Newspapers as marketing consultants

I bring this up because, at least at one community newspaper, my previous employer, the idea of newspapers levering their expertise (like The Dallas Morning News), or alleged expertise, in advertising and news coverage combined, to offer marketing services to businesses, has trickled down.

In a sense, if a pitch (which is what The Light and Champion is offering) of digital marketing services is nothing more than a spiel about, "Hey, small-town biz, here is why you should buy our online ads," then, to riff on the gospel of Bubba, this is just the same old pig stuffed in a new poke. Or worse yet, "Hey, small-town biz, we're ready to start doing some advertorial work for you," then it's a new pig, albeit one with a bad case of foot in mouth disease, in a new, turd-polished shiny, poke.

There are no advertising agencies in most small towns.

But, on the other hand, community newspapers have long, long offered ad-building services. So, digital marketing has to be more than that.

But, the typical community-sized business isn't selling outside local boundaries, so what really can digital marketing be besides old pig in new poke, or the advertorial spinoff? (And, yes, community papers, despite years of blather from publishers and owners, between special sections and pulling punches in regular issues, have already engaged in plenty of semi-advertorial.)

As for the big boys? They've long had competition from advertising, marketing and public relations firms. I'm sure the Dallas Snooze can't compete with any of the top shops there, much as it would claim to do so, unless it shatters the editorial-advertising wall far more fatally than what I'm talking about with my previous newspaper owner.

And, if THAT is the case, then just remove the title of "reporter" or "staff writer" from your remaining editor people. Call them "marketing writer" or whatever instead, and be honest about it.

I definitely don't expect that to happen at magazines. Their websites are already drowning in "sponsored stories" clickbait plus advertorial clickbait. Newspapers, so far, have resisted much of the sponsored story stuff, and still run more advertorial in print than online, it seems, but how long will that stay that way? Both are seeing programmatic ads vampirize ever more revenue, which is why, as I've said before, if we look at "devices," digital dimes (on computers) will eventually become mobile nickels.

As for non-daily papers, other than that being a rebranding phrase, I have no idea what else it could be.

Meanwhile, how does the AP stay afloat as papers stretch budgets tighter?

Actually, it's because most dailies continue to slash in-house staff, rather than force AP, AFP, and Reuters, along with anybody else, to bid against one another.

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All of this ignores that with more fake websites, like ESPN knockoffs, and other "sponsored story" sites running fake news (almost ALWAYS with a model shot of a humongous-breasted woman doing something or another as the thumbnail image), then legit websites paying for their stories to run as sponsored stories elsewhere, plus that fact now going meta to sponsored stories, and Americans having just a finite amount of ad spending dollars, and total spending dollars, that much of this is crapping one's own newspaper pants for diminishing returns. The above is true almost totally of the bigger dailies; not everything directly compares to community papers. But they should still take note.

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Note 2: On the other hand, being semi-addicted to Facebook Live videos, for which a publisher should know FB pays just pennies on the dollar to big dailies, and fractions of mills on the dollar to small non-dailies, may mean that perhaps your digital marketing advice may not be perfect.

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Note 3: Both before and after Craigslist started poaching their classifieds, alt-weeklies claimed to be harder-hitting on local investigative news than traditional metro dailies. Well now, at least one alt-weekly is going down this same road — and very explicitly, it's doing business PR mini-magazines.

This isn't even the small community paper doing a "buy an ad, get a story" deal for special sections like women in business or whatever. This appears to be producing straight, commissioned special projects.

Speaking of, when in the Metroplex on Saturday, I took a look at the latest issue of the Dallas Observer. It's probably down to about 60 percent of the size it was in 2009, when I moved out of there, and 75 percent of the size just four years ago, the last time I remember looking in detail.