ViewPoint
April 2010

Verified Would Like to Welcome...

Spray Technology & Marketing
Industry Publications
Parsippany, NJ
Spray Technology & Marketing serves manufacturers of spray products for personal/toiletries/fragrances, pharmaceuticals, household, insecticides, paints/finishes, industrial/automotive, foods, and veterinary/animal.

Paper, Film & Foil Converter
Penton Media
Chicago, IL
Paper, Film & Foil Converter (PFFC) has been serving U.S. and international converters and package printers since 1927. Through their print magazine, targeted e-newsletters, and interactive website and online products, PFFC offers award-winning coverage of process management, new products/innovations, market trends and industry news to the largest body of senior-level converting professionals in the marketplace.

Timber Processing
Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc.
Montgomery, AL
North American and international professionals in the lumber industry receive Timber Processing ten times per year. They rely on Timber Processing to stay updated on the latest industry news, sawmill projects and machinery technologies. Timber Processing editors continuously visit and report on the most outstanding sawmills. The editorial staff, which has more than 100 years of combined experience in this industry, is well known and respected and is frequently called upon to speak at industry functions.

Timber Harvesting & Wood Fiber Operations
Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc.
Montgomery, AL
Published six times per year, Timber Harvesting & Wood Fiber Operations encompasses in-wood operations, including logging, trucking, land-clearing, biomass processing, fiber procurement, timberland ownership and related association activities. The magazine primarily serves the U.S. market, supported by an editorial staff that has more than 100 years of combined experience writing about this industry.

Southern Loggin' Times
Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc.
Montgomery, AL
Southern Loggin' Times attributes its popularity and readership loyalty to the magazine's family-oriented approach to logging operations throughout the Southern U.S. Southern Loggin' Times provides the latest information on logging applications, technologies and issues affecting loggers.

Landscape Management
Questex Meida
Cleveland, OH
Landscape Management is a leading information resource for large, successful lawn care, landscape maintenance, design/build/installation and irrigation professionals. Serving as the industry conscience, Landscape Management not only reports on but also helps shape news, trends and solutions. It engages its audience by giving them access to exclusive, business-building information in print, online and through events.

Marine Log
Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp.
New York, NY
For more than 130 years, maritime executives worldwide have turned to Marine Log as the source for news and analysis on issues impacting vessel design, construction and operations.

Murdoch Calls for Paywalls, But Study Says
Most Consumers Still Not Ready to Pay for News

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corp., said newspaper publishers should prevent search engines like Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s Bing from linking to full articles for free.

"It's produced a river of gold, but those words are being taken mostly from the newspapers," Murdoch, 79, said at a taping of "The Kalb Report" at the National Press Club in Washington. "I think they ought to stop it, that the newspapers ought to stand up and let them do their own reporting."

Murdoch, who publishes the Wall Street Journal and Times of London, said news aggregators should be able to display only a headline, a couple of sentences and the option to subscribe to the publication. News Corp., based in New York, has started charging consumers for access to some of its newspapers' websites, emulating the subscription model of the Wall Street Journal online.

According to a study by the PRC-Project for Excellence in Journalism and the PRC-Internet & American Life Project Online News Survey conducted from December 2009 through January 2010, 71% of Internet users, or 52% of all Americans, get news online today. However, most consumers graze across multiple sites for news without having a favorite site.

Users who do have a favorite site are pretty faithful and check the site at least daily. Even among these most loyal followers, however, 82% would go elsewhere to get their news if they were asked to pay.

According to a statement by Google, publishers can charge for content while also making it discoverable through Google. "Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose to exclude their material from web search," Google said in the statement. "Of the tens of thousands of news publishers who choose to make their articles part of Google News, over the lifetime of the service there have been only a few dozen that asked us not to include them."

Google said it respects publishers' wishes and that there are easy ways to remove content if publishers don't want it to appear in search results. Publishers can limit to five a day the number of articles a reader can access for free through its search and news services, Google has said, as well as opt out completely.

The joint PRC study found that since most news is covered by multiple organizations, people do not place enough value on the difference between different reports. The degree of coverage between a pay story and a free story may not be enough to tempt a consumer.

The study concluded that if publishers are going to make any progress with paywalls, they are going to have to change consumers attitudes, even among the most avid news consumers.

Christian Science Monitor Thrives As Weekly

A little over a year ago, The Christian Science Monitor (CSM), the venerable daily newspaper founded in 1908, announced that it was folding its regular daily edition and switching to a weekly publication schedule as an oversized glossy.

Daily reporting for breaking news would take place on the website, while the weekly magazine would provide the longer, more insightful analysis that made the CSM famous.

At the time, many just chalked it up to another traditional media casualty—one in a growing procession of print newspapers slain by the Internet. Cynics could be forgiven for dismissing the idea of a revamped CSM; after all, other publishers have used the move from print to online publication to gut their editorial, and as for the magazine—would it even be around a year later?

Well, it is—and it's actually thriving.

After retaining most of the established readership, converting 90% of daily subscribers to the weekly edition, The Christian Science Monitor also recruited a large number of new subscribers. From a total paid circulation of 40,000 when the weekly debuted on April 12, 2009, the subscription base has grown to 77,000 today.

Readership "indexes through the roof" on education, with 80% holding a college degree and 47% holding a postgraduate degree, according to Editor in Chief John Yemma. CSM readers have a median household income of $88,000 and also travel much more frequently than the general population.

In March, the website attracted 5 million unique visitors, generating 14 million page views, according to traffic data from comScore. All this growth is especially impressive, considering the fairly modest promotional efforts undertaken by the publication.

As for the content in the print publication, there's clearly less in the weekly than there was in the daily edition—a total of about 48 pages per week for the magazine, versus about 100 pages combined for the daily newspapers, per Yemma. However, it retains its traditional strengths—especially in reporting on social issues and foreign affairs—with eight foreign bureaus and a "long-term commitment to foreign news," says Yemma.

Looking to the future, Yemma said he hoped for "steady, organic growth in high-quality readership" both online and in print. "If we can move up steadily, from 77,000 to 100,000 to the 150,000 range, and retain those people, we'll be about the size of The Nation, the National Review—and I can see us moving steadily to get there."

© MediaPost Communications 2010

Events Calendar

Oklahoma Press Association Summer Conference
June 4 – 6, 2010
Wagoner,OK
www.okpress.com

CRMA Conference
June 5 – 7, 2010
Providence, RI
www.citymag.org

Audience Development Show 2010
June 7 – 9, 2010
New York, NY
www.red7media.com

iab: Internet Week
June 7 – 14, 2010
New York, NY
www.iab.net

Magazines: From the Dimensional to the Digital
June 16, 2010
New York, NY
www.magazine.org

Georgia Press Association
June 17 – 19, 2010
Jekyll Island, GA
www.gapress.org

Audience Development - The New Frontier
June 17, 2010
New York, NY
www.magazine.org

Top Innovators in Business Publishing Awards
June 17, 2010
New York, NY
www.btobonline.com

International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors Annual Conference
June 23 – 27, 2010
Richmond, KY
www.mssu.edu

Tri-State Press Convention, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee
June 23 – 26, 2010
Tunica, MS
www.2010tristate.com/

Retail Marketplace 2010 Conference
June 28 – 30, 2010
Boston, MA
www.magazine.org

If you have an event that you would like to announce, please send your information
to e-newsletter@verifiedaudit.com.

Read All Aboot It: Canadians Still Like Print Newspapers

A new survey of Canadian adults in 53 media markets indicates continuing popularity for print newspapers north of the border, with a surprisingly low number of survey respondents only reading content online.

The survey covered populations in markets served by a total of 81 Canadian daily newspapers (as well as 60 community newspapers in 33 of these markets), representing 72% of the total Canadian population.

Overall, the new readership survey from NADbank found that 14.7 million Canadian adults, or 78% of the total population, read a print or online edition of their daily newspaper at least once a week. However, the print edition is still far more popular among adult readers in general, with 73% reading the print edition once a week versus just 22% for the online edition. Even more remarkable, a mere 4% of Canadian adults only read newspapers online.

More specifically, 47% of Canadian adults read a printed daily newspaper on an average weekday, 44% read the Saturday edition, and 23% read the Sunday edition.

In terms of content categories, 73% of readers went to daily newspapers for local content. The survey found that readership rates for local daily newspapers are higher in smaller markets.

The Canadian newspaper readership data provides an interesting contrast to some recent surveys of American adults' reading habits.

Earlier this month, a survey of 1,040 people by AARP found that just 29% of adults read a print newspaper every day—a figure that can be compared to the "average weekday" figure of 44% for Canadian adults—even though these categories aren't defined in exactly the same way. Furthermore, the AARP survey found that 35% of American adults don't read a daily newspaper at all, compared to just 23% of Canadians.

© MediaPost Communications 2010

Tips & Techniques: Where to Get Verified's Audit Guidelines

All of Verified's audit guidelines can be accessed on Verified's website. The Information & Resource Guide can be downloaded from the Members section. Go to www.verifiedaudit.com. Click on Members and then on Client Information & Resources.

You will need your username and password to access the guide. There is a guide for magazine clients and one for newspaper clients. Each provides a wealth of information about Verified beyond auditing guidelines including a glossary of terms, information on understanding your audit reports and contact information.

The guide is available as a digital edition in RealRead or as a PDF. It is completely searchable. If you have questions, contact Verified at 415-461-6006.

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