• by Dana Blankenhorn , April 30, 2003

Bakersfield Californian publisher Ginger Moorhouse was named "Publisher of the Year" by Editor & Publisher last week, mainly for editorial achievements. But media buyers should applaud the choice as well.

The paper has been a major innovator in creating new products and services designed to help advertisers sell product, said vice president-advertising John Wells, who has been with the paper 15 years. "We try things. Our turnaround is pretty quick."

The paper organizes its ad staff into "teams" so someone who knows the account always handles calls from advertisers. The paper got into direct mail to help advertisers reach prospects. A bi-lingual weekly is being produced for the local Hispanic market.

Most of these moves aren't innovations, Wells admitted. Papers like the Arizona Republic and Sacramento Bee pioneered the use of sales teams. But Moorhouse spent over $300,000 bringing the concept to Bakersfield, even hiring the consultant who had helped the Bee, said Wells.

"Our customer service errors have gone down dramatically. Customers know who to call, and get someone on a team who can work with them," he said. Wells has a veteran sales staff, but many are from outside the industry. Some reps he said, came from the department store business, others were in the beer industry. Yet these salesmen are quite welcome in the paper's newsroom. "A lot of our sales reps are natives of the area, but many of our editorial people are from outside. We can give those reporters leads," he said.

The latest innovation, which debuted last week, is a Hispanic weekly, launched after three years of research and focus groups. It will be mailed to a list of 25,000 households, and ads for the first three weeks are already sold out. "Our goal," he said, "is for the grandfather to read it with the grandson or granddaughter, so both can share the news. We're real excited. The question is whether the advertiser gets the result."