BUZZ SESSION QUESTIONS

Improving the Odds: Extending & Defending

Your Brand

The 61st Annual INFE/NPMA Conference & Exposition

June 22-24, 2008

Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada

Buzz Session Questions

Strategic Issues

·        In response to current trends in our industry, what steps is your newspaper/company taking to grow while ensuring long-term profitability?

·        Revenue growth steps

·        Expense control steps

·        Overall, industry revenues have been in a decline.  When do you expect declining revenues to turn around?

·        What types of new publications have you launched in the past year that have been successful?  Did they target a specific demographic? Did they run in your newspaper or were they stand-alone? Have there been any launched that were not so successful? When measuring profitability, are you only using incremental costs?

·        Are you considering changing the format (tab, for instance) or size of your daily newspaper?

Advertising

·        What trends are you seeing in Local and Classified advertising this year?  Do you anticipate a change and if so, in what area?

·        Do you provide for online placement of classified ads?  If so, is it a forced buy with the print ad or is the online placement optional? Can a customer run a classified ad online without it also appearing in print?

·        If a customer schedules a transient ad, prepays it and cancels it before the full run is complete, do you refund a portion of the ad cost?

·        Do you allow classified customers to write their own ads online?  If so, have you found that this increased or decreased the cost per ad to the customer?

·        Do you charge for obituaries?  If so, is it just if the family adds additional information or photographs or do you charge for the basic information?

·        How are most of your advertising incentive plans structured?

Circulation

·        How often do you compare net paid circulation to preprint volumes to ensure that they are reasonably in sync?

·        What is the typical grace period for subscribers?  Do you attempt to keep grace at some acceptable level such as some percentage of revenue?

·        Who analyzes routes and sets rates/subsidies, etc? Assuming its circulation, is there any auditing of their calculations, route lengths, delivery time, etc, that is used to justify rates/subsidies and if so, by whom?  Has your company adjusted rates/subsidies to accommodate rising gas prices?

·        Have you experienced any increase in carrier turnover that the carriers have attributed to difficulty making a profit due to rising gas prices?

·        Has your company tried outsourcing newspaper delivery and if so was the delivery acceptably performed and did you gain any financial savings from the change?

·        What policy does your newspaper/company have on discounting subscriptions?  Have you seen a change in the volume of discounting?

·        What is your most recent pricing strategy?

Online

• Does your newspaper use a separate sales force for online sales or is this handled by the newspaper account representatives?
• Has your newspaper partnered with any outside online sources such as HotJobs.com, Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, any Real Estate or Automotive product, etc.?  Has it been successful?
• How much of your online revenue comes from online only sources vs. print upsells?
• Where (display ads, searchs, video advertising, etc.) do you expect your future online growth to come from?  What category is currently the strongest?
• What company, if any, do you use to track traffic to your website?  Are you pleased with the information you are getting?  Do you provide this to advertisers as a sales tool?

Human Resources

• What type of retirement plan(s) is offered at your newspaper?
• Have you found it harder to recruit good employees in your area?  If so, do you relate it to the bad press the industry has been getting or the economy in general? What benefits are new that potential employees are looking for in your area?
• As health insurance costs increase are those increases being passed on the employee or is the company absorbing some or all of the increase?
• How is your company controlling rising health insurance costs?
• Has your company had to do any Reduction in Force (RIF’s)?  Are you doing any staff reductions through attrition?  If so are they viewed as temporary or permanent?

Accounting/Finance

• What statistical information do you track and how is it used in reviewing your newspapers operations?
• With all of the added products and the online presence that newspapers now have, have you moved from looking at net paid circulation to looking at audience in measuring success?
• Have you recently explored any advertising or circulation systems that had some new/useful features?  If so, tell us about their pros and cons.

Production

• What steps have you taken in recent years to control newsprint costs?
• Do you track newshole?  If so, do you try to stay within a certain percentage range?
• What is your newspaper’s web-width and what standard weight of paper do you use?
• What increase do you expect in newsprint prices for the rest of 2008?
• Do you have a contingency plan with another property in the event of an emergency at your site or in your immediate area?

BUZZ SESSION BREAKFAST TOPIC SUGGESTIONS

Not planning on attending the conference?   Your input is still important and will likewise be used to help create discussion points for the Buzz Sessions.

Thanks in advance for your input.

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