Raising another shot for coreweekly
The April 6 issue of The Clarion, MATC's twice-monthly student newspaper, included a piece from coreweekly editor Nathan Comp, titled "Editor of coreweekly takes shots from critics, then bars." Unfortunately, this issue of the Clarion is not online, so there is no link to read it in its entirety.
The opinion piece by Comp described his experiences with the eight-month old Madison weekly, talking about the ups and downs of producing the paper, along with a dose of boozing. The bulk of the piece, though, was devoted to defending the weekly, which has come under criticism since its inception, including from this keyboard. Comp described his experiences on the job, as well as criticism of the paper (including one quote charging that the paper is "so vacuous that even the word vacuous stains it with substance"). He also opined that they are coming into their own, arguing that there is "no doubt" it is only a matter of time before coreweekly "embeds itself in Madison's psyche."
The paper, which is nominally a product of Capital Newspapers, is ultimately an effort by its corporate parent Lee Enterprises to field test a means to build younger ad demographics in its markets. Due to this, coreweekly has come under criticism from media watchers, and the paper has countered with what Comp called getting "the PR machine chugging."
One such effort is the attempt by coreweekly to win over what was one of its most naysaying demographics, the Madison progressive activist community. The paper is doing this through its two most powerful tools for promotion - its cover and Comp's weekly interview feature, Coffee With… In the interviews, probably the highest quality part of the paper, Comp has moved from interviewing prominent personages like Rep. Tammy Baldwin and Sly from WTDY, to focusing on lower profile persons not typically recipients of media attention; five of the last six interviews have been with persons describable as progressive activists. Whether this tactic will reduce criticism of the paper from this direction is an open question, but it's clearly a smart editorial strategy geared to build goodwill.
Most interesting in the Clarion piece is Comp's description of the paper's staff and their relationship with Catherine Nelson, the weekly newspaper consultant who serves as publisher of coreweekly. According to Comp, "[s]he's a lot like us, only she’s rich and has the final say."
Nelson, a consultant who has been associated with a myriad of free weeklies across the country, was hired by Lee/Capital to create a youth-attracting paper. The result was coreweekly.
Comp wrote about Nelson;
She keeps us on our toes and aside from the health benefits, she is perhaps what's best about this job. Who needs journalism school when you're working under a guru of the weekly newspaper biz? With more than 30 years experience, Catherine is full of good advice. In those early weeks, she was always around to comfort us when the long, hard hours we put in were greeted by the vicious rebukes of our critics. "Fuck 'em," she would say with the authoritative simplicity of a true newspaperwoman.The best thing about Catherine is that she gives us lots of breathing room, which is to say she lets us make mistakes. Sometimes our missteps greatly disappoint her and she is quick to let us know this. But when the air clears, she always seems to wonder aloud, "Who's ready for a shot?"
Perhaps this penchant for (hearsay) invective was her undoing in another Wisconsin city. Nelson, who was also the associate publisher and CFO of Milwaukee’s Shepherd-Express, was let go from that paper in early April.
According to the April 11 edition of The Roundup on Milwaukee World;
The ever-fluid masthead of the Shepherd Express changed again this week with the deletion of the name of Catherine M. Nelson, who had reigned as the paper’s grandly-titled "Associate Publisher and Chief Financial Officer."Last year Nelson added to her responsibilities as the Publisher of Core Weekly, a Madison freebie now in its 34th issue.
Calls to Nelson's extension at the Shepherd were answered by owner Louis Fortis, who has had a goodly number of titles at the paper himself. Fortis, the "Publisher and Editor-in-Chief" would only say that Nelson was no longer working for the organization. He would not say that she was fired…
Nelson came to Milwaukee at Fortis' behest from Pittsburgh. She immediately expanded the advertising lineage of the paper and worked steadfastly to see that its editorial content became skewed toward advertiser-friendly fluff stuff. Noize, Dig and other Shepherd changes have come under her watch, although not all of her initiatives were successful. Some cost the paper dearly, for which Ms. Nelson usually retaliated by firing an underling…
Though Fortis would not discuss her departure, Nelson has been criticized for her role in founding coreweekly. This is due to the ongoing economic battle between daily newspaper chains and the alternative weekly industry, in which the former have lately been launching products in the weekly arts format to attract younger readers.
Typically described as faux-alts in the alt-weekly industry, there is no love lost between the two media sectors. In her capacity with the Shepherd-Express, Nelson continued to represent herself publicly as an affiliate of the alt-weekly industry, though not without criticism.
For example, in a Milwaukee World piece last summer about coreweekly, Bill Lueders of Isthmus was quoted about this tension, saying "[t]here is a fair amount of rumbling we've heard from people in the alternative press who consider Nelson a turncoat. I'm not sure that's fair, but she is drawing on her ties to the weekly alternative press to increase the market share of a company that enjoys a near-monopoly on the Madison-area print press."
As discussed in a review of the Capital Region Business Journal and in a piece about Lee Enterprises' recent acquisition of Pulitzer, it is clear that the chain is pursuing an aggressive strategy of monopoly, looking to be the number one source of ad impressions for print and online media consumers in its markets.
In a profile of Lee CEO Mary Junck from the Davenport, Iowa-based The Women's Connection, the expansion strategy of Lee Enterprises is discussed extensively, focusing on their recent purchase of Pulitzer. Following this acquisition, Lee became the fourth largest newspaper chain in numbers of dailies, and seventh in circulation.
The profile describes Lee's business reputation, noting;
Wall Street likes Mary Junck now. In most big mergers and acquisitions, the buyer's stock price takes a hit right after the deal is announced. Lee's stock went up the day the Pulitzer acquisition became public.Lee is the sort of newspaper company Wall Street cheers on. Its operating margin of 21.4% is among the highest in the newspaper industry. In its fiscal year 2004, earnings per share climbed a healthy 9.7%, and the stock price increased 20%. In an era when some of the best regarded newspaper companies turn up on the industry's police blotter, Lee is apparently squeaky clean - a pioneer in transparent corporate governance with internal controls and small route sizes that make circulation scandals unlikely.
This last item is a credit to Lee, and is particularly salient following recent newspaper circulation scandals, the latest at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The profile also discusses the smaller-scale business strategy of Lee within its markets. It notes that the "blockbuster deals overshadow the growth Junck and individual Lee publishers - who are given considerable autonomy by corporate HQ - have engineered through lower-profile acquisitions and the creation of a broad range of niche publications." The article went on to describe the various niche publications rolled out by Lee recently, including coreweekly.
The continuing publication of coreweekly seems ensured, at least for some time, due to the resources of its corporate parent. Those resources will be necessary, however, considering that the paper's ad ratio continues to be quite low (though growing slowly), and its pickup rate is in a similar state. Moreover, its classifieds still look to be mostly recycled from the dailies, considering that ads for horse stables and hay bales are clearly not intended for the weekly's target demographic.
Besides the negative implications for a diverse and vibrant media resulting from chain publications like coreweekly, what's most frustrating about the paper remains an issue of quality. As a friend related, the quality of the paper is most disappointing when considered in the context of its abundant financial support.
Isthmus takes on expanded media beat
Submitted by Dane101 (trackback) (not verified) on Fri, 2005-06-03 16:38.
A couple of weeks ago, kudos and gripes about recent Isthmus schools coverage were examined here, in a prelude to a look at the