Ill. These projects complement NAA's Readership Initiative that features a Readership Institute at the NMC at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and development of a template that can be used by publishers to reposition dailies in their individual markets. Scripps employees cite customer service and editorial content as major barriers to readership growth, Phillips says. To address that problem, one newspaper put out a list of employees by function, not by alphabet. Other newspaper managers conduct building tours for employees so they can learn what people do in different departments, he adds. Teams also examine alternate circulation plans such as delivering morning newspapers 30 minutes to an hour earlier.
People have much longer commutes.
Readership teams also analyze content and the percentage of the news hole devoted to local news, Phillips says. Readers First is a long-term project, he concedes. A daylong session involving about 130 employees resulted in some 180 readership-building ideas that Gaspard and his colleagues categorize under culture, marketing and technology. Culture concerns include breaking down the walls between departments, recruiting and retaining talented people and instilling a passion for the newspaper in employees. Technology ideas focus on training, better use of databases to target readers, and using existing or new technology to improve internal communication.