I left the AJC last year, on (presumably) good terms. It was the best job I’ve ever had, and may be the best I’ll ever have. We’ll see.
To better understand the problem facing the AJC, here’s a few points from the paper’s advertising rate card:
Mon – Wed advertising costs a base of $566 per column inch, Thurs – Sat costs $585, and Sunday costs $755. A quarter-page ad is about 31 column inches, assuming I’m reading the rate card correctly. The prices slide down with volume advertising. Retail advertisers pay about half that cost.
Count the number of ads in the paper, next time you pick one up. Last time I looked, there were only about 12 in the whole paper, but that may have been an anomaly. As I understand it, print advertising wasn’t offsetting the price of paper and ink, delivery and production — that the paper wasn’t covering its variable costs of production, even without accounting for newsroom staffing costs. I could be wrong. Commodity prices have fallen. I’d love to be corrected.
Now, for online advertising, I believe the AJC charges something like $12 per 1000 impressions. The AJC’s digital rate card seems to be hidden right now, so I can’t be sure. Larger ads cost more. The front page of AJC.com runs three to five ads, and a typical news story carries two ads. An average AJC.com user sees 3.15 pages per visit, according to Alexa.com, and the site has an average of 1.8 million visitors a month, according to Quantcast.com.
That’s about 60,000 page views a day, of about eight ads, at an average of, say, $15 per 1000 ad impressions. 60 x 8 x $15 = $7,200 a day, or $2.63 million a year. The AP probably charges the paper something like $200,000 a year for content. If a staffer costs the paper an average of, say, $60,000 in salary, benefits and whatever, then the online advertising can support about 40 journalists, editors, layout folks, ad people and random administrative types. I imagine the price of server space and digital distribution costs to be nominal, although you need an IT person or four in there.
From what we’ve heard, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is running a staff of about 40 – 20 newsroom folks and 20 ad folks. The P-I has about 1.8 million unique visitors a month, according to Nielsen Online, so that jibes with my assumptions.
Good luck keeping a news staff of 350, if the print paper is losing money. An all-digital paper with the AJC’s hit count could support a news staff of 35, maybe, and turn a profit. I hope that’s enough.
Here’s an odd thought, perhaps a Weird Idea. There’s no way — none — that you can cull a third of the AJC’s staff and not chuck a whole lot of real talent, no matter what you think about the paper.
Suppose a group of, say, 10 of the most talented to leave got together and formed their own Atlanta news site. No brand equity, certainly, but no legacy costs, either. Find a good ad person-marketing type to get the public’s attention, assuming they don’t manage it themselves with the right reporting. I wonder how long they would take to pick up a hit count greater than, say, 40 percent of the AJC’s? I figure they wouldn’t be able to command the same ad rates of the AJC, but $5-$8 per thousand impressions isn’t unrealistic. At that point, if they stay lean, they might actually become more profitable than the AJC.
The question, my friends, is whether a small group of writers can be compelling enough to attract wide attention in Atlanta. If most people are reading the paper for a narrow enough set of interests — to get mad at a columnist, to get Braves and Falcons news, and occasionally read about something funny or lurid — then it’s possible to get that attention.
I left the AJC last year, on (presumably) good terms. It was the best job I’ve ever had, and may be the best I’ll ever have. We’ll see.
To better understand the problem facing the AJC, here’s a few points from the paper’s advertising rate card:
Mon – Wed advertising costs a base of $566 per column inch, Thurs – Sat costs $585, and Sunday costs $755. A quarter-page ad is about 31 column inches, assuming I’m reading the rate card correctly. The prices slide down with volume advertising. Retail advertisers pay about half that cost.
Count the number of ads in the paper, next time you pick one up. Last time I looked, there were only about 12 in the whole paper, but that may have been an anomaly. As I understand it, print advertising wasn’t offsetting the price of paper and ink, delivery and production — that the paper wasn’t covering its variable costs of production, even without accounting for newsroom staffing costs. I could be wrong. Commodity prices have fallen. I’d love to be corrected.
Now, for online advertising, I believe the AJC charges something like $12 per 1000 impressions. The AJC’s digital rate card seems to be hidden right now, so I can’t be sure. Larger ads cost more. The front page of AJC.com runs three to five ads, and a typical news story carries two ads. An average AJC.com user sees 3.15 pages per visit, according to Alexa.com, and the site has an average of 1.8 million visitors a month, according to Quantcast.com.
That’s about 60,000 page views a day, of about eight ads, at an average of, say, $15 per 1000 ad impressions. 60 x 8 x $15 = $7,200 a day, or $2.63 million a year. The AP probably charges the paper something like $200,000 a year for content. If a staffer costs the paper an average of, say, $60,000 in salary, benefits and whatever, then the online advertising can support about 40 journalists, editors, layout folks, ad people and random administrative types. I imagine the price of server space and digital distribution costs to be nominal, although you need an IT person or four in there.
From what we’ve heard, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is running a staff of about 40 – 20 newsroom folks and 20 ad folks. The P-I has about 1.8 million unique visitors a month, according to Nielsen Online, so that jibes with my assumptions.
Good luck keeping a news staff of 350, if the print paper is losing money. An all-digital paper with the AJC’s hit count could support a news staff of 35, maybe, and turn a profit. I hope that’s enough.
Here’s an odd thought, perhaps a Weird Idea. There’s no way — none — that you can cull a third of the AJC’s staff and not chuck a whole lot of real talent, no matter what you think about the paper.
Suppose a group of, say, 10 of the most talented to leave got together and formed their own Atlanta news site. No brand equity, certainly, but no legacy costs, either. Find a good ad person-marketing type to get the public’s attention, assuming they don’t manage it themselves with the right reporting. I wonder how long they would take to pick up a hit count greater than, say, 40 percent of the AJC’s? I figure they wouldn’t be able to command the same ad rates of the AJC, but $5-$8 per thousand impressions isn’t unrealistic. At that point, if they stay lean, they might actually become more profitable than the AJC.
The question, my friends, is whether a small group of writers can be compelling enough to attract wide attention in Atlanta. If most people are reading the paper for a narrow enough set of interests — to get mad at a columnist, to get Braves and Falcons news, and occasionally read about something funny or lurid — then it’s possible to get that attention.
Keeping it is another thing …