It’s a small thing, really, and not all that successful yet, either.
But carving out space for an ad each Monday on the op-ed page is another sign of ongoing change and reassessment as The Bee looks for new footholds amid shifting economic terrain.
The paper certainly has lots of company as it attempts to navigate a fragmented landscape that is shaking the foundation of newspapers and mainstream media companies everywhere in America.
Pushed by drops in advertising revenue and declines in circulation, The Bee is cutting costs on the print side while at the same time expanding its presence on the Web, where readers and advertisers are increasingly headed.
The overall situation takes on a schizophrenic quality at times, sometimes on the same day.
Last week, for example, the paper in a cost-cutting move announced it was dropping a long-running syndicated auto section feature called Auto Album that focused on short stories and illustrations of old cars and trucks. Nearly 80 readers called to complain.
The same day, the paper’s corporate parent The McClatchy Co. announced a potentially far-reaching agreement with Internet giant Yahoo Inc. to showcase foreign news covered by McClatchy reporters, thereby adding a new audience of several million readers and new revenue. The specifics about the deal’s dollars and cents, though, were kept secret.
This is where the decision to create advertising space on the op-ed page comes into play, viewed as a small part of the larger picture of changes described above.
David Holwerk, editor of the editorial pages, says he’s been an advocate of selling advertising on the page, as long as it’s public affairs advertising.
The thinking goes that the Sacramento market is ripe for such advertising as the seat of the state capital and the focus of legions of lobbyists and special-interest groups vying for favor and getting their message out to the public.
He says the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal sell similar advertising on their op-ed pages.
“It’s a natural for this paper in this market,” Holwerk says. Yet it wasn’t until the paper was approached by a buyer several weeks ago that The Bee made the change.
The paper designated the bottom quarter of the page, eliminating several letters to the editor.
The parameters are that the buyer has to be an advocacy group; Holwerk knows what the ad is about and reviews it prior to publication. The advertisement also must be approved by the paper’s head of advertising, Steve Bernard, and the publisher, Janis Heaphy.
Holwerk says he will be vigilant for potential pitfalls such as conflicts of interest with the newspaper.
So far, interest from buyers has been weak. Only one ad has been sold, to a group advocating better access to public higher education. All the others have been house ads to promote the paper’s new Capitol Alert, a paid Web site of California politics and state government.
“If there’s not any real interest in it,” says Holwerk, “there’s no point in maintaining the (advertising) space.”
The pressure on papers to generate revenue by selling advertising on pages that were previously off-limits continues industrywide. The Washington Post announced last week that it was selling advertising across the bottom of its Sports section.
The first ads were sold to Comcast SportsNet. Several other large papers are also selling ads on the covers of their daily news sections, including in some cases the front page.
Meanwhile, other recent changes at The Bee have generated various levels of reader feedback.
Several readers said they liked that the new 28-page tabloid-size Sunday TV guide is now a separate entity and not tucked inside Ticket+, making it easier to find amid the flood of inserts. They also liked the new color-coding designating different types of programming.
Overall, though, most readers are still angry that the paper eliminated the previous booklet-size weekly television guide.
One reader was disappointed by the decision to drop Cathleen Brown’s question-and-answer Parenting advice column that was published in Saturday’s Scene section.
Pam Dinsmore, the assistant managing editor for features, says the column was eliminated to make room for a new travel feature and not to reduce costs.
The paper added the Travel Troubleshooter column by Christopher Elliot, the ombudsman for National Geographic’s Traveler magazine.
To make room, something had to go, Dinsmore says. The paper chose the Parenting column after The Bee stopped running the column for a few weeks and received no reader complaints.
Also, says Dinsmore, there are several other columns focused on parenting and family issues that remain, including Teen Talk, the Sandwich Generation, Carolyn Hax and Dear Abby.
Finally, several readers responded to last week’s column about the anonymity provided to writers in the weekly “The Blog Watch” feature in Forum.
Most said that, while they appreciate the paper’s efforts at including Web-generated commentary, a greater public interest is served by identifying the bloggers by name.
“Speaking in broad general terms,” e-mailed reader Brad De Luchi of Fair Oaks, “I think bloggers seek a wider audience and want a bigger stake than those who write letters to the editor.
“After all, the local editorial section doesn’t have nearly the potential for readership as a blog. But here’s the bigger problem I have.
“I don’t think that a lot of bloggers want the accountability for their views. I think that a blogger who hides behind just a screen name and offers nothing else about themselves is something of a coward. I think it takes a certain amount of courage to state your opinion along with your name and your city.”
