I am sad to report that some of you hate the advertising in The Salt Lake Tribune.
One man called several weeks ago and complained, “I hate those Meier & Frank ads in the A section of the newspaper. I would just like pages of news in the A section. Make them put their ads in a separate section, so I can see my news.”
A woman echoed his sentiments this past week, saying, “No newspaper in the country has as many ads as you people do. Put all those ads in the same section, so I can throw them away and let me have my news.”
She went on to say she might cancel the newspaper because the ads annoy her so much.
Another one of about 30 callers on this subject weighed in with this comment: “I don’t want to read all those ads, so put them someplace else.”
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those ads are what puts hamburger in the buns and caffeine-free Coke in the glasses of people who work at The Tribune and the Newspaper Agency Corp. (NAC), the company that prints, sells the ads and delivers The Tribune and the Deseret (Morning) News. Those ads also keep the price of your Tribune from being $2 a copy.
I don’t know about your buns, but I like hamburger in mine.
So, I devote this column to explaining the business of newspapers.
Like any other business, a newspaper must have revenue in excess of its expenses to make a profit. Let’s take a look at those revenues and expenses.
The main sources of revenue for newspapers are advertising, subscriptions and single-copy sales. And there is an interesting symbiotic relationship between ads and subscriptions. The more copies editions a newspaper sells, the higher the ad rates it can charge, because circulation drives rates. And the more advertising a newspaper has, the more subscribers want the paper.
For your edification, the healthy newspaper runs an average of 60 percent ads and 40 percent news. Keep in mind that’s an average, so some days there is a higher percentage of ads and sometimes a lower one.
Advertisers want to sell readers products or services. They hope that in the midst of reading an article about Elvis impersonators or the potential of making war on Iraq, your eye will rest for a moment on their advertisement.
But when they pay for these ads they insist that they actually go in the paper.
Then, there’s the matter of subscription revenue and single-copy sales. The $129.40 a year you pay for your Tribune subscription does not cover all the costs of getting it to your door. In fact, you pay 35.4 cents per day and it costs $1.22 a day or $445.30 per year to produce your personal copy.
IncidentlyIncidentally, that $1.22 figure does not include any profit for the owner.
Now, let’s talk about expenses. In addition to the costs of the news services The Tribune buys to bring you national and international coverage, the paper has to pay for the comics you love and hate, the crossword puzzle that taxes your ability with six-letter words for hot sandwich (burger), that horoscope so you know if you are going to get hit by a bus on the way to work, the stock market listings so you know if you can retire before age 104, the advice columns to guide your love life, the expense reports from reporters who are sometimes more creative with those figures than their stories, the electric bills, the phone bills, the newsprint, the ink and the Internet connections.
There are more bills to pay, but I don’t want to depress upper management with this recitation.
And then there’s payroll. Most of the people working here insist on getting paid every two weeks some kind of pesky habit like making your bed every day. Between NAC and The Tribune, it takes about 800 people to put this paper out. That does not include the carriers who put it at your door.
Then the paper has to pay for the people at NAC who sell the ads, make up the ads, bill for the ads, take subscription orders, bill for the subscriptions, find the carriers who bring the papers to your door, print the papers and truck them around the state.
And, although it may seem to you there is less room for news, those ads actually mean there is more room for news. It is spread out over more pages. We just have to stuff the news in where the ads aren’t.
While we are here in the building stuffing it, please keep in mind your subscription to the newspaper would be several times what you pay now if it were not for the ads. Also remember there are some people who buy the newspaper specifically for the ads so they can make decisions on purchases. About half of our readers look at the ads first.
Now, pass the ketchup, I have hamburger in my bun.
