While it is always good to see people in print spending money, paying waitresses to expose themselves wasn't what we were thinking. 

Interesting article on what is going on at the Tribune Co. in the New York Times here. 

This is hard to understand. Makes you wonder what they needed to do to qualify for bonuses, breath?

From sfnblog.com. Full story here 

Tribune execs to receive $45.6 million in bonuses

Newspapers continue to search for new and innovative cost cutting measures. Too bad they are not nearly as aggressive in reinvigorating their core product. My main example is my experience with Mediabids. We have been around for 10 years, more than 8,500 publications use us, we have sold tens of thousands of ads for publications and yet, nearly everyday, we have conversations with publications who are skeptical about the idea of using a website to sell newspaper and magazine advertising. Just yesterday, I spoke to a large publishing company who has gone through layoffs, product closings and downsizing in the last year and yet, despite their dire financial situation, are nonchalant about the opportunity to sell ads to the 17,000 advertisers who use Mediabids to buy print ads. Many print publications are not in the state they are in by accident.

From The Chicago Tribune. Full story here

The Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Co. newspapers plan to utilize as little content from the Associated Press as practical during the week of Nov. 8.

The goal, as the papers review costs and needs, is to see whether severing ties with the news cooperative next fall is a viable option, the Chicago-based media company confirmed Monday.

The trial is scheduled to be conducted almost 13 months after Tribune Co. gave the AP a required two-year warning that it might drop the news service, effective Oct. 15, 2010. Tribune Co. said at the time that it was keeping its options open while weighing what role, if any, the AP would play in its future.

AdAge reports today on The Dallas Morning News outsourcing its national ad sales to Tribune division Tribune 365. This could be a trend and it makes some sense. However, it doesn't appear that the Dallas Morning News expects this outsourcing to yield more national advertising revenue, as much as it will reduce costs.

Full story here. Excerpt below:

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- In what's believed to be a first-of-its-kind arrangement in the struggling newspaper industry, Belo's Dallas Morning News has tapped rival publisher Tribune Co. to handle its national ad sales.

The move figures to let the Morning News dedicate its sales resources to the local market without completely turning its back on national ad sales, while Tribune's national-sales unit, called Tribune 365, gets to sweeten an offering that already includes the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and other papers, and pocket a few sales commissions in the process.

By now you have heard the news that the Tribune Company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it seeks to reorganize its debts. 

I have a suggestion for Sam Zell, Tribune Corp. principal, as he takes this opportunity to re-think how the company operates - Take 5 minutes and try to buy an ad from any one of your publications. Pick up the phone and call The Hartford Courant, The LA Times or The Baltimore Sun. Tell the person who answers the phone that you are an out-of-state real estate developer interested in buying a display ad and then see what happens.

Here is what typically happens to the average customer: the person who answers the phone at the publication will put you on hold for a few minutes while they try to figure out who your sales rep should be. This is tricky because every industry is assigned a unique sales rep and there is no crossover. If you are an out-of-state real estate developer you can not speak to the same sales rep that an in-state real estate developer speaks to. So you get transferred to the only sales rep in the building who can help you and there is almost no chance that this person will anwer the phone. You leave a message and wait. Hopefully, your sales rep isn't on vacation. They call you back a few hours later, or if they are out on sales calls - the next day. When you do speak, the rate card is so complex that it can not be described over the phone, so you need to receive information via email. Once that is received, it is now the advertiser's job to read and understand the rate card and then get back to the sales rep with their advertising plans. 

Compare this to the advertiser's experience with pay-per-click advertising on Google, Yahoo or MSN. The same advertiser can sit in front of the television plan out an ad campaign and by the end of a sit-com re-run be done with it.

At Mediabids.com, we offer a streamlined online system that automates the buying and selling of print advertising. We think that our system offers an economical way for publications to increase revenue. But whether or not Mr. Zell takes my word for it, something needs to be done to make print buying easier, faster and (as mentioned in previous blogs) measurable. Without making changes that impact the ways ads are bought and sold, the Tribune Company, and many other similar publications, will never get out of the current crisis.