A newspaper war is stirring in suburban Denver.
The Denver Newspaper Agency, created four years ago to handle business operations for the city’s two metro daily papers, is going on the offensive with a number of new products and a marketing campaign.
The goal is to broaden readership and increase advertising dollars, particularly from the suburban markets.
“I don’t think it’s any secret that newspapers, especially large metropolitan newspapers, are going through a transformation,” said Kirk MacDonald, DNA president and chief executive.
The largest of the new initiatives, YourHub.com, is designed to compete with suburban papers for advertisers. YourHub.com is a marriage of Internet and print products, filled mostly with reader-submitted content. The websites, launched May 5, are up and running, and the first weekly print editions, being produced by the News, launch today in Highlands Ranch, Castle Rock and Parker.
Other new publications include Bias, a magazine geared toward 21-to 34-year-olds, and El Comerciante, a biweekly advertising circular aimed at Colorado’s burgeoning Hispanic population.
Local community papers are fighting back. Two suburban publishers have launched new Web and print products to protect their markets.
“I hesitate to call it a war, but we certainly feel like there is a target on our back,” said Greg Anderson, publisher of Boulder’s Daily Camera, which launched a site similar to YourHub.com last month.
In the past month, the Camera launched MyTown.DailyCamera.com, and Mile High Newspapers Inc., which publishes four weekly Jefferson County newspapers, launched MyMileHighNews.com. Both have the same approach as YourHub.com.
“Clearly, the DNA has more marketing power and resources than our small company has – or probably all the other suburban companies have combined,” Mile High publisher David Lewis said.
Other suburban newspaper chains, including Aurora Publishing Co. and Evergreen Newspapers Inc., said they are looking at launching similar sites or adding more blogs and interactive features to their websites.
“We’re all just trying to hold onto our niche in this world,” Aurora publisher Harrison Coch ran said.
Although the DNA would not provide a breakdown of ad revenues between the suburbs and the city, MacDonald said suburban markets are attractive to big newspaper companies like the DNA. In metro Denver, $1.1 billion is spent annually by local advertisers, and newspapers get about half of that or a little more. Another $600,000 is spent in the metro Denver market by national advertisers.
Bill Reynolds, YourHub.com general manager, said YourHub.com is designed to appeal to advertisers who were priced out of The Post and the News after a joint operating agreement was reached in 2001, combining the business operations of the two papers.
“That’s part of it, absolutely,” he said. “It’s for the smaller advertisers that obviously can’t afford to be in our newspapers right now.”
Advertising rates are lower at YourHub.com and its corresponding print publications than they are in The Post and the News and on their websites.
“It’s a big challenge for advertisers without a large budget to not only get in (the two metro papers), but to get in with enough frequency and size to really make a good impact,” said Brett Grischo of Explore Communications, a local media planning and buying agency.
YourHub.com, which breaks metro Denver into 40 local websites, is designed so readers can submit their own content – from graduation photos to church news. Readers are not paid for their postings.
Information posted online is culled and added to other local news produced by YourHub.com staffers, who have been hired by the News, and packaged into 15 zoned publications.
Those print sections will be delivered to Post and News subscribers every Thursday. The DNA isn’t releasing its rollout schedule for the various zones but says they’ll all be appearing by mid-August.
YourHub.com is tapping into a hot national “community journalism” trend, fueled by the explosion of blogs and the migration of newspaper readers to the World Wide Web.
“This is just starting to take off,” said Bill Ostendorf, president of Providence, R.I.-based Creative Circle Media Consulting. “The DNA is definitely on the leading edge.”
Newspapers in Tennessee, South Carolina and elsewhere have launched zoned editions packed with reader content.
In January 2004, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., launched eight zoned weekly reader-driven publications, called Appeal Editions. The paper has since seen increases in paid circulation and advertising revenues, said Henry Stokes, director of administration and planning.
“It’s been successful both on the advertising front and the readership front,” he said. “We about doubled our retail advertising business in 2004.”
Staff writer Julie Dunn can be reached at 303-820-1592 or jdunn@denverpost.com.
Denver Newspaper Agency
The DNA handles the business operations of The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. The two newsrooms remain separate and competitive:
The Denver Post
Publisher: ap, Denver
Weekday circulation: 268,004 for the six months ended in March
Sunday circulation: 735,621
Rocky Mountain News
Publisher: E.W. Scripps Co., Cincinnati
Weekday circulation: 267,031
Saturday circulation: 591,066
Note: The Post doesn’t publish on Saturdays, and the News doesn’t publish on Sundays.
Source: Denver Post research
