‘I’m an audience aggregator at the Tampa Tribune’
April 3, 2008 at 10:10 am by Wayne Garcia
(photo by epicharmus)Â
Not at all good times recently for the Tampa daily, with the positive-PR-challenged Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson able to pull the wool over its editorial board’s eyes and have an op-ed piece run by one of his (apparently legion?!?) public relations consultants, according to (say it with me) the Times:
[T]he author, Mike Foerster, didn’t mention that he is not merely a retired longtime government official. He’s a consultant being paid $75 an hour by Johnson’s office for communications and public relations services under contracts that began almost a year and a half ago.
In addition, before Foerster’s column was published in the Tampa Tribune, the newspaper asked Johnson if Foerster still worked for him. Johnson denied it, according to a top editor.
Rosemary Goudreau, the Tribune’s editorial page editor, said Friday that the newspaper decided to run Foerster’s column, in which he described himself as “director of communications for Hillsborough County for 19 years,” after determining Foerster had no relationship with the elections office.
The article criticized Trib coverage of Johnson and urged the newspaper to let up on him. This after the Trib muffed a story about another Johnson PR flack, one that led to an e-mail blast from the office:
Note to Voters of Hillsborough County
In this morning’s editorial piece, the Tampa Tribune inaccurately reported that Chief Deputy of Communications, Jennifer Marks is an employee of a public relations firm. In fact, Marks oversees communications and voter outreach and education efforts for the Supervisor of Elections Office. In a busy election year with a whole new voting system, voter education efforts are paramount and required by law. (Florida Statute 98.255(2)). All press releases put out by the Elections Office are for the purpose of informing Hillsborough County residents of important election dates and other pertinent election matters, as well as keeping the public apprized of ongoing voter outreach and education efforts.
Leaving aside the pissing match with Buddy for a second, we turn our attention to the more interesting hostile maneuvers undertaken by second-largest Media General shareholders Harbinger Capital Partners. It released on April 1 (no fool’s joke to this) its plan for “Rebuilding Value at Media General,”which focuses on expanding the board to include more outside directors to its liking:
The stock has declined 59% since we first invested ten months ago. We’re here today, nearly a year after we first became a shareholder, because we believe the time is appropriate to enhance the composition of the board in order to rebuild value for all shareholders.
We believe Media General has been falling behind its peers for years, has a consistent but consistently flawed strategy, and has made some major mistakes.
Ouch. But the truth hurts; the Bryan family’s personal fiefdom is not one of the great journalism or business stories in the U.S. Here’s what amounts to a response from Media General CEO Marshall Morton, delivered to uber-investor Mario Gabelli (another frustrated shareholder):
What we are is a content company – and, more specifically – a local content company. But it’s really more than that: we are audience aggregators. The way we make money is by connecting advertisers to local audiences. We have research-based relationships with consumers in each of our individual markets. Consumers value our information, including those advertising messages by the way.
When people want information about their communities – whether that’s news, weather, general information, entertainment information or, particularly this year, political information – we want them to think of and turn to the Media General brands in their markets. If we’re doing our jobs right, we are “local†in each of our communities.
One market we’ll talk a lot about today is Tampa. Tampa (including St. Petersburg and the 10 counties around those cities) is the 13th largest DMA in the country, and it’s the largest market in Florida. It has a population of more than 4.2 million people and nearly 1.8 million households. And, every week, we reach nearly 80% of that Tampa market with our information. No competitor or peer even comes close to that.
We do this by using many different platforms to distribute high-quality local content (when I say “high quality,†that’s personal short-hand for “timely, objective and usefulâ€). Our platforms include The Tampa Tribune; WFLA-TV (the #1 news station in the market); our Internet portal, TBO.com; and other daily and weekly newspapers in the same market. It also includes a Spanish-language newspaper and webcast, local television shows, niche newspaper and magazine products, and information packages sent to cell phones and podcasts.
The point here is that, as technology has evolved, audiences have become more and more platform-demanding, and we have had to become increasingly platform indifferent—we give it to the consumer the way they want it: some may want to read a newspaper over breakfast, but they also want continuing access to what we offer during the rest of the day, whether they’re walking, driving, sitting at their desks at work or traveling. We can give them that, and do so with branded, trusted, differentiated and value-added information compiled by editors, reporters and other information professionals who understand, importantly, that every platform is different and may require a different presentation to work well and be relevant for the consumer at that particular place and time.
Now, everyone who’s followed us knows that we’ve gotten hammered over this past year in the Tampa market because of the real-estate induced recession that continues to deepen across Florida – and a number of other key growth markets across the country. If anyone wishes, I’m happy to talk about what we’re doing specifically in Tampa to address these conditions. But the point I want to make is that Tampa has historically been a terrific market for us, and it will be again – in part because we’ll make it so.
In the meantime, though, we’ve applied the lessons we’ve learned in Tampa in all of our other, mostly southeastern, markets. So, the “audience aggregator†point carries across all markets, the need for a multiplicity of tools carries across all markets, and the value of trusted, high-quality local news and information carries across all markets.
Harbinger, however, has another, more “final” solution in mind for Media General’s underperforming in the market, especially when it comes to the company’s newspapers:
Improve Publishing Division
Cut costs more aggressively
Implement higher standards given its underperformance
Reduce spending and apply more scrutiny to cost/benefit and payback analysis
Be opportunistic but disciplined with future acquisitions and divestitures
Most urgently, consider alternatives for Florida market properties [emphasis added]
Alternatives = fire sale.
Send to a friend:
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
“[The Tampa area] has a population of more than 4.2 million people and nearly 1.8 million households. And, every week, we reach nearly 80% of that Tampa market with our information.â€
Really? I find it hard to believe that Media General’s information is getting to 80% of 4.2 million people every week. Just doesn’t seem like 80% of the people around here are paying attention to the news, and those that do aren’t all getting their news from the Tribune, WFLA, TBO.com and their other stuff (Skirt?). But maybe if you count anyone who checks the weather or a sports score one time during the week, it could add up to 80%. ?? Maybe.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Who would the buyers be? They have a grandfathered in combo of radio/TV/Paper. Would they not have more value as a unit then broken up? If not broken up then then does the St Pete Times become a less likely buyer?
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:40 pm
“When people want information about their communities – whether that’s news, weather, general information, entertainment information or, particularly this year, political information – we want them to think of and turn to the Media General brands in their markets. If we’re doing our jobs right, we are “local†in each of our communities.”
This is a laugh, the Tampa Tribune killed “The Temple Terrace News” which had been in existence since the 1940s. The City of Temple Terrace now has to get its local news from the “Northeast” Hillsborough County insert. How “local” or micro is that?
Don’t get me started on the Tribune propping up our current dysfunctional status quo which has kept Tampa “frozen in time”.
They suck.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:50 am
It’s a shame you didn’t do such a hit piece of the St. Pete Slimes. Does anybody read that rag anymore? You’ve been spending to much time with your left wing liberal broadcaster Brendan Mc.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Alan — The St Pete Times is not a public company and is not going through a hostile shareholder battle, so the situations aren’t the same. If I had access to the Times’ financial statements, as I do to Media General’s quarterly statements, I would write about them just as often. For now, we have this tidbit from a recent Columbia Journalism Review story, quoting Times’ President Paul Tash: “Tash says the goal is to keep the profit margin of the Times above 10 percent, roughly half of what most newspaper companies demand. (He also acknowledges falling short of that benchmark in the last two years.) But despite this more modest target—and despite the undeniable advantage of having a nonprofit as your ultimate boss—the Times faces the same problems as almost every other newspaper. Its advertising revenue is sensitive to the local real-estate market, which was soft even before the recent meltdown in subprime lending and seems unlikely to recover any time soon. The paper has cut about 10 percent of its newsroom staff in the last year, and shrunk its physical size as well, absorbing the attendant decrease in the newshole. In an attempt to capture younger readers, the Times has also launched a free daily tabloid, the tbt*/Tampa Bay Times, but Tash acknowledges it is still losing money at this point.”