August, 2009 The first in a series of Newsletters for our customers
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Thank you for being an SCS customer
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You are receiving this newsletter because you, or someone else at your newspaper, uses our software every day.
Our users are our most important assets and we want to serve you well.
Your travel budgets have probably been slashed and that makes it
difficult for you to attend the SCS User Group meetings. The small
group that met here at our offices in May had some wonderful bonding
experiences. I think they learned some useful things and I know we
learned more about their concerns too. One faithful user and attendee
wrote to us and said, "I thoroughly appreciated the individual quality
time and look forward to the rewards of implementing ideas shared."
This newsletter will try to perpetuate the spirit of this latest
User Group and to share it with ALL of you. Today you'll hear mostly
from us at SCS, but future newsletters will be best if I can include
questions, feedback and ideas from YOU. Please send me anything you'd
like to say or ask. I'll assume I can print what you contribute unless
you ask me not to. Please forward this email to anyone who should be getting it, but isn't on our current list. Maybe we don't have an email address for him/her. Also encourage the person to subscribe to this customer-oriented newsletter and/or to our more general industry-wide newsletter. Martha Cichelli ( martha@newspapersystems.com) Newsletter Editor P.S. Please reply to our Thoughts and Issues section at the end of the page. |
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Reinventing Ourselves
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by Richard J. Cichelli, President of SCS
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 I spent my first decade with
newspapers at the NAA's research facility in Easton, PA. It was called the American Newspaper
Publishers Association Research Institute (ANPA/RI) then. There I helped invent
some great labor-saving technologies for newspapers.
From designing and
implementing the software for the Composite Page Setter, a patented laser
imaging apparatus, to designing and managing the creation of Layout-80, the
first widely used electronic ad dummying system, I had the heady pleasure of
helping the newspaper industry reinvent itself.
Other changes happened back in
the 70s. There was the transition to a
majority of daily newspapers being owned by groups and to the virtual
elimination of newspaper to newspaper competition in most cities.
The reduction in labor costs,
monopoly pricing and group funding resources made owning a newspaper sweet
indeed.
Innovation, the wide-spread
adoption of technology, follows invention.
There is no newspaper
industry research institute today.
Companies without presses with only search engines compete with
newspapers for advertisers and readers. Many newspaper groups have precious few
profits and a number are in bankruptcy.
Add a monumental recession to
the mix and what now look like the easy successes of the past are long gone.
Any honest assessment of the
current woes systematically impacting newspapers can't ignore almost across the
board declines in advertising revenue of 25% over the past two years.
If you think newspapers will
easily transition into the online world, consider most publicly traded
newspaper groups are reporting declines in online revenue, sometimes as much as
10 - 20% this year vs. last year. It's
hard to hold onto market dominance when your competition can be a high school
senior with his or her own web site.
(Actually one wonders whether Google's success can be duplicated. It just may be a one-off phenomenon.)
Where will innovation come
from?
It is said that sometimes
what you do is less important than whom you do it with.
There is no newspaper
research institute now. Nor is there
much innovation to be expected from those legacy vendors consolidating with
private-equity financing.
The business model for
winning through vendor consolidation is to drive weaker product lines from
existence and to cut "duplicate" research and development spending . Raising support fees jacks up revenue,
complementing the cost cutting, yielding a short-term financial windfall.
The trouble with the
consolidation model is that it usually isn't good for either the newspaper customers
or their shrunken vendors. The buyout
is almost invariably financed with debt.
Debt payments usually eat research and development budgets and,
consequently, kill innovation. Just
when newspapers need innovation, most investment in it is being cut
severely.
Yet, we haven't cut research
and development here at SCS. I surmise
that we are different because the company has, at its core, a commitment to
invention and innovation. Despite the
financial troubles of many newspaper groups, there still remain financially
healthy publishers who are dedicated to serving their communities with better
products and services.
It is a joy to have such
customers. They form a nationwide (no -
worldwide) community ready to at least try new inventions. Inventions don't usually work the first time,
but "Genius is born from a thousand failures."
(Greg Linden, Amazon and Microsoft innovator.) "In each failed test, you
learn something that helps you find something that will work. Constant, continuous, ubiquitous
experimentation is the most important thing."
Forget innovation and you
might as well forget the future. SCS is
a company whose mission and joy is innovating for newspapers. We appreciate your decades of support and
wish only that it continues and grows.
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Thoughts and Issues
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Are you personally involved in the tedious (but essential) task of "paper checking" after each issue goes to print? Do you know how many different sources of data about the ads need to be verified and reconciled - ordered size vs. actual measured published size, paid location vs. actual location, color specs, advertiser name ...?
We have a product (called PaperCheckAdBoss™) in active development that will automate much of this and make the rest easy to visually inspect. We can use your help to make sure we've covered most of the workflow variations in use for paper checking. Send me an email if you have some thoughts about how the task is done at your paper - how long does it take? who does it? what data are checked and where do they come from?
I'll send you a "Keep Being Good" button in return.
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Customer Connections
