Days have stretched into nights here lately. It is convention season for Newspapers across Canada.
This past weekend I was elected for a second year as president of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association. Along with that honour, comes the duty of sitting on the Canadian Community Newspaper Association board, representing in part, the interests of over 300 Newspapers in Ontario.
As this county demonstrates, Newspapers come in all shapes and sizes. It can be a juggling act attempting to represent papers with a small circulation of 275 compared to multi-edition products with circulation in the tens of thousands each week.
Educational sessions were part of our latest conference, with courses ranging from editorial best practices to increasing sales. In one session we had to speak on the changes in this industry and our own efforts to keep the Wellington Advertiser a strong and meaningful Newspaper to our readers and advertisers.
Across the country there is a striking difference between ownership types – one being the publicly traded corporate entities that we hear about in the News all the time, and the independent Newspapers, which are often staffed with family members.
Corporate papers benefit from size and volume, often having better access to training and managerial frameworks. They can be fierce competitors, whereas the small independent Newspapers tend to have closer links within their relatively small close-knit communities.
One of the catchphrases of the sessions was “find your niche and own it.” Ironically, for many of our smaller publishers, the fact they have a community Newspaper serving a town or village of 1,500 people is in fact a niche – and one that a courageous proprietor can turn into a worthwhile market.
Independents like ourselves worry less about the profit margin, and focus more on doing a good job for our community of interest.
At the tail end of most of these events, time is set aside for a roundtable session with independent publishers. Here issues are discussed in a casual way, and advice is sought from peers across Ontario.
As introductions were made we queried if it were possible to get a sense of how business has been so far this year. It’s helpful to get a barometer on the economy and see how our members are doing. Without exception the reports were optimistic that they had a successful year so far.
The same cannot be said for the corporate chains that are going through continued downsizing to achieve corporate goals for shareholders. Massaging the books to achieve margins is nothing new, in fact it is a trend shared across publicly-traded companies. Shareholders demand returns, and those returns today do not necessarily bode well for building companies of the future.
Newspaper folk aren’t free from generalizing when talking about our industry. Truth be told, the corporate shops have many fine men and women that believe as strongly as we do in publishing a great Newspaper.
Certainly our experience at OCNA has been a sense of appreciation for the constraints under which corporate employees operate. As board members they tend to look big picture and support an agenda of doing what’s right for our industry as a whole.
The proof of that spirit shows up at the gala on Friday night where corporates and independents gather over a great dinner and watch the awards being presented.
Across the spectrum, whether it is the small weekly with a staff of two, or a large urban paper with dozens on staff, everyone has a chance to be recognized for doing a great job.
Close to home, local Newspapers including our own team here won awards. Despite the perceived competition factor, we cheered for them as much as they cheered for us.
After all, we are Newspaper people first and love the work we do for our communities.
