Author: Lee Aase

Husband of one, father of six, grandfather of 15. Chancellor Emeritus, SMUG. Emeritus staff of Mayo Clinic. Founder of HELPcare and Administrator for HELPcare Clinic.

Star Tribulation

The Star Tribune of the Twin Cities today announced its second round of layoffs this year (the first was in March).

Bowing to the pressures of declining circulation and falling revenue, the Star Tribune Monday announced a sweeping program of buyouts across the company that will send 145 employees out the door, either through buyouts or, if enough people don’t volunteer, layoffs.
The cuts represent 7 percent of the company’s 2,100 positions and include 50 positions out of 383 people in the newsroom and editorial departments.

Publisher Par Ridder delivered the news in a company-wide meeting in which he laid out the increasingly bleak fortunes for daily metro newspapers. The company’s annual advertising and circulation revenue has fallen by $64 million over the last three years. Classified advertising was down 23 percent in the first quarter over last year. If current trends continue, Ridder said, the paper would begin to lose money in a year to 18 months.

The full article goes into considerable detail on the financial problems facing the paper, which was sold late last year for less than half of what McClatchy had paid for it.

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Video in a whole new (Silver)Light

TechCrunch has a really interesting review of Microsoft’s new multimedia presentation and services software, Silverlight. I installed Silverlight on my Mac with no problem, and the demos show that this is going to be able to do a lot of neat things. For one thing, it might challenge the ubiquity of Flash. The video quality in the Fantastic Four movie trailer is stunning.

It tells me Web 2.0 might be moving to 2.2 or so, and that standards for web video may be moving up.

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Same Song, Same Verse

Circulation numbers continue to get worse.

Newspaper sales continue a steep slide nationally, figures released Monday show, but two New York City tabloids continued to buck the trend, posting the largest gains among major papers.

The industry as a whole reported a 2.1 percent drop in weekday circulation, and 3.1 percent on Sundays, in the six months ended March 31, compared with the period a year earlier. The figures, compiled by the Audit Bureau of Circulations but not yet audited, reflect 745 of the nation’s more than 1,400 daily newspapers.

The figures follow first-quarter reports for the nation’s major newspaper companies that showed falling earnings, declines in advertising and plans for continued staff cuts, heightening fears about the future of newspapers. Circulation figures have dropped gradually for two decades, beginning in the 1980s, but since 2004, the decline has picked up speed as readers and advertisers have migrated to the Internet.

It’s interesting that the Times places itself among those that “held fairly steady”…even though the other two in the group had slight gains while the Times’ decline was slightly worse than the industry average on Sundays, and modestly better than average on weekdays.

Sales have held fairly steady in recent years at the nation’s three largest-circulation newspapers, USA Today (more than 2.2 million), The Wall Street Journal (more than 2 million) and The New York Times (more than 1.1 million). In the most recent period, USA Today and The Journal, which do not print Sunday issues, posted fractional gains, while The Times’s circulation dropped 1.9 percent on weekdays and 3.4 percent on Sundays.

The Los Angeles Times, roiled by internal dissension, leadership turnover and a recent deal by its owner, the Tribune Company, to take the company private, lost 4.2 percent of its weekday sales, and 4.7 percent on Sundays. The Times’s weekday circulation averaged 815,000, almost 300,000 below where it stood seven years earlier.

I guess compared to the LA Times, the NY Times can take some comfort.

Or, as a famous Minnesotan would sing, “The Times, they are a changin'”

My wireless router burned out last week, and I’m just now back on-line at home, so I’m a few days late with this one. Happy to be back.

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What is a cool viral branding experience?

Thanks to my colleague Elizabeth R. for passing this tip along from one of her former co-workers at the Weber Shandwick agency. Odwalla has a Flash-based Soy Smart spelling contest featuring an animated Ken Jennings of Jeopardy! fame that’s pretty fun and maybe even addicting. It’s got some viral potential with a send-to-a-friend feature, and the top score each day gets a free T-shirt.

I tried it earlier today and got a 21, and just now did it a second time to reach 25, which put me tops on the list at this moment. I think it’s probably a really new contest, so it’s my best chance to get a T-shirt before the virus spreads too far.

The first time I played I was checking the high scores while I was playing, between words. This time when I checked the list of high scores didn’t show. I wonder whether they changed the application. The ability to do that, if it’s what they did, is another cool thing about Web 2.0 applications; they can be tweakedif necessary to increase engagement.

I’m a real milk guy (a descendant of dairy farmers), so I’m probably not their target market for soy milk, but the application does create an extended experience with the Odwalla brand.

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