Just what the Bee needs -- unsolicited advice from a hippie from Davis, California.Sue Greenwald, a city councilmember from Davis, logged on to the Bee's web site over the weekend and and outlined her plan on how to save the Bee:
Newspapers and businesses have to learn how to advertise on the internet. There is no reason why on-line advertising, and hence revenues, should not be as effective as hard copy advertising. I have been really missing the Safeway weekly specials and the Macy's sale ads since I went all-electronic. I have also been shopping less because of this, which is probably good for me but bad for the economy, bad for the businesses and bad for the newspapers.
I have noticed that you have just started having some decent on-line ads. Why don't you run a few banners across the top of the front page asking readers to help you stay in business by clicking on the ads? Explain that your ads have expandable, easy to read features. Start training people how to use internet ads.
And BEE supporters -- support the BEE advertisers by clicking on those ads. You might find some good buys!
Sue Greenwald
City Councilmember, Davis
Davis, CA
I'm sure Bee executives are intrigued by Greenwald's suggestion that the Bee add more banner ads on its web site, and ask readers to click on the ads. I have to admit, though, this suggestion stumped me: "Start training people how to use Internet ads." I was under the assumption people can figure out what to do with Internet ads -- but hey, maybe "Earth Child Greenwald" is on to something. (Greenwald's web site is here.)
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39 comments:
Another fine example of why people across the country make fun of Davis. The real joke is that Davis residents continue to believe they're relevant!
She’s a lib who has never held a real job, and thinks she’s hit pay dirt in the advise department.
She has no clue that internet ads will never bring in enough revenue to offset the cost of paper print.
Any MNI sheeple want to chime in on this sage advise?
CRICKETS?
Come on this your government speaking. Truth to Power?
actually, she is right about training people about how to use internet advertising. many people ages 40 and older are clueless of the capabilities and don't know how to find information.
Dear Sue...
After a few rounds of lowermybills.com and their annoying ads you too will become a big fan of Firefox with Adblock.
Shhh, those are the only people left to buy your newspaper. Gotta keep them in the dark.
There used to be a bag lady that foraged for food at the Church's Fried Chicken next to the Houston Chronicle. They had the same taste in hats.
She lives in a comic book world where the Daily Planet rules and Perry White still holds court, and Superman flies outside the window.
Great photo. Davis is just Berkley's suburbs.
Caption: "My fellow La Leche League, Sierra Club and ACLUers, lend me your donations."
You right-wingers are a bunch of sour grapes! This hippie has a point and people who are part of an older print-oriented generation need to learn how to use the new technology. We have a local super market that sends us their weekly specials electronically and we do use it. They used to insert it in the paper. It works for them why not Safeway?
I pulled my bookmark a week and a half ago from this site and hadn't returned until now. Pretty sad that many can't get past a lady's funky hat.
Sadder than those ladies who put together jigsaw puzzles on the first floor.
I'm out.
Fonzie has got his waterskis on.
9:59... Ah, so it is the customer that has to change. Great business model there.
Let's see how this will work in your next life...
Customer approaches the order counter and asks for a big mac and a large order of fries. You know that you do not have any fries made up so you tell them they are going to have to have a salad instead. Customer walks out and goes to a different restaurant. Your restaurant and you start delivering pizzas.
Sacramento - Loony Tunes Revisited
This is as good as Sheryl Crow’s suggestion that everyone just use one sheet of toilet paper.
Anon 10:23 and 10:41 Get it.
I tried the Crow system. It didn't work, as I then went over my water allotment cleaning up afterwards.
Speaking of Crow and her hypocrisy, she too drinks like a fish and fits right in with our very own, "Three Tire”
--so it is the customer that has to change. --
9:59 still doesn't get it.
Person who shells out .75 for a paper = reader
Company that buys ad space = customer
Re: “many people ages 40 and older are clueless of the capabilities and don't know how to find information”
--------------
Are you insane? People ages 40 and older are, the only people still reading whole sentences. Most people over 40 have used a computer in their work for years.
Where have you been? Retired people log more casual hours on the computer than any other age group. Uless you are talking about the advanced aged, you better try another avenue of ignorance.
Look, can we just stick to the facts, and this hippie libs green scarf! OK
Ask not what your local lunatic can do for you.
You don’t want to know,
for sure,
you don’t want to know!
If this out-of-touch hippy wasn’t wanting my money for her stupidity, it would be a bit easier to laugh at such a twit.
Davis councilperson is loonier than your average loon. Living on the ‘Left Coast’ seems to have touched her in the head.
agree with 9:59.
Frankly, she's right. A lot of consumers don't seem to understand that newspapers get nearly ALL their money from advertising. They're just happy they can log on and "read the paper for free" online. They don't understand that advertisers don't yet have confidence that their money'll be well-spent on the newspaper's website. Sorry, but it's true.
My supermarket has a little scan card that gives me the specials automatically. I can see on the receipt how much I saved. I don’t bother with wasteful paper coupons. Davis the faux green bag lady needs to get out more. (It’s not easy being green, when you are a phony.)
Most everyone understands completely that newspaper revenue comes from advertising. What many do not seem to understand is that advertisers do not pay to place an ad so they can read it, they place the ad so subscribers can read it.
Fewer subscribers = fewer ads. No subscribers = no ads. What is so hard about that concept? If your subscribers go away so does your advertising revenue.
Most local advertising revenue is from small local businesses. If you continue to piss off small businesses they are not going to give you their business. When you editorialize for more government control of businesses, more taxes, higher minimum wages, forcing employers to pay more for health care and many other anti-business campaigns the liberal editorial staff love you can figure they are not going to feel all warm and fuzzy toward you.
"Most everyone understands completely that newspaper revenue comes from advertising. "
This is not true. The average person does not know this.
"Most local advertising revenue is from small local businesses. If you continue to piss off small businesses they are not going to give you their business. When you editorialize for more government control of businesses, more taxes, higher minimum wages, forcing employers to pay more for health care and many other anti-business campaigns the liberal editorial staff love you can figure they are not going to feel all warm and fuzzy toward you."
Would you prefer the papers cater to these businesses in editorials and news stories just to get ad revenue, regardless of what's of interest to other readers? That would be totally unethical. There's a reason the newsroom, editorial dept and advertising dept are separate.
Ethics? Who are you kidding Mr. Trinket seller? You filth have none.
Give me a break. Take your paper to some landfill that will take it
10:52 is still in the MNI heaven of 15 years ago.
People refuse to shell out .75 for paper = most and growing
Company that buys ad space = fewer and fewer.
Why? Because your 1990's sales model blew up in your face a long time ago. The old customer = end user collapsed years under the weight of it's own idiocy. They even stopped teaching it as a failed theory.
There's a reason the newsroom, editorial dept and advertising dept are separate.
--
If they're separate then why is the entire health section paid advertisement, why does editorial comment bring in 10 times the regular advertising rate and why is opinion sprinkled LIBERALLY though out the news and on the front page.
Maybe you meant there was a reason that they were supposed to be separate?
Please refrain from using the word ethics. Every time you folks latch onto a word you bastardize it. That is one word you people should never have the audacity to even mention.
Newspapers get 70 per cent or more of their revenue from advertising. The problem that newspaper have is that advertisers no long want a mass audience, they want a targeted audience. They want to reach customers in a certain demographic or geograhic area. Newspapers have a hard time delivering that kind of audience in print. They can deliver it online but the dollars are much smaller because advertiser know that the cost of producing an online ad is much cheaper that costs to produce a print ad. That is the problem that print (newspapers and magazines)have.
OMG... 2:46 is sooo cute. Makes you want to take him home and see if you can house break him. Almost.
Maybe even teach him that left wing, anti-capitalist, anti-American agenda driven journalism is what is not ethical. Maybe.
Only problem is that soon there will be no more papers to use for house breaking.
The problem with selling online advertising is that about half the hits come from outside the paper's geographic reach - like the East coast, Midwest or even Iraq. How does that help local business? It doesn't.
Don't forget all those people over 40 that don't have a clue how to use the Internet, but do have a clue how to download Ad Block Plus to the tune of 500,000 per week. My over the hill, supposedly clueless ass hasn't seen a McClatchy ad twice in the last 4 or 5 years.
A quote from an August/September 2003 article about McClatchy in American Journalism Review:
"Favre gave bonuses to managers for hiring minorities...."
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3079
More liberal than the market but more conservative than their readers, McClatchy is in the death spiral. Helping people work the banner ads is re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
"Most local advertising revenue is from small local businesses. If you continue to piss off small businesses they are not going to give you their business"
OK say that really all the local advertisers really get annoyed with newspapers slanted politics (which they don' they get mad at articles that portray them badly) but say it is politics. In most papers the local advertising makes up less than 1/4 of the total revenue. They are not what is causing the brutal losses.
Our paper has lost more from 2 out of business national customers than 1/2 of our local sales people will bring in all year that is the issue.
There are no new advertisers entering our markets. Newspapers are not losing advertising to anyone else, advertising is just going away. Economic failure has companies thinking they will happily die without spending money on advertising instead of trying to promote themselves.
So lemme get thish straight. Bush wash wounderful, left the country is greatsh shape.
Don't be silly. The core problem of the newspapers is that they are losing readers. Market share declines of ten to fifteen percent a year are simply unsustainable. Moreover the declines are in the most desirable demographics. Newspapers are reaping what they have sown.
It's a transitional time for newspapers as a business model but their decision to lurch to the left in their coverage has alienated a large and affluent reader base when they could ill afford to do so.
The nose dive of newspapers is a self inflicted wound.
It's beside the point but Bush left the country in much better shape than Obama after two months. The market may not have voted for Obama but it sure is voting against him now. God helps us if this keeps up for four years.
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