NewsBeat

2 NewsBeat October 2018 NewsBeat A NEWSLETTER FOR NEW YORK'S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS Published by the New York Press Association 621 Columbia Street Ext., Suite 100, Cohoes, NY 12047 518.464.6483 • 518.464.6489 fax • www.nynewspapers.com Executive Editor — Michelle K. Rea Layout & Design — Rich Hotaling PA NY Mark your calendar Friday, November 9, 2018 NYPA/NYPS Board of Directors Meetings NYPA Foundation Board of Directors Meeting NYPA Offices 621 Columbia St. Extension, Cohoes, NY Tuesday, January 8, 2019 NYPA Better Newspaper Contest Deadline Thursday, April 4, 2019 NYPA/NYPS Boards of Directors Meetings NYPA Foundation Board of Directors Meeting Hilton Albany, Albany, NY Friday & Saturday, April 5 & 6, 2019 NYPA Spring Convention and Tradeshow Hilton Albany, Albany, NY Friday, June 14, 2019 NYPA/NYPS Board of Directors Meetings NYPA Foundation Board of Directors Meeting Location: to be announced Thursday, September 19, 2019 NYPA/NYPS Boards of Directors Meetings NYPA Foundation Board of Directors Meeting Location: to be announced Friday & Saturday, September 20 & 21, 2019 NYPA Fall Conference Location: to be announced C L I P & S A V E By DAMON KIESOW — former CEO, McClatchy Industry Strategies: How working together bilaterally and multilaterally will move our industry forward S ince leaving McClatchy last year, I've looked at various positions, including a number beyond media. One I found to be particularly cool was the COO of Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, Delaware, working for the company's founders. I extensively researched the company, which is currently the 12th largest craft brewer in the U.S. and noted for the originality of its products and focus on collaboration and community. Unfortunately, I was late to the process and didn't get the job. Still, my research on the company and its philosophy stuck with me. One point made by co-founder Sam Calagione during a 2015 TedX talk in Wilmington, Delaware, struck a chord with me. He said, "The industry I work in itself is exemplary for its prioritization of collaboration, its altruism [and] its mutual support because collectively the 3,200 small breweries in America share less than 10 percent market share. As much as you might hear about … Sam Adams, and it's ubiquitous, Sam Adams controls 1% domestic market share in America. The other biggest American brewery, the Yuengling family-owned brewery up the road from us here, [has] 1% market share. Two foreign-owned conglomerates control over 80% domestic market share. So again, thinking collaboratively, the 3,200-odd craft breweries in America recognize that we have way more to gain standing shoulder to shoulder and that rising tides float all ships and we take opportunities to work with each other and to help each other." Eighty percent. Sound familiar? So I thought about the news business. After all, local news organizations try to craft a high quality product for their communities. But why do we work so hard to reinvent the wheel when our energy should be spent on creating new ways to provide high quality journalistic and advertising experiences that sustain paying customers and create new consumption patterns that, as Mr. Calagione said, "float all ships"? While at McClatchy, I was as guilty as anyone of "not-invented-here" disease. Upon reflection, during my time as its CEO, I should have pushed harder for all of us to work together and find more solutions for our business challenges. And I should have accepted more offers to do so. While historically the company was at the center of many industry partnerships, there were many more we could have done together. For example, our industry has developed 100 ways to do a paywall. Many of us copied what was done before us, added our own twist, and then rarely gave the originator credit. How much more powerful would it have been for the industry to decide jointly on the right strategy so we could have come out with one marketing message? In the focus on local, it's easy to forget how much marketing is now national. It took years for consumers to understand what paywalls were all about, and only recently has the industry begun to surmount that confusion. Another example is digital agencies. According to local digital guru Gordon Borrell, less than half of all newspapers have digital agencies with their own identities. Operators developed those agencies in myriad ways. I am surprised that half still don't have one. What resources will be used up by those other operators to develop their

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