NewsBeat

2 NewsBeat October 2019 PA NY Mark your calendar Friday, November 15, 2019 NYPA/NYPS Board of Directors Meetings NYPA Foundation Board of Directors Meeting The New York Times Bldg. Seyfarth Shaw Office (33rd fl.) 620 8th Ave., New York, NY Tuesday, January 7, 2020 NYPA Better Newspaper Contest Deadline Thursday, March 26, 2020 NYPA/NYPS Boards of Directors Meetings NYPA Foundation Board of Directors Meeting The Gideon Putnam, Saratoga Springs, NY Friday & Saturday, March 27 & 28, 2020 NYPA Spring Convention and Tradeshow The Gideon Putnam, Saratoga Springs, NY Friday, June 12, 2020 NYPA/NYPS Board of Directors Meetings NYPA Foundation Board of Directors Meeting (Location to be determined) Thursday, September 24, 2020 NYPA/NYPS Boards of Directors Meetings NYPA Foundation Board of Directors Meeting (Location to be determined) Friday & Saturday, September 25 & 26, 2019 NYPA Fall Conference (Location to be determined) Friday, November 20, 2020 NYPA/NYPS Board of Directors Meetings NYPA Foundation Board of Directors Meeting (Location to be determined) C L I P & S A V E 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 By MICHELLE REA — Executive Director, NYPA Viewing journalism as a strategy rather than an industry I n 2018, state press associations and the Newspaper Association Managers Association committed $150,000 to fund a project we hoped would help us to reposition and rebrand newspapers. The Relevance Project committee worked for more than 18 months with the Cunningham Collective, a marketing and communication strategy firm based in San Jose, California. The Relevance Project is a "take back the night" movement. Its goal is to help newspapers and state press association owned ad services get their mojo back. At its most basic level, the Relevance Project is a coordinated promotion and marketing campaign designed to reposition and rebrand state press association ad services and the community newspapers they represent and position them for relevance in a digitally focused world. State press associations and the newspapers we represent share a common problem: we no longer matter in the same powerful way we once did. We have lost our unique roles and relevance in the marketplace. Restating the unique role and relevance of state press association ad services sounds like this: Together, state press association- operated ad services provide the ONLY platform for local engagement on a national scale. We alone provide local, on-the-ground knowledge of EVERY community newspaper in North America and we have the personal connections and market knowledge to drive the best results for our advertising clients. No other entity knows the newspapers and the markets they serve like state press associations do. A regional or national approach to buying local news is still very appealing to advertisers. Banding press services together creates a local news platform as powerful or more powerful than the tech giants' social media platforms. And how will we Reposition newspapers for relevance? Relevance is the paramount driver of news consumption and journalism has never been more important. That's our differentiator. Citizens navigate a high-choice media environment with an abundance of ways to stay informed. What makes local newspapers relevant? Our unique content – from well-known, comfortable content produced by local columnists, food critics and long-time sports writers, to breaking news, coverage of school boards, city councils, and in-depth reporting on critical local issues – creates the value quotient – this kind of content isn't available anywhere else. The Relevance Project is working to create a movement which will gain momentum over time. It seeks to harness the collective reach of 9600 newspapers throughout the United States and Canada to create a uniform voice spreading important messages about the unique value we alone deliver. Developing the promotion and marketing campaign has been a difficult and time- consuming journey. It is a journey that is ongoing today. The committee has developed a detailed implementation plan. The Relevance Project should not create a lot of additional work for state press associations or newspapers. All materials will be provided in bite-sized pieces – pre- packaged, ready to use however you choose. This is not a one-size-fits-all campaign. It is not mandatory. It is simply a large-scale movement whose goal is to remind citizens that

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