(Michael P. Smith)

In Bogota for a seminar on the future of newspapers for the national press association ANDiarios, you can't help but feel the positive energy around the press.

A new national tax on newspapers looms (advertising is already taxed) and the papers there face the same issues with newsprint costs, demographic challenges and technological threats as do their northern neighbors. Overcoming and yet still aware of the years of kidnappings, threats, and killings, Colombian newspapers are full of positive energy. They are seeing circulation and revenue growth, pouring their hearts into the Internet, and creating new products.

Here are a few examples:

El Tiempo in Bogota seems serious about getting readers involved in producing content. So serious that they have a blog doctor (Doctor Beta) to assist readers in posting to blogs, forums, and photo galleries, and to help them download podcasts and videocasts. They are so serious about interactivity that they ask their readers, what else can we do for you.

Vanguardia Liberal in Bucaramanga is a national leader in advertising growth and shows a 25 percent ad gain in the first half of 2006. Even in a down economy two years ago, Vanguardia Liberal was growing by using the sales force management techniques taught by the Media Management Center. Now publisher Alex Galvis-Blanco is working with director (editor) Sebastian Hiller to apply some of those management principles to the newsroom. I posted about Alex here. Read more about how Vanguardia benefited from the Center's sales force program. Watch the Readership Institute site for more information on how Vanguardia Liberal is building its newsroom around reader experiences. As a baseline for its editorial changes, Vanguardia Liberal completed the first national Reader Behavior Score survey.

El Pais in Cali is making progress in a variety of ways. Director (editor) Francisco Jose Lloreda attended the Media Management Center's Advanced Executive Program and went home to Cali between sessions and launched a popular daily that is rivalling the respected El Pais. Now he is using the excellent reader councils from Reforma in Mexico and Zero Hora in Brazil to model an advisory board for El Pais using the Internet as a recruiting tool and meeting place. This is a development that we will follow closely.

While in Colombia, I met a fellow American over dinner with the director of El Tiempo and the executive director of ANDiarios. Teresa Calkins is a Knight Fellow working closely with newspapers around Colombia. Teresa is a former Gannett VP of Market Development. I asked her about the positive vibes I was getting. She sees it, too. While she has been working since early May of this year to share ideas with circulation, advertising, new media, and human resources, some of her most exciting and rewarding conversations have been cross departmental and with a focus on readership and growing audience.

She said that on her visits the newspaper management staffs, in particular the news staffs, have been very receptive to the concept of using reader groups and informal access groups and surveys online and in person to generate much needed information for directional purposes in the newsroom and in other departments. They have also been receptive to being asked to look at their layout, designs, photos, and content through the eyes of their readers.

She gave an example of a recent discussion was held with a newsroom staff over front page placement of a photo of a bombing in Lebanon. The question posed, after finding that the franchise for this newsroom was local, local, local news ... then, why, when there are deaths, car bombs, and guerrilla murders here locally, would you lead with this particular photo from around the world?

The group assembled was interdepartmental at Teresa's request and the discussion was animated, not acrimonious. The conversation was assisted by a circulation director who indicated a local car bomb photo would have been easier to sell and more local. The new media person said he didn't use that photo online for that very same reason, and the photojournalist piped up and said he had great local murder photos that could have been better positioned there.

Teresa also noted an excitement around creating a center in the newsroom for encouraging "community conversation" through more reader outreach through discussion groups, forums, blogs, photo galleries. Plans are afoot at several papers to strengthen their knowledge of their readers and create content plans, in news and advertising to meet their readers' needs.

(Michael P. Smith)

It is always great when the student becomes the teacher. Alex Galvis-Blanco, the publisher of the newspaper Vanguardia Liberal in Bucaramanga, Colombia, studied in the United States and attended the Media Management Center's Advanced Executive Program.

Part of the AEP curriculum focuses on advertising sales force management based upon a program of research and consulting conducted by MMC professors Hervey Juris and Hazel Reinhardt. Juris and Reinhardt have never failed to help an American or Canadian client make money after they have instituted the MMC approach.

In 2004, Galvis-Blanco invited Juris to visit Bucaramanga and advise Vanguardia Liberal on reengineering its sales force. One answer we were interested in discovering was whether the North American business model would work in a struggling country like Colombia. Would the MMC approach generate the same large increases in revenue?

Juris tailored the sales force management model for Vanguardia. He explains: "Working with Alex and the leadership of Vanguardia's advertising department, we were able to identify the important current and potential sources of revenue in the community and identify existing weaknesses in the management and deployment of the sales force."

The program also included a performance management mindset for the leadership of Vanguardia and the sales teams. "We talked about consequences for consistent failure to perform and more positive rewards for success," says Juris. The results are the talk of Colombia and the profit margins would be the envy of American newspapers. Galvis-Blanco, the former student is now leading sessions in MMC's Spanish-language programs on how to build, manage and grow the ad team -- and do it profitably. He gives credit to MMC and Juris.

Juris shares the praise: "Talk is cheap. The success of Vanguardia over the last three years is due to the implementation of those suggestions by Alex and his team and the extension of those ideas beyond anything that the Center team recommended."

(Michael P. Smith)

"Digitalizar las Noticias," por Media Management Center senior fellow Pablo J. Boczkowski, esta disponible ahora en espanol. Cuando el libro fue lanzado hace dos anos, Rosental Calmon Alves de la Universidad de Tejas-Austin tenía esto a decir:

"Digitalizar las Noticias es uno de los libros más importantes sobre el impacto de Internet en los medios en general y en la industria de periódicos en particular. Debería ser de lectura obligatoria para todos los que estén interesados en entender los cambios revolucionarios que Internet esta produciendo en los medios. La edición en castellano será seguramente muy útil para profesores y estudiantes de comunicación y periodismo, así como para periodistas y ejecutivos de medios que están viviendo el día a día de la transformación de su entorno profesional. También será de gran utilidad para los ciudadanos que con su participación y expresión en Internet están ayudando s transformar los medios tradicionales."

Libro en español.
The book in English.

(Michael P. Smith)

In Santiago for our third annual presentation on change and progress in newspapers for the Associacion Nacional de la Prensa (ANP), we caught up with Agustin J. Edwards, director responsable de Las Ultimas Noticias.

Edwards is doing what MMC recommends -- using the Web site www.lun.com as a laboratory.

We first wrote about Las Ultimas Noticias in 2004 when we were compiling the book 50 Great Ideas. At the time, Edwards was using the Web site as a guide to see what kinds of stories drew the most interest and then used that interest to guide story selection and play in the print edition. That method was very helpful. Circulation climbed from zero to 149,451. Edwards calls this the "click system" of customer intelligence.

What? They are letting readers tell them what to put into the newspaper? Well, not exactly. LUN journalist Jorge Santis explains: "The data serves as a reference to test the content we are publishing and to see if we're going the right way..."



Not satisfied with that, Edwards has decided on another gamble. He has decided to put the entire 32-page newspaper -- ads and all -- online. This not only allows him to see which stories get accessed but also which pages and which ads. This experiment has not been without a problem. Circulation has slipped to 144,575. Some readers prefer to see the entire newspaper online and therefore bypass the print edition. Edwards calls this the introduction of the free online daily. It suggests that in the future the print edition may not exist.



Even while print circulation is down, advertising is up this year. Advertisers appear to be fascinated about the intelligence a free online paper can provide -- real-time data on when their ad is read. When Edwards told the LUN story at the World Association of Newspapers this year in Moscow, there was skepticism about the business model. Edwards himself is not convinced there is one. Online usage in the United States builds slowly in the morning and peaks around lunch time. LUN peaks at 9 a.m. and declines from there. So, in effect, LUN is a morning newspaper online.

The guiding idea behind Las Ultimas Noticias is rooted in the Readership Institute's reader experiences study. The experience that LUN wants to own in Chile is "the newspaper gives me something to talk about with my family and friends." Edwards wants LUN to be the launching pad for a daily national conversation -- not what readers should be talking about, but what they are talking about. If it is sports or something that was on TV, it could be the cover story.

In the modern concentric-circles of desks that make up the LUN newsroom, that conversation begins by looking at the top 5 downloaded stories and thinking about how to advance the story in print and online. A sample single image cover with headlines is electronically posted and staffers add comments. The paper is published and the readers react. Then the process starts over again.

It's an interesting experiment. One we will continue to watch.