Daily Circulation: 92,434
Sunday Circulation: 115,985


List the major steps you have taken in the last four years to increase readership. Please organize your response under four headings: content, brand, service, culture.

News Department Content
Make the paper easy to navigate.

A gradual redesign that began in March 2002 achieved continuity in section flags, better labeling of content, a more open look and feel in Life and Sports, and a bolder design framework for A, Local News and Money & Work.

We use more entry point boxes and refer elements to related stories throughout the paper.

We use more editorial space for same-day and upcoming content promotion. Every section front has a “tray” that tells readers what’s inside the section. With Money & Work inside the Local News section except on Sundays, we use part of the Local News flag to refer to Money & Work. Most days, we also use a “Coming Tomorrow” element (with photo) at the bottom of every section front.

We more often “book” the front news section to provide clearer designation of world news, national news, expanded treatments, etc. Better space planning also allows better use of photos inside the sections.

We adopted a “news feature” design treatment that differentiates those stories from other news on the page by typeface and layout.

We anchored “fun” stories in Sports (page 2), as we had already done in the A section. Local News and Life are to follow.

We adopted a Franklin headline face as part of the news mix, which gives a higher count and more bang with bold sans serif contrasting with the regular serif head face. It draws readers to the important story.
-Increase certain kinds of content.

More feature stories. By reconfiguring our daily features section, discarding the strict themes for each day and slightly increasing features newshole, we freed the section to run more of the kinds of stories the Readership Institute said readers want. (We didn’t throw away the themes, though, as our own reader research identifies health, family, faith, etc. as key content categories. We still label them well on the appropriate days, but we no longer let them take over the entire front.)

More feature style. Our staff-written stories take a feature approach more often.

Popular culture. Our feature (Life) covers frequently explore pop culture trends and issues.

More short bites. We added a “Pop Culture 101” box on the Life cover daily — a fact and visual, not a story. In the Money & Work section, we added a daily “By the numbers” data bit, such as the number of containers moved through the port of Hampton Roads last year.

Fashion. We use more wire stories about fashion (having no fashion staff writer).

Global relations. We use fewer remote disaster stories and more explanatory stories about national and international events and issues.

General and personal business news. We increased newshole slightly to reach proportions suggested by the Impact Study. More important, we recast the Money & Work section to include a steady diet of financial commentary and personal finance advice every day.

Local crime and courts. We try to zone crime and courts stories so they play well where they are local but are not overplayed in other communities. National crime stories have a higher hurdle to be in the paper at all.

More intensely local news.

Neighborhood crime. Intensely local crime logs are now run in suburban zones. Expanding to main cities is desirable but a space and staff issue.

Special Occasions. Adding to our local obituary story, the news assistant staff now selects stories to highlight from other reader submissions in Special Occasions, such as anniversaries, weddings, etc.

Local-local entertainment. We’ve added a “Weekend” feature to the local-local cover of our community news sections, to highlight zoned entertainment or events that wouldn’t make a splash in the all-runs Ticket entertainment/weekend section.

Small business. The Money & Work section features small businesses every week.

More people-oriented local news. We more often us a feature style in local news stories, especially government and politics.

Brand
Creation of a set of branding standards for outside communications. All departments follow the standards and the Creative Services department is responsible for signing off on any new branded materials developed.

Unified the design of all of the advertising department’s media kits, rate cards, letterhead, presentations, and branded promotional items. Everything has the same look and style. When we change the design, all components are changed to match the new look.

Extensive promotion of news content through “same day”, “tomorrow”, and “coming this Sunday” house ads throughout the paper.

Creation of a cross-departmental branding team to create a branding statement, conduct a communications audit, and a gap analysis. The team has already conducted branding research similar to the Readership Institute’s survey. Once the gap analysis is completed, the team will create an action plan for each department to “live the brand.”

Service
Transition of our delivery force from carrier collect to Daily Press agents. We now have control over our relationship with our customers.

Cross-departmental billing team identified and fixed a major driver of customer complaints — inaccurate billing.

Reorganized and moved customer service to the marketing department. The VP of Operations and Marketing have joint responsibility for circulation.

Creation of Super Customer Service Representative positions. These reps receive comprehensive training on all aspects of the business. They are responsible for working on any type of customer problem until the issue is resolved. Once a situation is fixed, they are responsible for following up with the customer to see that they are satisfied with the results.

For the first year, as we tried to create a culture shift in customer service, the VP of Operations and the VP of Marketing were copied on all major customer service complaints and complaints that required two customer calls to resolve.

Changes at the distribution level have increased our ability to serve customers better.

We have focused on carrier performance by 1.) using Route Smart to simplify the route lists making them easier for carriers, and especially substitute carriers, to follow 2.) organizing the distribution centers so that packaging staff mans the center and our carrier supervisors can focus on carrier performance. 3.) charging back the carriers for customer complaints.

Meet regularly with contractors and single copy distributors to build teamwork and resolve issues.

Culture
In 2001, as part of our readership study subgroups, we formed a cross company team to specifically address "culture" related issues. The committee made some recommendations that centered around employee communications, development, recognition, company knowledge, and benchmarking, for consideration. The most significant action that resulted from that group was the decision to conduct an employee survey.

An employee survey was conducted in September 2002 with a 63% participation rate by employees. As a result of that feedback and analysis, four major cross department action plans were developed. Specific actions have included a revision of our job posting program, development of Daily Press "rules of the road", a proposal for an employee suggestion program, expansion of management and employee development opportunities, and more frequent and varied communication to our employees.

Survey feedback also led us to commit to the development of a long term "Workforce Development Plan". A plan is currently under way to understand our current employee demographics, assess our skills, develop new skills needed for the future, understand the influences of the external market and demographics and create some measurable goals to help us meet our future business needs.



What is the most innovative, successful or noteworthy thing you have done on readership that you think other papers might learn from or want to emulate?
Reorganized so that customer service is under Marketing

The VP of Marketing and the VP of Operations both have responsibility for circulation.

Use of cross-departmental employee teams to address readership issues of branding, customer service issues such as billing, and readership.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Our readership, according to Belden Associates market research, has remained steady for the past two years.

Our circulation has remained steady or gained slightly in the past two years.

Home delivery complaints-per-thousand metric has been declining. In some districts, complaints are down by as much as 40%.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
Every department can have a positive impact on readership

The readership initiative has been successful because it was a cross company collaboration. The input of all departments has been valuable. Employees who had never been on teams before, participated and learned and contributed.



What would you like to do on readership that you have not been able to do and why haven't you been able to do it?
We have not conducted a study to measure our RBS score. In 2003, we did not have the budget. We are also waiting for Tribune to develop a company-wide standard for measuring our RBS.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper