Many thanks to Robert Buckman, j-prof at University of Louisiana,for sending around a brief note and some pictures from the national SPJ convention. (I hope to get some pictures posted soon. Having a disagreement with the website operation. – DEK)
Just more evidence — as if more was needed — that there is much much more to the national conventions than just attending meetings and dinners.
Hope: Las Vegas Review-Journal
By Robert Buckman
For me the high point of [the convention] experience was the tour of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
We got to meet with the managing editor, Charles Zobell, who has been with the R-J for 33 years. What he told me was enlightening and gave me cause for hope that all is not necessarily lost for newspapers.
Two of my students, about eight students from other schools and a professor from the University of Alabama also took advantage of the tour, which gave most of these students their first look at a real printing press and composing room.
Then we met with Zobell in the conference room, decorated with historic R-J front pages. Zobell informed us that like so many dailies, the R-J’s circulation has dropped from 180,000 to about 150,000 daily and 200,000 on Sunday. But unlike so many dailies, he said the R-J is making a profit! This is despite Las Vegas’ current unemployment rate of 15 percent and the country’s highest home foreclosure rate.
“Just a little,” he emphasized, holding up his thumb and forefinger.
“That beats the alternative,” I said.
“It sure does,” he said. Moreover, although he acknowledged there were some buyouts a few years ago, “We haven’t had any layoffs; we’ve actually added a few.”
So, what was their secret, I asked. His reply holds a telling lesson for other newspapers.
“The owners realize that their greatest asset is content,” he said.
Zobell explained that the R-J is owned by Stephens Media, once named DonRey Newspapers before the death of the previous owner, Donald Reynolds. Because Stephens inherited the company, it is still private, and “We don’t have to worry about stockholders.”
Zobell also credited an “ambitious advertising staff. As a journalist, I hate to say that. But we do tell them to stay out of our newsroom.”
Another peculiarity about the R-J is its unique joint operating agreement with the once-mighty Las Vegas Sun, the paper of the legendary Las Vegas visionary Hank Greenspun. Unlike other JOAs, in this one the Sun appears as an eight-page supplement inside the R-J, but the Sun’s offices are separate and the R-J has no say over its content. The profits are split between the two papers according to a formula. Zobell said the Sun laid off 50 percent of its staff last December. When he joined the R-J in 1977, Zobell said, the two papers were about the same size. He said, however, the Sun has an aggressive Web site. “That’s where we really feel their competition,” Zobell said. “They keep us on our toes.”
Meanwhile, he explained how the R-J “partnered” with the CBS and PBS TV affiliated in Vegas to conduct a poll on whether Nevadans prefer to resolve the state’s budget deficit through higher taxes or cuts in services, and which taxes should be raised and which services should be cut.
Like other dailies, the R-J offers its content online for free and doesn’t have plans to start charging. A chart on the wall there shows overlapping circles of print and online readership, with the print edition still enjoying the lion’s share of readers, while about 17,000 readers employ both. One of the pillars of the print edition, which he said has a higher profit than the online edition, is “the large senior population in Las Vegas, so that makes a difference. We run their obits every day. They’re dying on us.”
To take up that slack, Zobell said the R-J is coming to terms with “how to be creative enough for young people, to be relevant, to give them what they want.”
The same adaptation to change holds true for the R-J staff, he said, with social networking media being used more and more.
“Our smart reporters are using Twitter to build audiences for their stories,” he said, “but it’s not yet required.”
Interestingly, the day after our tour, the R-J endorsed Sharron Angle for senator over Harry Reid.