Phillip Reid
Owner and Publisher of Reid Newspapers
How to keep the “cool factor” in print publishing
Phillip Reid is the second-generation publisher of Reid Newspapers, which owns and operates over a dozen traditional print newspapers around Oklahoma. Reid says he grew up in the newspaper business and started his first delivery route at just 6 years old.
Reid is a lifelong Oklahoman. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma’s journalism program in 1982 and later earned his law degree from the University of Tulsa. He eventually bought the company from his parents in 1989.
In his long career, Reid has grown Reid Newspapers from a portfolio of three printed titles to 14 that serve a range of audiences, from rural communities to metropolitan areas. Reid says the digital age changed journalism in intractable ways. Now, he says, newspapers need to find a way to innovate their business model to attract advertisers and retain a loyal audience.
By Robert Davis
Whenever people ask me how I feel about newsrooms closing, I have to clarify whether they’re asking about my business or about the industry overall.
If they’re asking about Reid Newspapers, I tell them how we’re growing by leaps and bounds. For example, we’ve increased our employment by 22% since the first day of COVID-19. However, if they’re asking about the industry overall, then I say that I am absolutely concerned about newsrooms closing. Those closures adversely affect the perception of my business.
About a year and a half ago, we started seeing more companies come to local newspapers to run coupons, which is something that websites like redplum.com siphoned from newspapers in the early days of the internet. I asked one advertiser why they were coming back and they told me, “It’s because you guys shove [our ads] in people’s faces.”
To me, that’s a huge compliment. Paper coupons are tangible. People cut them out and put them on their refrigerators, on their kitchen counter, on the coffee table, next to the toilet. Those are places that digital ads can’t touch.
That’s why we’re seeing other businesses get into publishing as well. The other day I received a really cool printed toy catalog, as did hundreds of thousands of other people across the country. It had the old newspaper feel to it and was really well done. But do you know who printed it? Amazon. That’s earth-shattering in my arena. If they wanted to send you an advertisement, they could have sent it to your email or shown you a sponsored post on social media. Why would they go through the trouble of publishing something?
Frankly, the biggest obstacle for newspaper publishers right now is other newspaper publishers, and that’s a frustrating place to be.
A Sense of Loyalty
Newsroom closures are also impacting large metropolitan newspapers and small community newspapers differently. Small communities tend to be very supportive and want that sense of being at every football game, every graduation, and every other local event. That’s what’s keeping small newspapers alive in those markets.
There isn’t that same sense of loyalty in larger markets. A lot of newspapers in large cities simply exist; they don’t feel that same sense of responsibility to help keep the local Boy Scout troop alive or help the local sports team afford their trip to the national championship game. Those things don’t really mean anything in large cities.
We have one metro newspaper in our portfolio, the Bethany Tribune, which has really struggled to find ad sponsors for things like our list of high school graduates, even though the newspaper serves an area that is surrounded by Oklahoma City.
Frankly, the biggest obstacle for newspaper publishers right now is other newspaper publishers, and that’s a frustrating place to be.
The paper still has a lot of subscribers, so it’s ironic to struggle with advertising because there are supposedly more potential customers in a metro market. On the other hand, businesses in our rural markets are scrambling to put their names on our high school graduation lists. Businesses in the metro area still seem to wonder why it’s a good investment for them.
Metro markets seem to have bought into this idea that newspapers should be completely digital. In theory, they could work on geo-fencing [digitally mapping a real-world geographic area] a certain portion of their clientele and become increasingly sophisticated in their marketing to those people. While that stuff is kinda fun and exciting, it’s not working for everybody.
In turn, our smaller-market newspapers are seeing a lot of advertisers return to print. That says that print still has a “cool” factor.
Playing Politics as a Publisher
Publishing still provides a lot of exposure to people, and that comes with a lot of responsibility. Think about it: What other business sells a product and asks their customers to criticize it, disagree with it, and really analyze it?
But there seems to be an inability for large metro newspapers to transform their business model. That includes blending their marketing and news departments for the benefit of their business. Instead, a lot of newspapers are killing their advertising revenue because of their biased news coverage. That’s forcing newspapers to make job cuts in their marketing departments that they can’t overcome .
This is evident in political advertising. There’s an old debate whether it’s the job of newsrooms to educate voters about a candidate’s platform or if it’s the candidate’s responsibility to educate the public by buying advertisements. The old-school answer is that it is the responsibility of a newsroom, but now political candidates see this and say “Thank you, but we’re going to go spend $10 million on television advertising.” So newspapers have lost virtually 100% of their political ad revenue.
What do you do about that? If you can’t change your method, change your ways.
When political candidates come into my newsroom, I tell them (figuratively) that anything short of them getting run over by a bus will be considered paid political advertising in my newspapers. Why? Because they want something from me: They’re requesting an audience.
Newspaper readers are generally well-educated, and they’re going to get out and vote. Television viewers? Not so much. It’s a hardcore approach, but it’s necessary to support local journalism.