If Lee Abrams At Tribune Was Really Doing His Job He’d Be Nursing A Really Sore Foot Right About Now

Philip M. Stone Novermber 18, 2008

If Tribune’s Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams was really doing his job he’d be nursing a really sore foot right about now. Why sore? For all the ass-kicking he should have been doing in Tribune Tower last week.

Last week the Chicago Tribune produced a really beautiful special section celebrating Barack Obama’s political career. It was a collection of eight Tribune front pages – near full size – heralding Obama’s Illinois political career for the past four years, culminating with the November 5 front page full-page picture of Obama with the headline “Obama Our Next President”. It looked great. No advertising except for the back page promoting various Tribune Obama special deals (like buying the full Nov.5 edition for $10 – ten times the cover price, but it does include postage and handling!)

Now we all know that Tribune, and the Sun Times, each had to print some 200,000 additional copies November 5 to feed the thirst for newspapers that day. So if Chacagoland knew that the Tribune was coming out with its front pages special section last week no doubt a whole lot more copies might have been sold. But as far as we could see – and we have the Tuesday newspaper in which the insert appeared – there was no promotion whatsoever to tell people what they were missing.

Now surely to a radio guy like Abrams that has to be a capital crime!

ftm quizzed a senior Tribune executive who admitted there had been no advertising on Chicago television stations the night before and there is absolutely nothing on the Tribune’s front page that day for any self promotion for that special section.

Now surely somebody at Tribune has to be into self-promotion?  Surely one reason Tribune ran the section is because of the November 5 sell-out. Obviously people wanted a souvenir and what better souvenir could they ask for than this special Tribune section. This writer has it, and will bequeath it down the generation line!

So where, oh where, was the self promotion for this? It brings out so starkly the point this writer made November 6 in discussing the newspaper sellout around the world because of people wanting printed souvenirs of Obama’s victory. “So, people really do remember there are newspapers out there; and they truly appreciate their newspaper when there is a really great story. Surely there’s a message there for publishers that if they put out a quality editorial product that its populace is really interested in, then print newspapers do just fine. Sure, the election of an African-American as President of the United States was historic and exceptional, but it goes to show people have not forgotten newspapers, and newspapers need to keep coming out with editorial products that people want to read, even keep. “

And to that we should add that newspapers have to keep reminding potential readers what they are missing. They knew what would be in the November 5 newspaper. How were they to know of that special section last week?

It’s that lack of self-promotion that is so irritating with American newspapers today. They don’t seem to have the message that the public needs constant reminding on why they should be buying a newspaper that day. Of course, if Sam Zell and Lee Abrams are just happy making their home subscribers happy with that special section and they didn’t want to use it as a way of enticing more newsstand sales, getting more people to read the newspaper and perhaps make the decision they, too, should subscribe, then so be it, but real doubtful that is really the case.

And that’s why Abrams, instead of writing long rambling memos that people don’t read any more, should be going through the building kicking ass to get across the self-promotion message. What a waste.

The incident naturally raises the question of what kind of support American newspapers give to promotion and the answer is really “very little, if at all.” FTM had an interesting exchange with the general manager of a major US metropolitan newspaper who shall go unnamed to protect the guilty, and he described the way it is:

“The only reason a manager puts promotion into the budget in the first place is so that when the publisher goes through the first budget exercise and says he wants x millions taken out, then the first to go out is promotion and hopefully most other costs can be saved.”

So ftm countered and said that then during the good times when financials weren’t so difficult then promotion has a good chance of getting through? “Of course not,” the GM responded. “If times are good, then you don’t need promotion!”

It’s a mindset that obviously has to change. Newspapers need to remember they are no longer the only game out there – in the traditional field and also digital. Since print provides such a large percentage of revenues today then surely isn’t it in print’s best interests to be continually reminding people why they should be buying the print product?

At the top of the Tribune front page last Tuesday there was a three deck headline, a picture and the first paragraph of a story to be found on page 15. Why not “Obama Front Page Special Section Today – a Lasting Souvenir”? It certainly would have sold more newspapers.

Mr. Abrams needs to get that message across not just in Chicago but in all Tribune newspapers. If he’s really doing his job right then by Christmas his foot should really be swollen!