71 ways to build up your newspaper

OK, I lied. I’m not going to give you all 71 ways to build up your newspaper in 500 words. I once made a living as a writer, but I was never that good. I can, however, give you what I think are the 10 best:

1. Tell them what they’ll get. Promote your unique content everywhere and often.
    
2. Tell them where to find it. Use consistent indexing to both news and advertising.
    
3. Peddle your pictures. Use as many as possible; their acquisition costs more than words.
    
4. Promote your stars. Feature writers, syndicated writers, bloggers, and photographers.
    
5. It pays to ask your readers. Get story, layout, advertising, and promotion ideas from fans.
    
6. Jazz up your classifieds. Design the page well, adding comics, reading matter, and photos.
    
7. Promote advertising categories to accelerate demand for delayed purchases.
    
8. Use the weather. It gets people thinking about heating, cooling, and home comfort.
    
9. Guarantee results. It helps convince advertisers that you’re serious about helping them.
    
10. The right promotion can multiply the space-selling value of … your staff.

 

I’d like to tell you that the list is the distilled wisdom of my nearly 40 years spent in media and advertising, print and broadcast, news and business. I’d like to tell you that it’s a set of strategies I’ve proven with thousands of satisfied clients. I’d especially like to tell you that it’s the result of proprietary research with senior executives, available for download at US$999.

 

It’s none of those. I bought the book last month for US$8.99 on eBay. Nobody bid against me, which may tell you something. It hasn’t appreciated much in the 65 years since publication; its cover price was US$5 when it was published in February, 1945.

 

I’ve never heard of the author, Robert S. Clary of Los Angeles. I came up empty when I Googled him. Clary says he developed his 71 ways from work with newspapers in North America, Asia, and the Middle East. I believe him.

 

“Some newspaper publishers are the smartest people in the world,” he wrote, “and the dumbest … (are) dumb enough to advertise everybody and everything but themselves and their own excellent newspapers.

 

“Advertising is a great power. Newspapers have it, but do not use it. The average newspaper publisher apparently does not believe in advertising.” 

 

I’ve said almost the same thing myself countless times over the years. 

 

Writing 65 years ago, Clary couldn’t have foreseen today’s media landscape. The battle for Iwo Jima (and its iconic newspaper photo) was still a few weeks away. Regular television news and sports broadcasts would wait until after the war. The PC didn’t appear until more than three decades later, and the first practical browser was a decade beyond that. The iPad was … no, is, close to being magic.

 

At the time Clary wrote his book, times weren’t great for newspapers. Wartime shortages of consumer goods meant advertising was weak. Newsprint was rationed, so in 1944 daily newspapers in the United States had their lowest page counts in 23 years, and weekend newspapers were the smallest they had ever been. “The war will not last forever,” he wrote. Its end later that year ushered in newspapers’ golden age of readership, revenue, and profit.

 

As Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, put it: “My suggestion to newspapers everywhere is to give the public a reason to read them again.” 

 

I’m interested in the past, but I don’t want to live in it. I’m also interested in the future, and we ought to face it with the benefit of good ideas that have worked before.