Chasing Readers

Can you build circulation and still sell a readership to advertisers? That would seem to be what newspapers are trying to do more and more these days, as circ money is slowly laundered into advertising revenue. That means old-guard dailies like the Star Tribune are caught between two worlds—the mass audience and the niche enthusiast. On the one hand, you like to believe that everyone in the greater metropolitan region should be interested in reading “The Newspaper of the Twin Cities” regardless of age, sex, political pursuasion, or high school hockey team. On the other hand, there seems to be a strong compulsion to change the newspaper itself to appeal to certain “underserved” readerships—presumably in an effort to add raw numbers to the circulation line, while improving the complexion of your readership. (More women! More suburban Republicans! More disposable income! More soft-focus enterprise stories about relationships and eating disorders!)

One could certainly make the argument that to capture those coveted exurban readers, you’re going to lose your core city readers. More than one person has identified this as the dread disease afflicting the Pioneer Press at present. While the Strib is one of the very few dailies in the country to actually grow in circulation in the past year, all of their other numbers are down—suggesting that they may be reaching a point of diminishing returns in stretching the rate base and aspiring to attractive new readerships.

Last Sunday, we were interested to read the Strib’s new ombud, Kate Parry, who feels very strongly that editors should get out of the building and meet some readers. She’s of the energetic opinion that the Strib must evolve in order to better reflect the values and needs of the community, and to comport with certain scientific studies about readers. In other words, she is very interested in how the Strib can grow its business. (Which makes her sound less like a reader advocate, and more like a stooge for the advertising department, but that’s probably just our bad attidude talking.) That all may sound good in theory, of course—what could be wrong with “interfacing” with the public? Building trust? Establishing credibility? But rather than worry about directly servicing the “needs” of readers, why not focus on the simple values of traditional newsgathering? For example, reporting hard truths tends to build credibility. Fully reasoned, civilized, and well-written opinion tends to build trust. Why are traditional newspapering values not enough to establish what is needed by newspaper readers today?

We were especially interested to read the comments of Anoka-area readers as expressed in a little get-together organized by Parry. She writes, “Eleven very frank, funny, smart readers had accepted my invitation to have supper and talk about their lives to help this newspaper improve its coverage.” In particular, we were compelled by the words of Kate Lasota, a junior at Spring Lake Park High School. According to Parry, Lasota “explained how urgent it was for editors to think about readers her age. ‘You’re going to want to hook my age group right now by directing a few things towards me, some things I want to hear and read about. Because as I go off to college it’s going to be, “Which do I want to read?” I have that choice and you want my business.’”

Now what could the Star Tribune do to capture that elusive, desirable business—the powerful, demanding, well-fed, chic, center-of-the-universe, eighteen year-old, suburban high-school student? In other words, how can the Star Tribune conform the news of the day to appeal to more young people who have such a clear view of themselves in their thrones high atop the attention economy? (Or is it the bottom?)

Perhaps this is precisely the problem—chasing a reader instead of chasing the news. Perhaps Kate Parry could hold another seminar in which she returns the favor to her Anoka readership by empanelling a group of editors and reporters who can describe what news is and why it is important and why all intelligent members of a civil society should value it—precisely for its refusal to pander to any particular reader.