We Were Print

Food Editor Deborah Hartz-Seely Steps Down from Sun Sentinel

4thestate — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:38:42 +0000

Food editors are a dying breed at newspapers – be very glad if you’ve still got one person dedicated to the dining scene in your area.

Deborah Hartz-Seely

After 30 years in the business, Deborah Hartz-Seely decided to leave while the section was at its prime.

Since Hartz didn’t do a goodbye column, and there was no announcement from the Sentinel regarding her leaving, her readers may be perplexed.

But her former colleague and friend Jan Norris interviewed her. Read Norris’ Q&A with Deb here. She had quite an interesting career.

Leaving: Donna Coven Made Paychecks Happen

ksteinhoff — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:16:47 +0000

Most employees at Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., didn’t know Donna Coven. She wasn’t a featured columnist. She wasn’t a swashbuckling photographer. She wasn’t even the person who pushed the Big Button that started the presses rolling.
But her job was important to all of those folks.

Donna Coven was the payroll supervisor

Donna, who started at The Post in 1977, was the person who saw to it that every employee got a love letter from the publisher on Thursday. As far as I know, we never missed a payday when Donna was driving the payroll bus.

Her life was a living math word problem

As a manager, I hated dealing with time cards, particularly during weeks with holidays in them. In the early days, I’d try to figure out how to calculate how someone who worked 12 hours on a holiday should be paid. OK, they get 8 hours of regular pay; 8 hours of time-and-a-half holiday pay; they only get regular overtime for the extra 4 hours, but that’s if the relative humidity is 83% and the winds are from the north and the two trains meet in St. Louis.

That’s when I would go see Donna, who would calmly and patiently point out that the trains were really going to meet in Cleveland.

An auditor questioned her access level

John Occhipinti, the former Data Processing manager, who was celebrating his one-year anniversary of retirement from The Post, said that Donna “was meticulous about her numbers and worked tirelessly to confirm their accuracy.”

She was given a level of access to the company’s mainframe computer that was normally reserved for programmers. “A security auditor gave me a black eye one year for allowing a non-programmer to have that access,” John said. “In my written response, I said that it was more important that PBNI employees get paid correctly every week than to try to limit Donna’s functionality.”

Donna’s retirement party was December 30

The official company policy these days is not to have retirement parties, but the folks in Accounting are such rebels that they held an unofficial one for Donna.

It gave an opportunity for some of us who had left in 2008 and earlier to see old friends. Former Accounting Boss Larry Siedlik, the former VP and Treasurer, was on hand sporting a new wedding ring.

Donna’s husband, former Tech Services Assistant Manager, Ray Coven, was part of the first wave of buyouts in the summer of 2008.

A new payroll system is in place and employees are paid every two weeks instead of every Thursday. I haven’t checked with any of my former coworkers to see if the trains are still meeting in Cleveland like they’re supposed to.

Gallery of photos

Here is a gallery of photos taken at Donna’s retirement party. Click on any picture to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the images.

Horrific Haiti Photos Next to Inappropriate Ads

ksteinhoff — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:19:36 +0000

Warning: graphic images ahead

Unfortunate ad placement is a fact of life. I’m sure the page designer would like to claw back this one showing a person with a computer strapped to his back, falling though the air like a parachute jumper. The ad happened to run on Sept. 17, 2001, next to a story about how IT departments were coping with the aftermath of September 11, when real people jumped out of the Twin Towers to keep from burning to death.

How well did my old paper do on the earthquake in Haiti?

I spent 35 years working for The Palm Beach Post. I never went to Haiti myself, but I sent photographers there when I was director of photography. I’m not exaggerating when I say that every shooter came back a changed person.

Lannis Waters, a photographer who had been to Haiti several times was one of the few old-timers to survive the buyouts. I heard a rumor that he was going back, so I turned to The Palm Beach Post web site to see if he had filed anything in the gallery of photos from the devastated island.

This goes beyond insenstive

Cops, journalists, healthcare workers and EMTs use gallows humor to protect us from what we see on a daily basis. We try hard, though, to keep that defense mechanism away from outsiders, who wouldn’t understand.

These advertisements paired with horrific pictures of crushed bodies, maimed children, destroyed homes and incredible human suffering were worse than any caption I ever saw posted on the photo department’s back bulletin board.

SECOND WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES AHEAD

I couldn’t decide which was worse

The Jet Blue ad that says, “THIS DAY JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER” next to a father who has just discovered his 10-month-old daughter in a pile of corpses.

A Palm Beach Post house ad with the headline “SURVIVING THE SQUEEZE” next to a photo of a pair of feet sticking out from under a collapsed hotel.

Another Palm Beach Post house ad headlined, “LOSING YOUR HOME?” next to a photo of the rubble of Haiti’s Presidential Palace.

Airlines used to kill ads

Commercial airlines used to have a mandatory kill in their contracts to keep one of their ads from running on the same day as a plane crash. I’m sure that some of these advertisers would be appalled to see their ads used next to these photos. Under any other circumstances, the juxtapositions would be funny. This isn’t one of them.

My geek son gave this explanation:

I think this is less about good decisions and more about the technology they use and the inability to make a change that detailed. I believe the Post outsources its ad space to Yahoo. If this is the case, Yahoo would be the ones feeding the white space and the Post has no control over it. The same is the case for website ads driven by Google.

A web developement person agreed

A web development person who is a (former?) friend said essentially the same thing:

… the technology probably does exist to eliminate certain ads in theory based on keywords (like say not having Jet Blue ads next to photos of a plane crash), but might not be available in the current configuration (maybe because of Yahoo, maybe because of something else), or maybe it doesn’t work as specifically & focused as you’re asking for, and it definitely isn’t feasible to just “turn off” ads on a photo gallery because there just isn’t an easy button like that, not to mention that the photogalleries are yielded by a 3rd party, and ooh I can’t wait to hear your rant about how we shouldn’t outsource our photogallery tool.

Possible solutions?

Kill the ad feed for a few days?
Pull the ads out of rotation (some photos must lack ads because they displayed plain black where the ad would have been)
Run APPROPRIATE house ads detailing how you are covering the event
Run public service announcements

Technology has come a long way

I worked at a paper in North Carolina where the publisher had a bell that would ring in his office when the presses started to roll. He expected department managers or a substitute to be in the press room.

He would hand them out, warning, “Read for content, not entertainment.”

If he found something he didn’t like, he’d start with the pressman and work his way upstream to the editor until he found someone accountable for what displeased him. I can’t imagine D.R. Segal accepting the answer, “It’s beyond our control.”

I’m waiting for a Post response

I sent an email to three of the top execs at The Palm Beach Post at 11:43 A.M. on January 15. If I get a response, I’ll post it here as an update.

Gallery of Photos

Here is a representative sampling of the photos and ads. I could have included more, particularly the house ads, but I didn’t have the stomach for it.

[Note: Ken Steinhoff's first published picture was April 18, 1963. He's worked for papers in four states as a reporter, copy editor, photographer, typesetter and engraver. He was hired as a photographer for The Palm Beach Post and Evening Times Dec. 31, 1972. He was a shooter for three years, promoted to director of photography and spent from 1991 to his retirement in 2008 as telecommunications manager. He wrote this piece as a long-time Palm Beach Post subscriber who remembers when newspapers were accountable for every word they published.]

Before The Palm Beach Post Presses Were Stilled

ksteinhoff — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:10:59 +0000

It was just about this time last year when The Palm Beach Post, which had some of the best reproduction of any paper in the country going back to the late 60s, cranked out its last paper.

Even though I had taken an early retirement buyout, I wanted to spend some time with the men and women who had made my pictures look good for so many years. I’ve always believed that every worker should be able to give his or her kids and grandkids a picture of what they do for a living.

I shot these pictures over two of the last weekends before the presses were stilled forever.

Go here to see the Magic of the Big Iron and the workers who drove it so well.

Photos by Ken Steinhoff, former staff photographer, director of photography, editorial operations manager and telecommunications manager at The Post from 12/31/72 – 9/1/08

Editor & Publisher, Age 125, Dies Unexpectedly

ksteinhoff — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:06:45 +0000

Or, maybe the demise of Editor & Publisher wasn’t unexpected. Subscriptions to the publication weren’t cheap and I’m sure that it was an easy expense for papers and other subscribers to cut. Newspapers that aren’t hiring don’t need to run want ads, either.

Shawn Moynihan, who wrote the magazine’s obituary, said “the expressions of surprise and outpouring of strong support for E&P that has followed across the Web — Editor & Publisher has even hit No. 4 as a Twitter trending topic — raises the notion that the publication might yet continue in some form.”

Sounds like whistling past the graveyard to me.

You can read the whole, sad story here at E&P.

Poynter rehashes the press release here, but the comments are starting to get interesting.

I lost respect for the magazine when they started calling ink slingers ‘journos.” I never heard anybody who really wrote for a living use that term as a self description.

News Industry Harder Hit Than Many; 210 Media Outlets Gone in Two Years

4thestate — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:14:34 +0000

The Unity Journalists, an alliance of journalists who work to keep newsrooms and the news representative of the national diversity, began tracking news industry layoffs in January 2008.

No light reading

Its 2009 report is grim.

During one month – December 2008 — nearly 7400 jobs were lost in the journalism field.

Final edition

210 media outlets have completely disappeared since January ’08.

Since the Layoff Tracker began, 46,599 people in the news industry have been bought out or were terminated.

Read the article, which links to a .pdf of the report, on the Unity web site.

In Dallas, Editors Now Answer to Sales Managers

4thestate — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:58:57 +0000

At The Dallas Morning News, and other Belo properties, a New “Bold Strategy”

Section Editors Reporting to Sales Managers

After the jump, you will find a memo Dallas Morning News editor Bob Mong and senior vice president of sales Cyndy Carr sent to everyone at A.H. Belo Corp. Wednesday, Dec. 2, outlining what they call a “business/news integration.”

Which means? As of Wednesday, some section editors at all of the company’s papers, including The News, will now report directly to Carr’s team of sales managers, now referred to as general managers. In short, those who sell ads for A.H. Belo’s products will now dictate content within A.H. Belo’s products, which is a radical departure from the way newspapers have been run since, oh, forever.

Business and Metro likely not exempt

Those sections mentioned in the memo include sports, entertainment, real estate, automotive and travel, among others.The memo doesn’t mention Business or Metro by name, but there are references to “health/education” and “retail/finance”; these are not defined in the missive. Says the memo, Carr’s sales force will “be working closely with news leadership in product and content development.”

Executive sports editor Bob Yates and Lifestyles deputy managing editor Lisa Kresl are quoted in the memo enthusiastically signing off on the unconventional marriage; says Kresl, “I’m excited about the idea of working with a business partner on an arts and entertainment segment.”

The memo

Subject: Memo from Bob Mong and Cyndy Carr

The Dallas Morning News

December 2, 2009

Colleagues:

Today we are launching a new business segment structure as the next step toward becoming the most comprehensive and trusted partner for local businesses in attracting and retaining customers and continuing to generate important, relevant content for our consumers.

To better align with our clients’ needs, we will be organized around eleven business and content segments with similar marketing and consumer profiles including: sports, health/education, entertainment, travel/luxury, automotive, real estate, communications, preprints/grocery, recruitment, retail/finance, and SMB/Interactive.

Each segment will be led by a General Manager (GM), a newly-defined role, each reporting to Cyndy Carr, charged with analyzing and growing the business by developing solutions that meet consumer needs and maximize results for our clients. Their responsibilities will include sales and business development. They will also be working closely with news leadership in product and content development.

In the Sports and Entertainment segments, the senior news editors will report directly to the GM while retaining a strong reporting relationship to the editor and managing editor. These collaborations will bring new products that consumers want to the market more rapidly. We are proceeding knowing and trusting each other’s distinct roles and responsibilities in the same way our News leadership and our Publisher have worked collaboratively for years.

This business/news integration is a progressive step and is strongly supported by the news leaders of both the Sports and Entertainment segments:

“As a segment, we have a lot of advantages usually associated with a start-up,” said Bob Yates, deputy managing editor and Executive Sports Editor. “We should be able to move much more quickly to take advantage of opportunities. That comes from having greater autonomy that gives us the freedom to develop both advertising and content solutions.”

“As a journalist who has participated in many new product launches, I’m excited about the idea of working with a business partner on an arts and entertainment segment,” added Lisa Kresl, deputy managing editor for Lifestyles. “Our high quality, credible content will reach new audiences in a variety of formats.”

The new segment leadership team is comprised of a very talented and accomplished group of business professionals:

Entertainment and Travel/Luxury Segments: Tracy Martin Taylor is the GM for the Entertainment and Travel/Luxury segments. As part of the new GM role, Tracy will be responsible for overseeing content. Tracy will continue her role as Quick Publisher and assume the role of FD Luxe Publisher. Prior to joining The News in July, she was in sales management at Clear Channel Radio and marketing at Wherehouse Music.

Sports and Health/Education Segments: Rich Alfano is the newest member of our management team. Rich worked for Times Mirror Magazines and served as President of Yachting, Saltwater Sportsman and Golf Magazine. He has most recently served as Senior Vice President/General Manager and SVP/Strategic Marketing for Practitioner’s Publishing Co./Thomson Reuters. His professional success and experience in several industries makes him ideally suited to lead two of our high-growth segments.

Automotive Segment: Bill Bradley is the Automotive GM. Bill has over ten years of experience in sales management and has been a leader in solution-based selling. His in-depth knowledge of the auto industry combined with his strong local dealer relationships make him ideal for the role. Bill has held sales management positions on the The News classified and local teams as well as sales and training roles in the newspaper industry prior to joining the company.

Real Estate Segment: Bill Bradley will assume the role of acting GM for Real Estate until the permanent position is hired.

Communications Segment: Alejandro “Alex” Sanchez is the Communications GM and Publisher of Al Día. He’s been the Publisher of Al Dia the past two years and is responsible for achieving profitability earlier this year. Prior to The News, Alex spent 10 years as vice president and general manager for various television and radio stations in Texas, New York and California.

Pre-prints/Grocery Segment: Dan Phelan is the GM for the Pre-Print/Grocery Segment. Since becoming pre-print sales director in 2003, Dan has excelled in delivering creative solutions for our clients and has ranked at the top of our peer group in revenue performance. Prior to The News, Dan spent 18 years with Advo/Valassis in customer service and sales management roles.

Recruitment Segment: Michael Mayer is GM for Recruitment Advertising segment. He is a seasoned sales leader and has held various sales management positions in the newspaper industry including Recruitment Director at The Denver Newspaper Agency.

Retail/Financial Segment: Grant Moise is GM for the Retail/Financial segment. Grant has also been named Publisher of Briefing after leading it to profitability since joining The News in December. Grant was previously the Regional Sales Director for Tribune Media Net and the National Advertising Director at The News.

SMB/Retail Interactive Segment: As the GM of SMB/Retail Interactive, Robert Jehling will focus our existing local teams on sales opportunities in the small and medium business (SMB) segments. SMB is composed of the General Classifieds organizations, SMB sales teams, and the Self Serve Portal. Robert will also continue to lead the Local and National Retail Interactive teams which have achieved revenue growth under his leadership. In addition, Robert will serve as Publisher for NeighborsGo and NeighborsGo.com. Prior to joining The News last November, Robert was a Senior Sales Director at AT&T. Robert has over 15 years in leading consultative sales and marketing teams, with a proven track record of success in merging sales organizations and driving increased productivity.

The segment restructure is one of several key strategies we have implemented this year to better serve our advertising clients, including the following:

Every member of the sales staff has completed a solutions-based training and evaluation program to increase their ability to better understand our clients’ marketing objectives and recommend solutions that deliver results. Training is an ongoing priority. Future training topics will include digital, product and segment training in addition to a learning management system to facilitate continuous education and assist in certification.

Implemented a new Integrated Advertising System (IAS) in July, which consolidated over five disparate operating systems enabling us to more efficiently manage our clients’ accounts.

Restructured the marketing organization to better support the sales staff in the development of media solutions for our clients. Market, audience and segment analysts provide valuable insights while marketing strategists, media planners and the agency help create campaigns that deliver results.

Created an agency liaison team to better serve our advertising agency clients through a more singular focus on account management. After the first 90 days, our satisfaction ratings have increased significantly.

As The Dallas Morning News approaches its 125th anniversary in 2010, our business stands at a critical crossroads. Our success depends on employing bold strategies to evolve our organization: our home delivery pricing strategy (on which Jim and John updated us on Monday), our continued dedication and investment in important and relevant journalism that makes a difference in our community and the ongoing development of our product portfolio have all played a role in changing our approach to how we do business.

This restructure and strategic integration with news, along with the many other strategies we’ve put into place this year to better serve our clients and consumers, position us for significant growth and stability as we head into the new year.

Cyndy Carr Bob Mong

SVP/Sales Editor

Broward New Times Lays Out SoFla Newspaper Declines

4thestate — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:10:32 +0000

Lisa Rab, reporter for the New Times – Broward-Palm Beach edition – has a media story this week titled The Rise and Fall of South Florida’s Daily Newspapers.

Rab interviews several journalists who took the “voluntary” buyouts.

You can read it through this link.

Those in the business – and now out of it – will recognize most of the names, and recall most of the facts in the fairly detailed article.

Paradise Lost – from Mast of The Palm Beach Post

4thestate — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:45:48 +0000

Former short-time Palm Beach Post publisher Alex Taylor left behind a catch-phrase created by a reader that ran during his tenure under the mast:

“The Home Page of Paradise” – as seen below, on Oct. 21, its last day in print.

Well, Taylor is gone and they’re now still without a publisher — and, without Paradise. Here’s the mast from Oct. 22:

Daytona Beach News-Journal Slashes 43 Jobs

4thestate — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:24:17 +0000

43 Daytona Beach News-Journal employees lose their jobs as newspaper continues looking for a buyer

The story posted today by Henry Frederick, on NSBnews.net – an online community newspaper in New Smyrna Beach:

By Henry Frederick

DAYTONA BEACH — Forty-three employees of the Daytona Beach News-Journal lost their jobs earlier today, according to several sources.

Of the 43 cuts, 16 were in the newsroom and nine were unionized pressmen. The others were from various other departments.

Executive Editor Don Lindley informed the terminated employees in an e-mail and then left for the day at 4 p.m. without facing any of those whose jobs were cut, according to an inside source.

Buyouts offered

One of two terminated newsroom reporters is a single mother with a baby, whose recent beat was the city of Deltona. A sports columnist who has written a popular column for more than a decade was terminated as was a longtime photographer, a librarian, a longtime regional editor a page designer in Accent and a page designer on the news desk. Several others in the newsroom were offered and took buyouts, including the senior managing editor Troy Moore, whose last day was Saturday.

Just four years ago, the News-Journal employed more than 800 people and had a daily circulation that hovered around 100,000, but after losing a series of appeals of the $129 million federal court judgment awarded to minority owner Cox Enterprises, the News-Journal’s circulation has plummeted and so has its staff by almost two thirds. The suit was spurred by the late Tippen Davidson’s decision to spend $13 million on naming rights without Cox’s permission for the $29 million News-Journal Center, a cultural arts Center on Beach Street that is now owned by Daytona State College

No buyers for newspaper

The News-Journal has had trouble finding a buyer in this national recession that has wreaked havoc on newspapers across the country, with some offers hovering around $20 million.

The Pennysavers were consolidated earlier this summer and last year the News-Journal closed its bureaus in New Smyrna Beach, DeLand, Deltona and Bunnell.

The former Pennysaver/News-Journal bureau on Canal Street is now the headquarters for the re-election of Mayor Sally Mackay.