• Brass Tacks Design, Wednesday, February 8, 2006 11 AM

Alan Jacobson, of the Brass Tacks Design firm, recently sat down for a lengthy on-the-record Q&A with Mary Nesbitt of The Readership Institute to discuss the many problems confronting the newspaper business. They talked about readership scores, the need for editorial changes, and systemic troubles that have yet to be satisfactorily addressed. A lively, interesting exchange. Highlights (quoting Nesbitt): "We find that often changes [at newspapers] are focused on editorial content -- and not on circulation, or marketing, or ad content as well... it has to be a whole-paper effort, and the changes need to be big.... We think... that readership is the primary (though not the only) metric [that should matter to advertisers]; we have never used circulation as an outcome in our research. You need to first get people engaged with the newspaper... before you have any hope of getting them to plunk down any money.... While everyone would like to believe in a silver bullet [to save newspapers], no one we've met thinks we've got it."

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