, Drew Verenna, Ethan Hartley, Michael Grabowski, Charles Finady, Jacob Pfeiffer, Brian McCasland, Kurt Jackson, Marty MacDonald

Software Consulting Services

www.newspapersystems.com When looking to find out what Software Consulting Services (SCS) is all about, you have only to look at their mission — “SCS builds and supplies trusted newspaper systems to those responsible for the free press.”

That is highlighted in the SCS vision: “Good technology decreases the cost of production and frees people from repetitive tasks.” SCS products are “Best of Breed” applications that are available as part of their Community Advertising System and/or their Community Publishing System. Or they can integrate into your existing system as standalone products. In addition, SCS has an Automated News Pagination product and FotoWare, a world-class digital assets management system.

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When the call for Business Partner Powerhouse nominations went out, SCS customers responded. “SCS has been a highly responsive provider of integrated newspaper ad ordering, layout and workflow management systems. We’ve worked with them for 10 years and have experienced incredible success with their help.

They have customized their platforms to meet our specific needs. They are a great partner for our suite of publications,” said Joe Wingert, publisher of the Bucks County Herald.

Jeremy Gulban, CEO of CherryRoad Media, wrote, “SCS has a very robust software solution for advertising billing and editorial content management.

They are also rolling out new solutions for automated pagination. We have been very impressed with their responsiveness to our needs and unique requirements. Coming from the software industry, I am very impressed with the skills and dedication of their staff. We had a very aggressive timeline that we required to complete the

implementation of their software, and they delivered.”

Cerria Orientale Torres, production manager for Times Review Media Group, said, “SCS has been an absolute essential partner to our business. They are quick to assist any time we are on deadline to assure excellent technological information. Our business would not be the same without them.” And Phil Spencer, director of application support at Tribune Publishing, added, “We have worked with SCS for over 30 years and have always felt they delivered high quality software products, excellent service and support and understood our business needs as few others did.

They have truly partnered with us to help drive the business and meet the needs of our customers.”

Finally, Jeffrey Wilson, regional IT director for Ogden Newspapers, said, “SCS is a wonderful company to work with. They have been very responsive when there have been editorandpublisher.com

any issues that come up and (with) changes we need. We have successfully deployed their Layout system across the country at many of our locations.

They strive to educate our tech folks to be knowledgeable with their systems so we can troubleshoot any issues our users have on our own. And since we operate 24/7, issues always arise.

In the rare case we have had issues overnights or on weekends, they have been available to work with our team to get us back up and running quickly.

This has allowed us to meet the tight deadline schedule all our newspapers are on these days.”

} Kurt Jackson, managing member and owner of SCS

Kurt Jackson, managing member and owner of SCS, told E&P, “For 39 years, SCS has been known for innovative products and the industry’s best service. Richard Cichelli, SCS’s previous owner (and my boss for 27 years) always said, ‘The best comment a customer can give us is that your technology and software just sits there and runs.’ I purchased the company to ensure what we built continues for many years to come. We would like to thank our customers for nominating SCS and continuing to support us as we change and grow to meet the current and future needs of our industry.”

Stacker

www.stacker.com Stacker is a mission-driven organization providing a newswire of data-focused features to thousands of news outlets across the country.

Stacker’s newsroom of journalists and data analysts creates more than 150 stories a month that are accessible to partner news organizations including McClatchy, Tribune, Hearst, Town Square, Beasley and Nexstar, among many others.

Stacker takes a different tack on the traditional newswire service by offering its content for free to publishing partners, both local and national, and subsidizing its newsroom operation by working with brands to underwrite select content through Stacker Studio.

Stacker empowers publishers by advancing sustainable models for journalism.

Stacker provides a national desk to local and independent news partners helping them fill coverage gaps, complement their own reporting and ultimately allowing them to deliver engaging and data-driven stories for their readers. editorandpublisher.com

} The Stacker Team on a Zoom call. Top Row (L to R): Siri Cosper, Zack Abrams,

Sam Larson; Second Row: Julia Hagopian, Kristen Wegrzyn, Paris Close, Eliana Marzullo, Melanie Vernoia; Third Row: Leesa Davis, Nicole Caldwell, Christie Citranglo, Kevin Fowler, Jaimie Etkin; Fourth Row: Tommy Gamba, Ken Romano, Noah Greenberg, Emilia Ruzicka, Brian Budzynki; Fifth Row: Diana Shishkina, Coleman Walsh, Brandon Ruetsch, Brandon Poindexter, Emma Rubin; Last Row: Elisa Huang, Luke Hicks, Amanda Milligan, Ben Higgins, Lauren Liebhaber

Their Stacker Local product delivers hyperlocal insights at scale, spanning news, business and lifestyle topics and localized across all 50 states and 384 metro areas to help small newsrooms bolster their coverage and focus their efforts on the local community reporting they do best. Stacker also provides “data drops,” where they share the data beyond Stacker feature so that

local publishers can further customize the stories for their audience. Whether it’s localized coverage of rural hospital closures or a breakdown of voter demographics by state, Stacker produces trusted journalism by shining a light on stories often hidden within local and national data.

In her nomination of Stacker, Elizabeth Miller, the owner/editor of the APRIL 2022

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Auburn Examiner, said, “The Auburn Examiner is a small local news outlet, so we don’t have a pointed focus. While this provides our readers with more variety, it also means that we are often spread thin.... As a small, independent outlet, I must always be thinking of ways to stand out from other outlets, all with larger newsrooms, budgets and resources. Stacker also keeps the Auburn Examiner relevant with content our local competitors can’t match. … From lists to national stories that connect locally, Stacker is able to provide the Auburn Examiner with valuable content that is not only appreciated by our readers, but that is engaging in a manner that makes a meaningful impact on our SEO, analytics and engagement across all platforms.”

} One of the Stacker teams working in the office (L to R) Eliana Marzullo, Melanie Vernoia, Tommy Gamba

TownNews

www.townnews.com TownNews delivers tried-and-true solutions that provide sustainable audience and revenue growth for dynamic media organizations.

“We’re known for our world-class digital publishing platform, BLOX CMS,” said Brad Ward, CEO of TownNews. “But we’ve evolved into an end-to-end solutions provider for media organizations of all sizes.

If you’re a local media company that’s looking to expand your audience, grow revenue and boost operational efficiency, TownNews is the first call you should make.”

In the past year, TownNews has launched new and improved audience development and programmatic advertising platforms that are making a serious impact for their customers.

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} Brad Ward, CEO of TownNews Audience+ is a new dynamic paywall solution that supercharges subscription/membership conversions with one-page payments, dynamic landing pages with special offers and fully customizable audience journeys.

Audience+ adopters are seeing impressive results: • 130% increase in new digital starts (WenatcheeWorld.com) • 5,253% increase in newsletter signups (BendBulletin.com)

• 250% higher conversion rate than industry median (EastCentralIowaNews.com) • 187% growth in conversions (Lee Enterprises) YieldUp is an industry-first, fullymanaged program that delivers guaranteed revenue, optimal sellthrough and the best payment terms — Net 30 — in the industry.

“We’re working closer than ever with key clients to test and refine solutions in the real world before wide release,” Ward said. “Our massive media industry footprint, which includes our parent company Lee Enterprises — one of the largest newspaper groups in the country — gives us an unmatched capability to deliver proven solutions with sustainable results.”

Don Lovelace, vice president of circulation for Lakeway Publishers said, “We moved all our websites to TownNews and saw a dramatic increase in online traffic, increase in online subscriptions and online advertising.”

Rachael Pracht, senior digital subscriptions manager for Lee Enterprises told E&P, “They are very editorandpublisher.com

responsive to their customers, and I have had the best relationship with the Audience side of TownNews. The Audience+ product rates higher in functional use tests against competitors, and anytime we need assistance, have product ideas, etc., they are always very responsive. The Audience+ product alone was a huge success for us.”

Allie Peters, product manager for Lee Enterprises, said, “TownNews provides local media technologies that make it possible for local newspapers and broadcasters to exist and perhaps even thrive in a declining market. Lee Enterprises uses numerous TownNews products and heavily uses their CMS, news apps, video solutions and smart paywall. All solutions are affordable and effective, allow us to monetize as needed and come with the best support. All pieces of their technology work seamlessly together allowing our markets to eliminate tedious tasks and focus on what is most important to them and their communities — journalism. In a world full of biased news and celebrity content, TownNews helps our markets provide localized valuable journalism and eliminates the risk of news deserts in communities across the United States.” 

editorandpublisher.com

Major market solutions for your community newspaper learn more about low cost e-editions at etypeservices.com

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KEEPING UP WITH HUPKKE

Columnist Rex Huppke talks about moving from the Chicago Tribune to a larger audience at USA TODAY

By Mary Reardon

E

rstwhile Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke is settling into his new gig at USA TODAY. The “humor(ish)” columnist is from Florida, went through Indiana via a stint with The Associated Press and banked nearly two decades at the Trib. He’s also an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches feature and opinion writing.

Huppke is a trained scientist with a degree in chemical engineering from Lehigh University. He found the science field “jarring” and took refuge in journalism, getting a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Huppke talked to E&P after a few weeks nesting in his new editorial home. Here are excerpts from the conversation.

E&P: Chicago has a history of famous columnists. You’ve got Mike Royko, Roger Ebert, Clarence Page. Does your work draw upon their experiences?

Huppke: There’s a legacy of just amazing columnists in Chicago.

Personally, I really felt lucky to have the chance to be a part of that scene.

I used to read Mike Royko growing up in Florida. I grew up in Tampa. He was syndicated, and the Tampa Tribune carried Royko’s columns. There was always something about that that I liked. I wasn’t eyeing a career in journalism at that point. But I read all kinds of columnists: Anna Quinlan in The New York Times, Dave Barry, and Royko was one of them. When I did

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} A headline from a March 9, 2022 Rex Huppke opinion column for USA TODAY about the East Coast invasion of the Joro spiders

get up to Chicago and got to write stuff in the same spot that he did, I did not feel worthy of that by any stretch of the imagination, but it was pretty cool.

E&P: Is there anyone you enjoy reading today?

Huppke: USA Today’s got some great people. Suzette Hackney is writing incredible stuff, and Connie Schultz, I really love. I really like Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri, who writes satire, which has been my wheelhouse.

She’s amazing; I love her work. I try to read conservative voices and voices more along the lines of my worldview too. I’m on the more liberal side, and I try to get a little bit of everything, which hopefully, most of us do. I read several conservative columnists at The Washington Post, like Michael Gerson, Jennifer Rubin and George Will, and keep up on other right-leaning publications, like National Review.

E&P: Looking at some of your recent columns, they include “Absurd trucker convoy has me rooting for higher gas prices.” Then you have “Texas’

transgender order isn’t a political winner; It’s cruelty writ large.”

What kind of reader response do you typically get?

Huppke: This is my third week right now, so I don’t have a really great sense of that at this point. Readers are just getting to know me, and I’m getting to know them, so I can’t tell you that I’ve had a specific type of reaction.

It’s a much larger audience, of course.

Based on the feedback I’ve gotten from columns in the Tribune, I wouldn’t anticipate it being too dramatically different. Right now, in this country, people have pretty strong opinions on both sides of most issues. Generally, what I found — and thank goodness for this — is that most of the responses I get to the columns are positive. Usually, especially when I’m writing something that’s humorous or satirical, people seem to appreciate having a chance to laugh about something that might otherwise be a bit scary or whatever. And then, there’s also a smaller undercurrent of grumbling and calling me bad names.

If you’re a columnist and you’re only getting positive feedback, you’re not columnizing very well. editorandpublisher.com

E&P: I was surprised to hear you say that you’re getting higher percentages of positive feedback, because I thought most people who would write emails or contact you on Twitter would tend to be the ones who were not really positive.

Huppke: Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to underplay the negative; it certainly comes in. But what I think has happened, and I saw this, particularly while Trump was in office and it’s continued, is there’s such a divide right now that’s based on people who believe in things that are actually happening and people who believe in stuff they’re being told that is not factual. So you have this kind of split.

And I think that for a lot of people on the side that’s grounded in facts, it’s really difficult to see other people on their Facebook feeds or friends and relatives even who are saying things that are just factually untrue and taking them as somehow gospel or something like that. It’s twisted people up a lot, which I completely understand because it is sort of mindbending. And so, when they read something that satirizes that kind of a situation, it seems to have a cathartic effect. The majority of the nice emails that I’ve received the past five, six years have said, ‘Oh, thank goodness, I’m so glad to see that somebody else sees things that way or somebody else feels this way.’ There’s almost a relief that they’re not completely losing their minds or something like that. The positive stuff has been higher in volume during this period of the sharp division.

E&P: Do you ever feel pressure to be funny when you’re out with friends or at the proverbial cocktail party?

Huppke: No, I don’t feel pressure to do that. That’s kind of a knee-jerk thing for me. I’ve always been, depending on who you talk to, either funny or a bit of a smart alec or whatever you want to call it — really, since I was a kid. I don’t think of myself as being Mr. Jokes-alot or anything like that. But I try to observe the strangeness of things going editorandpublisher.com

Huppke: The Tribune was such a great place. I was there for 19 years.

You don’t leave a job after 19 years and not miss the people. But I was ready and excited about the chance to come to a place like this to reach a national or international audience and have the chance to write about virtually anything — and big important topics that are impacting people all over the place. I’m still in Chicago.

} Rex Huppke (Photo credit: Sebastian Hidalgo/For USA TODAY)

on around us. Point out things that seem a little askew.

E&P: When you go home, do you indulge in current events, or do you try to back away from that?

Huppke: I’m pretty immersed in things, especially with social media.

Over the weekends, I try to find a day to at least largely disconnect just to preserve what’s left of my sanity. We live in a 24-hour news cycle. It’s not like when there were deadlines at 8 p.m., and then nothing happened until 10 or 11 the next morning. It’s going on all the time, and I like to be on top of things and try to find ways to help people understand stuff and cope with it or think about it. So I’m pretty tied in.

E&P: You have a background in chemistry. Do you think you’ll ever write about science?

Huppke: I was a chemical engineer, and when I became a journalist, a lot of people thought, ‘Oh, you’re gonna do science writing, right?’ But honestly, I think my time as a chemical engineer was so jarring to me that I never wanted much to do with it.

I do sometimes like to write about science stuff in a funny way — like about quirky discoveries or quirky little scientific developments when there isn’t a lot of big news happening. I like to goof around with some science stuff, but I don’t have a strong focus on that.

E&P: I know you’re happy to be at USA Today, but are there certain things you miss about the Tribune?

E&P: What was the atmosphere at the Trib since Alden Global Capital took over last year?

Huppke: Not fantastic. Alden Global Capital carried with it a reputation that was not ideal if you’re a journalist. You can read about the efforts that reporters, as well as the union there, made to try to find other possible buyers. There was clearly a strong opposition to them taking over.

E&P: Do you have any plans to appear on TV, do any podcasts, documentaries or anything like that?

Huppke: I’m certainly more than open to doing other things. I love getting into other forms of media and talking if there’s something positive that I can weigh in on. I’m always happy to do that somewhere I can be helpful, but I don’t have any specific plans.

E&P: They should get you on Bill Maher’s program.

Huppke: We’ll see. I’m always, well, largely happy. This is week three, so I have no idea exactly where everything’s going to lead here, but mainly I’m just happy to be here and happy to be writing.  Catch the “E&P Reports” vodcast featuring E&P Publisher Mike Blinder and Rex Huppke at editorandpublisher.com.

Mary Reardon is a writer and editor based in Wisconsin.

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NewsPeople Chris Licht, the producer who created “Morning Joe,” revamped “CBS This Morning” and revitalized “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” has been selected to run CNN once Discovery merges with WarnerMedia this spring.

The Lake Placid News and Adirondack Daily Enterprise in New York have a new publisher. Trevor Evans, 33, previously was publisher of the Gloversville (New York) LeaderHerald. Evans takes over the publisher role from Cathy Moore, of Saranac Lake, who spent 47 years at the Enterprise and the News, 31 of those years as publisher.

Jeff DeLoach, president of the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Times Free Press for the past five years, has resigned as head of the Chattanooga Publishing Co. Mark Lane, president of the newspaper division of WEHCO Media, Inc., which owns the Times Free Press, is acting as the interim president of the newspaper until a replacement is named. Lane said he will split his time between Chattanooga and Little Rock, Arkansas, where WEHCO is based, until the company hires the next president for the Times Free Press.

Karen Fioretti has been named publisher and editor of The McDuffie Progress in Thomson, Georgia, following the recent departure of Wayne Parham, who had served in the role for nearly 10 years. She was most recently publisher and editor of The Star-Herald in Kosciusko, Mississippi.

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Donna B. Hall, publisher of The Atlanta JournalConstitution, which is owned by Cox Enterprises, will retire at the end of April. Hall has been with the company for 35 years and was named publisher of the AJC, Dayton Daily News and Cox’s other Ohio newspapers in 2019.

Insider has tapped New York Times advertising sales veteran Maggie Milnamow as its new chief revenue officer, reporting to Insider president Barbara Peng.

33 years, he has worked with News Media Corporation, a family-owned newspaper company with daily and weekly papers, most recently as chief operating officer.

Executive Editor Maria De Varenne, The Tennessean’s tenacious longtime newsroom leader, will retire this month from journalism. De Varenne, the first female executive editor in the news outlet’s storied history, took the helm more than a decade ago and led The Tennessean’s newsroom at a time when Nashville’s unbridled growth increasingly put the city in the national spotlight.

The Dallas Morning News has named Tampa Bay Times senior editor Amy Hollyfield its new managing editor.

Hollyfield succeeds Keith Campbell, who retired in December after 31 years with the daily. She will oversee day-today newsroom operations and report to Executive Editor Katrice Hardy.

Barry Winterland has retired from his role as regional finance director at Lee Enterprises, including properties in southeastern Wisconsin, and general manager of Lee’s Central and Southern Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin properties.

John X. Miller, who has served as a top editor at a number of newsrooms and most recently was a senior editor at ESPN’s Undefeated, is The Dallas Morning News’ new senior editor working with the paper’s business, features and sports teams. He joins Mede Nix as the paper’s other senior editor.

John Shank has joined D-R Media in Florida as vice president and group publisher. He will oversee the D-R Media weekly newspapers in Lake, Polk and Sumter counties. For the past

The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism has reached an agreement to collaborate with the nonprofit JournalList Inc. to expand its automated system designed to elevate and monetize trusted news outlets

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Share your news for next month’s issue with Cindy Durham: cdurham@newspapers.org

and their official social media feeds.

As part of this new collaboration, the JournalList board and RJI appointed Mark Stencel of the Duke Reporters’ Lab to be the project’s new executive director. He is taking over JournalList from its founder, Scott Yates, who is running for a U.S. congressional seat in Colorado.

Seasoned journalists and longtime newsroom leaders Lisa Miner and Jim Slusher have been promoted to managing editor roles at the Daily Herald in Chicago, Illinois. Miner was named managing editor and Slusher was named managing editor for administration and opinion. Both moves were announced by Jim Baumann, executive editor of the Daily Herald.

Paris Goodnight is the Salisbury (North Carolina) Post’s interim editor as outgoing editor Josh Bergeron moves onto another opportunity in news. Goodnight will manage the staff until a permanent editor is named.

Bergeron has accepted a position as a local news editor at the Charlotte Observer.

Working in Lawrence and Mercer counties is something of a homecoming for Vanessa Koper, who joined the New Castle News and The (Sharon) Herald in Pennsylvania as advertising director.

Outside Interactive, Inc., the world’s leading creator of active and

NewsPeople News Media Corporation owner John Tompkins recently announced two promotions within the organization. Current NMC Chief Revenue Officer JJ Tompkins has been promoted to company CEO and longtime Brookings Register Publisher Billy McMacken has been named the company’s new chief operating officer.

healthy lifestyle content, events and experiences, has named Amy DuBois Barnett as its first-ever chief content officer. She will oversee the company’s 30+ brands and direct editorial operations for all Outside titles.

Noreen Gillespie is the new global business editor at The Associated Press. She has a long history of being involved in transformative projects at AP. For the past five years, she’s been constantly innovating U.S. news, including developing AP’s state government collaboration with Report for America and securing a grant to deepen education coverage.

Allison Petty has been named Central Illinois executive editor of Lee Enterprises Inc. She will oversee the news report on all platforms for The Pantagraph in Bloomington, Herald & Review in Decatur, Journal Gazette/ Times-Courier in Mattoon/Charleston and Woodford County Journal in Eureka. Petty, who had been Midwest digital editor for Lee, succeeds Chris Coates, who has been named executive

editor of the Richmond TimesDispatch in Virginia, also owned by Lee Enterprises.

Greentarget, a leading public relations firm, has announced the addition of award-winning journalist Jennifer Smith as director of content and editorial strategy. Smith, who spent more than a decade as a reporter covering a variety of topics at The Wall Street Journal, will lead Greentarget’s content team.

Jin Ding, an experienced journalism fundraiser, has joined the Center for Public Integrity’s leadership team as chief of staff, part of a strategy of hiring that has transformed one of the oldest investigative newsrooms into an organization whose staff is majority people of color.

Maya Srikrishnan, a veteran journalist who has innovated in reporting with and for marginalized communities, has joined the Center for Public Integrity as an investigative reporter. Srikrishnan most recently served as associate editor for civic education at the Voice of San Diego, and was leading the organization’s diversity, equity and inclusion work.

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NewsPeople Trevor Baratko has been named editor of InsideNoVa and FauquierNow.com, two properties owned by Rappahannock Media LLC. Baratko joins Rappahannock Media from the Frederick (Maryland) News-Post, where he had been news editor since October 2020.

Medill has added a new faculty member to its integrated marketing communications department and a new staff member to lead the Spiegel Research Center. Lan Nguyen Chaplin will be a professor in IMC. Her research focuses on branding, materialism and children’s consumer behavior. Larry DeGaris will be the executive director of the Medill Spiegel Research Center.

NPR’s “It’s Been a Minute” host Sam Sanders has left the media outlet after 12 years working there, making him the fourth BIPOC journalist to exit the public radio network in the past six months.

Axios has named Jamie Stockwell, a local news veteran, who most recently served as a deputy national editor at The New York Times, as the executive editor for Axios Local. She will oversee Axios’ plan to expand its coverage to 25 local cities by the summer, and 50 by the end of 2023.

Adams Publishing Group has named Faith Hochanadel its vice president of human resources for the East Division and head of the companywide HR

Ross Ramsey, executive editor and co-founder of The Texas Tribune, has announced plans to retire May 1. In a tribute to Ramsey, CEO Evan Smith wrote: “Without his contributions as a writer, editor, mentor, steady hand, diplomat, historian, backstop, puncher of sacred cows, resolver of moral quandaries, calmer of waters and sayer of sooth, we surely would not be what we are today. No him, no this. No him, no us. Our success is his legacy.”

division. Hochanadel was most recently vice president of human resources at InhabitIQ, a Knoxville-based tech company.

Adam Behsudi has rejoined the POLITICO newsroom where he will guide coverage across a wide range of beats as news editor on the Economy & Business team. He most recently spent nearly two years at the International Monetary Fund, where he immersed himself in global economic issues and shaped content for the organization’s editorial platforms.

Ronda Parkes has been named the new CEO of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association. She succeeds outgoing CEO Caroline Medwell.

Former Claremore Daily Progress Executive Editor Pat Reeder will be inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in April.

Maria Ressa, the co-founder and CEO of Rappler, has been named a contributing writer for The Atlantic.

She will write about democracy, press freedom and the social web.

Ressa was a co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

Sree Sreenivasan, an internationally acclaimed journalist, digital media executive and educator, will join Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication to lead a new professional education and skills training initiative. Starting on July 1, Sreenivasan will serve as managing director of CronkitePro, which will address the training needs of journalism and communications professionals, or their companies, and eventually deliver a suite of offerings for non-degree seekers.

He will be based at the ASU Barrett & O’Connor Washington Center in Washington, D.C. Jezebel, the iconic women’s site under G/O Media, announced a series of new editorial and video hires including Senior Features Editor Sarah Rense, Senior Writers Khalisa Rae and Ezinne Ukoha, Video Lead Kady Ruth Ashcraft, and Staff Writers Gabrielle Bruney, Kylie Cheung, Audra Heinrichs and Emily Leibert.

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NewsPeople Emily Enfinger, a veteran newspaper reporter who most recently worked for The Courier (Houma, Louisiana) and Daily Comet (Thibodaux, Louisiana), has been named managing editor of The Daily Iberian, also in Louisiana.

Robert Miller, or as many Columbia Basin Herald (Moses Lake, Washington) readers may know him, R. Hans Miller, was promoted from senior reporter to managing editor on Feb. 14.

WAN-IFRA has announced the appointment of Kah Whye Lee as director, Asia. Lee, a Singaporean, was previously in charge of the Asia-Pacific media business of Reuters where he spent almost 20 years of his career which spanned roles that included marketing, product, operations and sales.

Robert Medley has been named editor of the Times Record in Fort Smith, Arkansas, swtimes.com and affiliated newspapers. Most recently, he was managing editor at the Yukon Progress, Piedmont-Surrey Gazette and Okarche Warrior, all weekly papers in Oklahoma.

Nexstar Media Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group, Inc., has announced the appointment of Jay Howell as vice president and general manager of its broadcasting and digital operations in Las Vegas, Nevada (DMA #40), including KLAS-TV (CBS), 8Newsnow.com, and their related digital and social media channels.

Rodney Blaukat has joined the Star Local Media team as its new vice president of sales and marketing. editorandpublisher.com

Acquisitions A century of Kavanagh newspaper ownership has come to an end. Brian and LeAnne Kavanagh have sold the Shelby Promoter, as well as the Cut Bank Pioneer Press, Browning Glacier Reporter and The Valierian to Jesse Mullen and Lloyd Mullen of Ponderosa Publications, LLC. Ponderosa Publications is affiliated with Mullen Newspaper Company based in Deer Lodge.

Mid-Atlantic Media, LLC has expanded its media holdings with the acquisition of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. The regional Jewish publication covering Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania suburbs and South Jersey was sold by the Jewish Publishing Group, a subsidiary of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

CherryRoad Media Inc. has purchased nine newspapers from Rust Communications, Inc. Three of the papers are in Missouri: Marshall DemocratNews, Monett Times and Cassville Democrat. The Arkansas papers are: South Missourian News in Thayer, Carroll County News in Berryville, Lovely County Citizen in Eureka Springs, The News in Salem, Villager Journal in Cherokee Village and Clay County Times-Democrat in Piggott.

Local TV giant TEGNA has been sold to a pair of private equity firms in a multibillion-dollar deal. Standard General and Apollo Global Management teamed up for the deal, under which the company will become the “nation’s largest minority-owned, woman-led broadcast group,” the deal partners said.

After two generations of Peck-family ownership, the Riverton Ranger in Wyoming has changed hands twice in roughly a month. The Peck family’s two-generation run with The Ranger ended in January. That’s when the paper announced the Pecks were selling The Ranger, Lander Journal and Wind River News to local financial adviser Grace Andrus, who moved to Riverton in 2017.

In early February, less than a month after the announcement of the first sale, the paper again changed hands, with Andrus transferring her stake in the three publications to Edwards Group Holdings, a company that instituted an employee-stock-ownership plan in August.

With a background in helping small businesses, Blaukat will focus on working with Star Local Media’s local advertisers to enhance their brand awareness and revenue through digital, email and print marketing solutions.

IndieWire has announced an expansion of its News team with the promotion of two veteran staffers and the addition of several new hires.

Christian Blauvelt has been promoted to executive managing editor and Ryan Lattanzio has been promoted to deputy managing editor. Joining the News team are News Editor Samantha

Bergeson, Weekend Editor Christian Zilko and Social Media Manager Vincent Perella Jr. FROM THE WASHINGTON POST: Sara Wildberger is joining The Washington Post as a multiplatform editor in the News Service. She comes to The Post from Argentum, where she was editor of Senior Living Executive magazine and other publications.

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NewsPeople to The Post from The Dallas Morning News, where he worked on zoned local coverage and SEO strategies during the pandemic.

Sophia Nguyen is joining the National Politics desk at The Washington Post as an assistant editor, where she will take on a new role helping conceive and edit explanatory pieces about politics, policy and the federal government. She joins National from Outlook, where she earned an exemplary reputation for her work commissioning and editing essays and news analysis on a range of political and cultural topics.

Naomi Nix is joining The Washington Post’s Tech team to cover Meta and other social media companies, with a special focus on their influence on American democracy and global politics and culture. She previously spent four years at Bloomberg News, where she most recently covered Meta.

Rushawn Walters has become a fulltime social editor at The Washington Post.

He started helping on The Post’s main Facebook and Twitter accounts in 2020 when Razzan Nakhlawi received The Post’s Opportunity Year. Since then, he has been an imaginative editor, finding compelling and creative ways to share the paper’s most ambitious journalism through visually driven social storytelling.

Dave Clarke is the new editor of The Washington Post’s 202 franchise, which provides news and analysis for Washington insiders on Capitol Hill, in the executive branch and in the policy and political advocacy communities.

He previously helped to run coverage of the Trump White House and, most recently, was the paper’s Congress

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CNHI has promoted Lisa Chappell, a veteran Texas publisher, to regional executive for the company’s newspapers in North Texas and five others in Oklahoma.

Chappell presently serves as publisher for the Greenville Herald Banner and its Texas sister papers in Gainesville, Royce City, Rockwall County, Weatherford and Cleburne. Her new role will include working with these Oklahoma newspapers: The Ada News, The Duncan Banner, Pauls Valley Democrat, McAlester News-Capital and Woodward News.

editor. In his new position, he will oversee a team that produces six daily newsletters.

Missy Khamvongsa has become the deputy editor of The Washington Post’s National Politics breaking news team, helping to lead a high-octane group responsible for anchoring coverage of the biggest national political stories of the moment. In her 15-plus years at The Post, she has developed a track record as a skilled editor with a creative, digital-first mindset.

Liz Seymour has become deputy managing editor for news operations and planning at The Washington Post.

Stephanie Hays has joined the Design Department at The Washington Post as a news designer. She joins The Post from The Seattle Times, where she handled design for A1, metro, opinions and features, including 12 special sections each year.

Zach Purser-Brown has been promoted to senior producer, Live Moments at The Washington Post. He joins Lauren Saks in leading the team responsible for bringing the biggest live events to Washington Post viewers onsite and YouTube.

Marissa Vonesh is joining the Design Department at The Washington Post as a news designer. She comes to The Post from Moment magazine, a nonprofit publication where she juggled multiple projects while also planning long-term story ideas.

Liz Sly will take on a new role as a correspondent-at-large covering global affairs for The Washington Post, based in London. She has spent the last decade as The Post’s Beirut bureau chief. In her new global affairs role, Sly will cover international relations and rivalries, with a focus on the United States’ shifting role in the world and the impact of American foreign policy.

Sarah Dunton has joined The Washington Post’s newsletters team as assignment editor, where she will guide a growing team of editors in managing and implementing strategy, overseeing the paper’s portfolio and editing individual products.

Leila Barghouty is joining Video at The Washington Post as supervising producer for weekends. In this role, she will serve as a critical link to ensuring seamless video coverage seven days a week. Barghouty has spent most of her career as a contractor at a variety of global news organizations.

Washington Post Opinions is adding Katja Hoyer, Mac Margolis and Keith Richburg as Global Opinions columnists, building on the diverse perspectives Post Opinions offers around the world.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: The New York Times has hired two reporters who will help the paper beef up for the midterms and add investigative muscle to its coverage of editorandpublisher.com

NewsPeople the struggle over American democracy.

Jazmine Ulloa, a versatile and talented national political reporter for The Boston Globe, is joining the paper as a roving midterm reporter based in Washington. And Alexandra Berzon of ProPublica is bringing her firepower as an investigative reporter to dig into the fight for the controls of our electoral system.

The New York Times has announced four promotions within the Food and Cooking department. Genevieve Ko and Emily Fleischaker have been promoted to deputy editor. Sara Bonisteel was promoted to associate editor and Becky Hughes was named senior staff editor.

Luis Ferré-Sadurní is the new Albany, New York, bureau chief for The New York Times. He has been with the Albany team since the end of 2019.

Writer, sociologist and cultural critic Tressie McMillan Cottom has joined The New York Times staff as an Opinion columnist, as the paper continues its ongoing expansion of Times Opinion columnists.

Alissa Rubin, who has been an international bureau chief not once but three times, has won a Pulitzer and has just spent a year as a Nieman fellow, is now turning her skills to a region she has long known well, and to a topic she has become newly passionate about. In her new assignment, she will focus on the Middle East and climate.

As we enter the 2022 midterm cycle, Nate Cohn will become The New York Times’ chief political analyst, and he will be broadly responsible for the methodology of its political polling and election night modeling. He’ll also produce a steady course of ambitious journalism that helps readers understand local and national politics editorandpublisher.com

by dissecting trends and offering clarifying historical context. In this new role, he’ll remain part of The Upshot.

Nicholas Casey has joined The New York Times Magazine as a staff writer, where he will be an international correspondent, based in Spain, and writing on a range of subjects.

Hannah Dreier has joined The New York Times as an investigative reporter.

For the past three years, she has been a national enterprise reporter at The Washington Post.

Claudio Cabrera is taking on his next big challenge, leading audience and newsroom strategy for The Athletic, which was recently acquired

by The New York Times Company. He will be defining The Athletic audience strategy, building an audience team to execute it and closely partnering with The Athletic’s newsroom on coverage.

Jason Karaian will be joining the Business department at The New York Times as news director. Karaian, with Greg Schmidt and Will Davis, will lead the team that produces the daily briefing – its planning, execution and evolution. He will remain based in London, working closely with Kevin Granville, London editor. In addition, Mohammed Hadi, in his new role as a deputy editor, will help lead news and enterprise coverage.

The New York Times has announced two appointments to the National desk: Kate Zernike and Alex Burns.

The New York Times announced that Charles Homans, who has been an editor at the Magazine since 2014, is becoming a full-time writer, for both Politics and the Magazine. Homans, who until recently was the magazine’s politics editor, will be reporting on ideas and activism shaping domestic politics.

The New York Times has created the position of climate editor in the opinion section – filled by Eliza Barclay, who has joined the paper from Vox. She will focus especially on how to bring climate opinion journalism to as wide an audience as possible, rather than appealing chiefly to insiders and activists. In addition, Andrew Trunsky is the new editorial assistant supporting Maureen Dowd. He was most recently a fellow at the Daily Caller News Foundation, where he reported on Congress, elections and American politics.

The New York Times has named Brian Weigler as the new SVP and head of Enterprise Infrastructure and Operations. In his role, Weigler will drive the technology strategy and lead the tech operations needed to support the paper’s hybrid workforce.

Mark Walker, The New York Times’ FOIA coordinator, has been promoted to a correspondent in Washington. He will work on a wide range of topics.

New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul has joined Opinion as it expands columnist ranks.

David Gelles has joined the Climate desk at The New York Times to cover the intersection of business and climate policy.

Ashley Calloway-Blatch, Metro’s night editor, has joined Standards at The New York Times.

Michael LaForgia, who joined Metro last year at The New York Times, has been named Metro’s new investigations editor.

Kirsten Danis, who joined Metro at The New York Times as its investigations editor three years ago, will now take on a wider role in the newsroom. Her job as a senior investigations editor will be APRIL 2022

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NewsPeople twofold. She will manage a small group of reporters connected to the Investigations department, working with Rebecca Corbett and Dean Murphy. She also will work with Matt Purdy to drive, oversee and vet investigative journalism from across The Times.

Obituaries Walter R. Mears, who for 45 years fluidly and speedily wrote the news about presidential campaigns for The Associated Press and won a Pulitzer Prize doing it, has died. He was 87. “I could produce a story as fast as I could type,” Mears once acknowledged – and he was a fast typist. He became the AP’s Washington bureau chief and the wire service’s executive editor and vice president, but he always returned to the keyboard, and to covering politics.

Al Autry, who had a 30-year career with McClatchy, including many roles at the Modesto (California) Bee before joining The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) and later the Sacramento Bee as senior vice president of advertising, died Feb. 25, just a few days before his 70th birthday.

Longtime Denton (Texas) RecordChronicle Publisher Emeritus Fred Patterson died Feb. 19. He was 92. He was remembered by friends and family as a man with two careers. He built a reputation in Denton as an advertising salesman and newspaper publisher. His legacy, though, will also be as a man whose

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The Flexible Editing desk at The New York Times has welcomed Elizabeth Yuan, Mike Peed, Dan Schneider and Hannah Wulkan as senior staff editors.

Emily Anthes, who joined the health and science desk at The New York

support for the arts, history and economic growth helped plant the seeds that helped Denton bloom into a cosmopolitan county seat proud of its distinctions from Dallas and Fort Worth.

Richard Curtis, founding managing editor for design at USA Today and a 1972 graduate of NC State’s College of Design, died Feb. 27 after a prolonged battle against cancer.

He was 75.

Booker Izell, 82, died Feb. 16 after an extended illness.

The retired head of diversity and inclusion changed the face of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and its parent company Cox Enterprises by championing diversity, attracting more employees of color and mentoring a generation of Black journalists.

Stan Champer, who spent the majority of his 50-year newspaper career in supervisory roles at The Daily Independent in Ashland, Kentucky, has died. He was 79. He retired from the newspaper in 2009, spanning a career that started in 1959 when he worked in the circulation department at the Tribune in Ironton and a stop as a reporter at The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington.

Michele McNally, who elevated photojournalism at The New York

Times a year ago on a temporary basis, is now a permanent member of the team.

Chelsea Matiash is moving to the National desk at The New York Times, where she’ll support organizational and operational improvements.

Times as its director of photography and later as a top newsroom manager in a 14-year tenure that brought the paper six Pulitzer Prizes for news and feature photography, died Feb. 18 in a hospital in Yonkers, New York. She was 66.

Keith Jones, 72, who worked for daily newspapers for more than 40 years, died Dec. 3. He worked in various editorial positions, from evening news editor for the Orange County Register in the late 1960s to deputy regional editor for MediaNews Group’s Bay Area newspapers in 2005.

Martin Tolchin, a former reporter for The New York Times who covered Congress with a keen knowledge of its twisting ways and power plays and who was later the founding publisher and editor of The Hill, a successful newspaper devoted to events on Capitol Hill, died Feb. 17 at his home in Alexandria, Virginia. He was 93.

Jon D. Smith Jr., a longtime finance executive for Hearst and the Hearst Foundations, died suddenly on Feb. 11 in Millbrook, New York. He was 77.

Smith, who joined Hearst in 1986 and retired in 2011, most recently served as assistant treasurer and director of banking and corporate finance.

Jack Shea, a freelance writer for The Martha’s Vineyard Times, died Feb. 13. He was a larger-than-life character who immediately put his friends at ease with his wry sense of humor.

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Advertising Sales Rep — MerCo Publishing Inc. — U.S. More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/525922625 Assignment Editor for GBH News — WGBH — Brighton, MA More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/524874817 Assistant Editor — Design History Foundation — San Francisco, CA More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/524339519/ Editor — Harlan Publications — Harlan, IA More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/524809665

Media Specialist — Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama —Birmingham, AL More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/525932131 Director of the Eugene S. Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media — DePauw University —Greencastle, IN M ore information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/525376848 Field Producer/On Air Reporter — The Laura Flanders Show — U.S. More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/524892102

Editor — Princeton University — Princeton, NJ More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/524303469

Education/Sports Journalist — The Sheridan Press — Sheridan, WY More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/525387833

Editorial Internship — Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting — Washington, D.C. More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/526128917

Production Editor — St. Louis Post-Dispatch — St. Louis, MO More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/525479956

Editor — Suffolk Publications, LLC, Suffolk News Herald — Suffolk, VA More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/524793781

Reporter and Editor — Environmental Integrity Project — Houston, TX More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/524331163

Executive Producer — Capitol Broadcasting Company, Inc. — Raleigh, NC More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/525820165

Producer/Reporter, “Oregon Field Guide” — OPB — Portland, OR More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/52597609

Editorial Page Designer — Las Vegas Sun, Greenspun Media Group— Las Vegas, NV More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/526136068

WRAL Streaming Anchor/Producer/Editor — CapitolBroadcasting Company, Inc. — Raleigh, NC More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/525958990

Director of Student Media — University of MississippiSchool of Journalism and New Media — University, MS More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/525740845

Writer/Associate Editor — Global Miami Magazine — Miami, FL More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/524815729

Government Watchdog Deputy Editor — Steinman Communications — Lancaster, PA More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/525722224

Writer, Middle East and North Africa — USIP — Washington, DC More information at https://jobs.mediajobboard.com/ job/524802091

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MEDIA SERVICES MARKETPLACE KAMEN & CO. GROUP SERVICES, LLC Media Appraisers, Accountants, Advisors & Brokers

Publish life’s stories.

Low-cost, turnkey solution to publishing paid content on all platforms. devlyn@modulist.news 701.412.8733 modulist.news

Kevin B. Kamen President/CEO

626 RXR Plaza Uniondale, New York 11556 Phone: (516) 379-2797 Cell: (516) 242-2857 E-mail: info@kamengroup.com www.kamengroup.com

Drive Revenue WITH Social Media Newspapers PROFIT with CellMark's Recycling Programs Contact: Tom Reilly, GM of Operations, Cell: (239) 560-4561 Email: thomas.reilly@cellmark.com • cellmark.com/recycling

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• Local market • Multi-media • Consumer • 60+ Markets • Standardized surveys • Tailored pricing

Phillip Beswick, CEO 832-521-1000 Pbeswick@TheMediaAudit.com

“Last year, your sales presentation using The Media Audit tool secured our publication a $100K+ print campaign. We are currently presenting a second- year renewal campaign and are confident your sales tool is a huge factor in continuing our partnership with this advertiser.”

Mid-Sized Market Newspaper “Public Broadcasting has its own unique sales slant and your understanding of our programming and approach have been tremendously helpful, We also appreciate the tremendous amount of customer support and attention to detail.”

Top 10 Public Broadcaster “We can attribute over $132,000 in new revenue that The Media Audit has helped us secure.

Media Audit has also helped us maintain over $220,000 in business whose contracts had expired and were shopping around.”

Top 35 Market Radio Cluster “The Media Audit is an invaluable tool which allows us to plan and execute across multiple media platforms and across multiple markets…We particularly like your software…it’s a competitive advantage that helps us win new business.”

Medium Size Florida Ad Agency

Meet These Great Business Partners!

See where they will be exhibiting over the next few months and book a meeting now

Find conferences at editorandpublisher.com/calendar

#NewsMedia Calendar

TOM REILLY

DEVLYN BROOKS

General Manager of Operations at CellMark Recycling CellMark Recycling (239) 560-4561 thomas.reilly@cellmark.com cellmark.com/recycling

Tom has 42 years of experience in newspaper operations for many of the leading news publishers in the country. Tom’s knowledge and experience in Press/Newsprint/Plate/ Preprint Operations and Logistics allows him to work directly with the Operations Staff to manage their waste efficiently, reduce costs, increase revenue, and add any necessary equipment to improve the process.

CellMark Recycling works together with our partners, daily, to build solutions for recycling, waste and the environment.

Custom Tailored Programs • Building custom recycling and waste program • Monitoring waste flow • Understanding our partner’s business • Cost benefit analysis • Finding new revenue streams Green Consulting • Advice on recyclability • Help to build Circular economies.

• Working towards Zero Waste.

• Green Certifications.

• Utilizing Green Marketing.

Streamlined Process • One point of contact • Back up documentation and reporting.

Visit us at the MegaConference.

KIM SAFRAN VP of Sales iPublish Media Solutions

sales@ipublishmedia.com (772) 532-3435 ipublishmedia.com

Legacy’s media technology brands—iPublish Media Solutions, Memoriams, & Legacy.com—drive millions in self-service advertising and digital revenue for local news companies while building audience engagement.

Our obituary content systems and order intake platforms are trusted by 8 out of 10 publishers to serve thousands of clients, reaching millions of consumers. iPublish also offers industry-leading platforms for classified, real estate, public notices, SMB at both the local and enterprise scale. Please ask us how we can help you grow revenue, grow audience and reduce operational costs.

Now with Legacy.com and iPublish, Safran is a recognized thought leader in digital advertising and audience. In the past, she ran digital sales at the corporate level for Tribune Publishing, iHeartRadio and more.

Visit us at Borrell, MNAEA, Mega and NAB conferences.

President – Modulist devlyn@modulist.news 701-241-5545 Modulist.news

Devlyn Brooks is president of Modulist, which he founded for the family-owned Forum Communications Co., headquartered in Fargo, N.D. Modulist processes 17 different categories of paid and unpaid content for all media.

Modulist's tagline is "Publish Life's Stories."

And that is our mission: matching people and businesses wanting to publish their stories in local media. We provide a world-class online portal where clients submit their content, such as obituaries, milestones, business announcements and paid letters to the editor directly to one or multiple media outlets, with a single transaction.

We collect the payment upfront from the consumer; they build their ad in our intuitive and user-friendly portal; we do the quality assurance on the order; and then we provide a pdf for printed publications and export a digital file for content management systems. Most importantly, our process assures that you keep your community content on your platforms.

Visit us at the ACP, Mega, and NYPA conferences.

TODD WILSON Executive Vice President PDI Plastics

KURT JACKSON

Owner/ Managing Member kurt@newspapersystems.com

twilson@pdisaneck.com 614-890-0343 pdisaneck.com

Since 1984, Publications nationwide have trusted PDI Plastics to protect their publications from extreme weather conditions, while providing value to meet the tightest budgets.

Our innovative manufacturing has given us the flexibility to provide custom newsbags, offering many sizes and colors, along with many printing options.

PDI also offers a wide range of circulation supplies, such as rubberbands, hot dots, misc., carrier supplies, etc.

PDI’s warehousing network allows us to service customers with timely deliveries and avoid out-ofstock situations.

PDI HAS YOU COVERED. Visit us at the 360 Summit in St. Louis, May 19-20.

PHIL CURTOLO Director of Sales

phil@newspapersystems.com (800) 568-8006 newspapersystems.com

SCS is known for its innovative technology, for its longevity as a solutions provider and for providing the industry's best service and support. The company provides advertising, production and editorial systems that create workflow efficiencies and optimize sales and productivity for independent and corporate publishers of all sizes.

In 2021, SCS introduced Automated News Pagination (ANP), which uses SCS AI to assemble complete, output-ready editorial pages with ads, photos, captions, headlines and page furniture without endless InDesign templates!

Kurt Jackson is SCS’s Owner and Managing Member and will be at the MegaConference, NYPA and 360 Media Alliance. Phil Curtolo is SCS’s Director of Sales will be at ACP, Mega-Conference and 360 Media Alliance.

shoptalk /commentary

I pledge allegiance…

By Mike Blinder

“

T

hank you for your service!”

I say that phrase so often now, especially at boarding gates, when I’m in the frequent flyer line and the agent announces that retired or active-duty military can board before the “road warriors.” Now, as I watch war break out in Europe and — make no mistake, this is a war — that phrase means even more to me.

Because I believe in my heart that these dedicated young men and women perhaps know more about who we are as a country than the average American.

This is because those who choose to serve in harm’s way for all of us pledge their allegiance, not to a flag or a country, but a document — The United States Constitution.

Oath of enlistment (10 U.S.C. § 502): “I, ________________, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me,

according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me, God.” Ask yourself, if you, like I, never served in the military or civil service, what pledge of allegiance have you given in your lifetime? The answer for me is that for 14-years (pre-school through my senior year at high school), I was directed to stand and pledge my allegiance to a flag. However, I was not taught about our Constitutional Democracy until middle school.

I guess my point is this, how we expose the American youth to civics and service may be the way we can begin to find some peace here at home for future generations as we continue this endless battle with each other in our culture wars.

The way I interpret the root cause of our homeland conflict lies within our societal fringes. The very, very far right has adopted a philosophy that would prefer a dictatorship over democracy, proven as we all heard at CPAC 2022 in the pro-Putin chants. And the very, very far left refuse to accept the dualism inherent in our democracy by not allowing their leaders to move to the center on any liberal issues, thus avoiding

any consensuses between our two parties.

America’s ability to achieve critical consensus is what the Constitution is all about. For centuries, this document that our brave, selfless warriors have fought for — with some giving that “last full measure” for — safeguards the interests of a majority rule while ensuring minority rights of liberty and equality. In short, as Americans, we must all get along. We must look at each other and respect each other — period!

Would it not be interesting in the years to come if we were to see in the front of our classrooms a framed copy of The Constitution (along with the flag) and perhaps change our pledge slightly to begin: “I pledge allegiance to the flag and the Constitution, of the United States of America…..” 

Mike Blinder is the Publisher of Editor & Publisher Magazine (E&P) and CEO (Chief Evangelist Officer) of its parent company, The Curated Experiences Group. E&P has served as the authoritative voice of the news publishing industry for over 140 years. Mike hosts the magazine’s popular Vodcast series “E&P Reports.” He is also the author of “Survival Selling,” a popular media-based, business-to-business sales guide.

He can be reached at MikeBlinder@EditorandPublisher.com.

More at: http://www.MikeBlinder.com

Printed in the USA. Vol. 155, No. 4, EDITOR & PUBLISHER (ISSN: 0013-094X, USPS: 168-120) is published 12 times a year. Regular issues are published monthly by Editor and Publisher Magazine.,19606 Eagle Crest Drive, Lutz FL 33549; Editorial and Advertising (406) 445-0000. Periodicals postage paid at Lutz FL, 33549, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Please send address changes to: Editor and Publisher, 19606 Eagle Crest Drive, Lutz, FL 33549. Copyright 2021, Editor and Publisher Magazine. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Subscription Price: U.S. and its possessions, $99.00 per year, additional postage for Canada & foreign countries $20.00 per year. Single copy price $8.95 in the U.S. only; Back issues, $12.95 (in the U.S. only) includes postage and handling. Canada Post: Publication Mail Agreement No. 40612608. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 682. Subscriber Services 888-538-4188; Customer Service Email: circ@editorandpublisher.com.

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SPONSORED CONTENT

Major Population Trends Mean a New Era for Obituaries

A

recent Editor & Publisher webinar explored four demographic shifts that will impact the obituary market, and covered recommendations of what newspapers can do to secure the future for their most important local content.

“The trends represent a growth opportunity for the industry, but also an existential threat depending on how the industry reacts,” said Stopher Bartol, Founder and CEO of Legacy.com, who has a birds-eye view as the leading provider of obituary software to the news industry.

The first factor is a surge in death rates. Baby boomers are starting to turn 75 and will fuel a 70% growth in deaths over the next 15 years, he said. So theoretically, the obituary category could see massive growth.

But three other trends are working against newspapers if they do not respond: A growing preference for cremation — already the first choice for American families; a more digitalcentric generation with new memorialization options; and an increasingly transient population, Bartel said.

When more than 50% of families elect cremation, there is often no funeral director, and the crematoriums have no relationship with the newspaper. Will this digitalcentric generation simply switch to other easier, less expensive social and digital options to inform their loved one’s community?

Legacy provided a white paper outlining six action steps for their newspaper partners.

Two newspaper executives with proactive strategies show how they are incorporating the proactive ideas to rethink their approach to obituaries, starting with changing the mindset that obituaries are classified ads.

Deseret Media’s editorial department now “absolutely” sees obituaries as local content, said Sally Steed, Director of Sales. The newspaper now publishes a standalone obituaries section, Memorials, including both editorial and paid obituaries, plus a one-page advertorial feature that compliments the section. The advertorial is repeated as a sponsored post on the home page and on Facebook. The extra effort paid off in the first month.

“We just sold out of sponsored content for the year,” Steed said. “I didn’t need to create a sales sheet.

All we had to do it say it, and companies wanted it.”

Legacy offers a free library

} Clockwise from top left: Stopher Bartol, Founder and CEO

at Legacy.com, Mike Blinder, Publisher of E&P, Michael Fibison, VP of Inside Sales at Advance Local and Sally Steed, Director of Sales at Deseret Media.

of memorial content written and edited by professional journalists available at sales.legacy.com.

Michael Fibison, VP of Inside Sales at Advance Local, said that his team noticed the obituary market change.

“We started to see people placing their obituaries on social media and places beyond. One of the things we’ve pushed out is a social solution,” Facebook Targeted Obituaries, part of the iPublish Obituaries software suite, he said.

The platform uses automation to repurpose each obituary into a tasteful paid ad distributed on Facebook. Anyone can select detailed targets, starting with the age of a loved one, locations the loved one lived, and drilling down to super-detailed factors, “if Dad did his internship at Memorial Sloan Kettering or was on a sports team”

to find related people who knew them, Safran said.

People who try to notify friends and family on Facebook only think they have alerted everyone who needs to know.

“The reality is that an organic post is only seen by 10% to 40% of their friends list, if that, and they may not have all of Mom or Dad’s friends,” she said. On the other hand, Advance Local’s Facebook obituaries are guaranteed to reach thousands of these hypertarget audiences.

As Mike Blinder, publisher of E&P, put it, “I could still go to a hundred newspaper websites right now, and I’d have to dig deep to find the obituaries.

This content is critical. If we lose it, we may never get it back.”

Visit Sales.legacy.com/ webinar2022/ — copy of the white paper, Obituaries at a Crossroads. 

CUSTOMER SUPPORT Just one of many reasons newspapers around the country continue to rely on Newzware Business Management Software Circulation Subscription and Audience Management Financial General Ledger, Accounts Payable Advertising Classified and Display with A/R Editorial Print, Archive and Web Solutions Layout Pagination, Ad Layout, Ad Tracking

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