Macy's and parent company, Federated Department Stores, have been shifting their ad spending to other media including the Internet because, according to MacDonald, newspapers are not engaging readers as they should.  

MacDonald admitted that newspapers are prime engines for local advertising, but when it comes to reaching national audiences, to which the Macy's brand is spreading, the newspaper is lacking. Even more perplexing for newspapers, department stores primarily target women aged 18-54, not necessarily a demographic that is a huge reader of printed newspapers.

She suggested that newspapers from different regions join forces to faciliate selling ad space on a broader scope, making newspaper advertising more appealing to national advertisers, and for newspapers and advertisers to work together in studying rapidly changing consumer habits in order to gauge the best ways to reach them.

One suggestion she made sounded an awful like personalized newspapers. MacDonald mentioned that every week, the first sections she turns to in her New York Times are the Science and Dining sections. If NYT could figure out a way to put these sections on the top of the fold for her home delivery, she would appreciate the ease of reading. She insinuated that the Times should try to figure out the personal preferences of all of its subscribers.

In its Trends in Newsrooms 2007 report, the World Editors Forum argued that one of the problems with newspapers is that they are a one-size-fits-all medium in a world prone to specified satisfaction: essentially, someone interested only in sports will not buy a newspaper, despite it having a sports section, because the rest of the content will be wasted on that reader.

So how to cure this problem?

Before, we've argued that papers could spin off weekly supplements into separate magazine style publications or begin selling different sections separately. Although this sounds good and theory and would probably attract more readers to a newspaper's brand, it is highly unfeasible economically.  

There are publications who are trying to personalize news for each of their individual subscribers. Reason Magazine did it by printing a satellite photo of subscribers' residence on the front page delivered to their respective addresses. A German start-up, Personal News, is developing a means of delivering a printed, personalized newspaper to subscribers' doorsteps. The Daily Me is a start up trying to gather a following of people seeking personalized news that is sent directly to their printer.     

But the costs for traditional newspaper publishers to pull off either wrapping individuals' preferred sections on the outside or to sell supplements and sections separately would far outweigh the benefits. Printing presses would have to be modified constantly. Distribution spending would need to be greatly increased. And getting back to MacDonald, people's preferred sections might not be those in which national advertisers would buy space to begin with.

Thus, figuring out how to appeal to more advertisers and readers in the printed version, is financially more difficult than it sounds. Any suggestions?

Source: Houston Chronicle