Journalism Challenge Brings Together Chicago Editors, Student Ideas

As American newspapers face unprecedented challenges in attracting and retaining younger readers, dozens of DePaul University students offered a variety of ideas – ranging from downloadable news columns to prepaid cards that would activate newsboxes and vending machines – at a day-long conference with top Chicago journalists Oct. 24.

The DePaul Journalism Challenge Symposium, “Rewriting the American Newspaper,” brought together scores of DePaul communications students with many of Chicago’s key editors – including Jane Hirt of RedEye, Christine Ledbetter of the Chicago Sun-Times and David Snyder of Crain’s Chicago Business. Together the participants debated how the news media is adjusting to a rapidly evolving and splintering market for news. The event, funded by a grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation, was held at DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus Student Center.

As part of the program, DePaul communication students competed to come up with creative new ideas for helping newspapers attract younger readers. The symposium included presentations by the three finalist teams in addition to the expert commentary.

Student presenters winning first-place honors in the challenge were Daniel Biederman, Kathryn Pircher and Gia Teolis, who offered a “Newspaper CPR” plan designed to change the way newspapers are formatted, packaged and sold. Included was a proposal to shift newspapers from a broadsheet to a tabloid format, to sell the papers either a la carte in sections or as a whole, and to revive the evening commuter edition. These changes would be combined with a fully wireless delivery system, which would send the entire paper, in text or .pdf versions, to digital subscribers on cell phones, wireless PDAs, mp3 devices or television via a digital cable outlet. Finally, the students proposed an “InfoPass,” similar to a debit card, which would allow customers to purchase media products quickly and easily from a variety of outlets and machines.

Two student presentations tied for second place. George Astaves, Mary Jo Maffei and Tom Kennedy created a “hybrid” format paper, combining the portability of a tabloid with the easy section divisions of a broadsheet, all in a smaller package that takes up less space. The new paper would focus on second-day stories, emphasizing the “how” and “why,” as the “what” is typically unearthed by most readers online immediately.

Meanwhile, Virgil Dickson and Alexandra Kalo offered a proposal for redesigning the Chicago Tribune by adding a diverse lineup of young, fresh columnists to front each section of the newspaper. Each columnist would offer his or her own daily video podcast, adding a multimedia element to the redesign. Other elements included a redesigned Web presence, and a shift in focus of advertisers, from the current emphasis on corporate and national accounts, to wooing more local and independent advertisers.

The event kicked off with a presentation by Gary Meo, vice president of print and Internet services for Scarborough Research, a prominent market research firm studying media behaviors, who argued that papers are not losing readers because of the slipping newspaper sales figures, but rather, more readers are getting their news online from newspaper sites.

“In 2005, there were 55.5 million unique web paper readers, up 31 percent from the previous year,” Meo noted.

Snyder, associate publisher of Crain’s Chicago Business, offered his assessment of the keys to putting a quality print product online. Snyder said the key is to integrate the web presence with the print product as a news operation. Crain’s has 1.5 million page views each month, 125,000 unique users (two-and-a-half times its print circulation) and four million requested alerts each month, he said.

“No one can do an effective job of running an Internet site as a sideline,” he said.

The day wrapped up with two media panel discussions, both moderated by Laura S. Washington, DePaul University Ida B. Wells-Barnett Professor, senior editor of In These Times, and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

The first panel, “Is There a Newspaper in Your Future?,” featured Hirt, RedEye editor; Ledbetter, Sun-Times features editor; and John Sturm, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America.

Sturm opined that the newspaper industry is still capable of being robust, despite the challenges of lower circulations and fewer advertisers, but the definition of the industry must change, incorporating other forms, such as television, Web sites and blogs.

“We have two choices,” he said. “We can either hope that circulation bottoms out at a level we can live with, or we can stop seeing ourselves as a one-product industry.”

By focusing on Web products and television, Sturm said that newspapers won’t be “just newspaper companies anymore, but rather multi-product and multi-channel news and information companies.”

Hirt, whose RedEye paper targets new and younger readers to the print paper form, responded to a frequent criticism that her paper’s celebrity-heavy stories and short articles are “dumbing down” news for readers. She noted that newspapers are “fighting for their lives,” and something needs to be done to create new readers.

“Making stories more concise isn’t ‘dumbing down’ the newspaper,” she said. “It’s respecting busy readers’ time.”

Ledbetter and Hirt agreed that not every newspaper is going to suit every consumer in this era of thousands of media choices and niche marketing. “A single news product will be unable to satisfy everyone,” Ledbetter said.

The second panel discussion, “Capturing Young Readers,” featured Kurt Gessler, editor of the Daily Herald’s Beep and Beepcentral.com; and Mike Lenehan, executive editor of the Chicago Reader. Gessler, who earlier this year oversaw the launch of Beep, an arts and entertainment weekly and Web site, said his publication looked to attract young readers in the Chicago suburbs with a comprehensive guide to entertainment and nightlife in their area, which he noted was lacking in the local media market. The vehicle was launched on the Internet four months before the first print edition hit the streets.

Both Lenehan and Gessler emphasized the importance of putting as much effort into the online version of a publication as one does with a print publication, something business realities are beginning to dictate.

“The physical cost of producing a newspaper is huge,” Lenehan said. “The cost of newsprint is going nowhere but up, the cost of gas to get that newsprint around is going nowhere but up…(print) cannot survive those economics and the ease of distribution in online delivery for long.”

Winning presentations from the students, as well as the guest speakers’ presentations, are available at http://communication.depaul.edu/.