“We have only one option — totally integrating our print and digital operations,” Philadelphia Media CEO Greg Osberg, told fellow newspaper executives at an industry conference this spring, “and it can’t be gradual; it needs to be abrupt.”
Osberg was true to his word as he revealed details of three initiatives Monday. The announcements also served as a sort of first anniversary report on the news organization’s progress under his direction and ownership by a group of private equity investors.
In a brief phone interview, he told me of several more digital launches in the works.
But first these three initiatives are at the head of the line:
- Later this summer, the paper will launch a program to provide Android-based tablets to a few thousand people who buy subscriptions. Osberg believes this to be the first such offer from an American newspaper organization.
- As part of continuing efforts to jazz up the Daily News, the feisty second paper in town will switch in two weeks to a new format and add more outside contributors so as to be “a loud irreverent, fun tabloid.” Osberg cited as examples previous covers that “hit the mark,” including one on a baffling coaching change for the Eagles with a prominent “WTF” on the front page, and another on Osama’s death, “We Got the Bastard.” The idea, he said, “is to capture what’s on people’s minds. But they may not say it, so we say it for them.”
- Osberg spoke earlier this year about making room in the Inquirer’s building for a digital media incubator. Monday, he said that the Knight Foundation has made a $250,000 grant to an existing academic-foundation consortium which will pick entrepreneurs for the program and coach them. The company will provide rent-free space, equipment and an avenue for getting quick to market with the best ideas.
Not mentioned Monday was the company’s strategy for smart-phones, but Osberg agreed with my suggestion that the medium is distinct from tablets and requires different products — what he called, in an earlier interview, “commerce-related content.”
“Later this summer, we will introduce a mobile app for our Dealyo (deals) product — strictly a commerce-based app for local businesses,” he told me. Location-based and not limited to a single deal a day, this app will offer discounts to stores and restaurants near the user.
“There are 200,000 small businesses in the Philadelphia region,” Osberg said, “and we are not yet serving a very high portion of those.”
He added that Philadelphia Media plans to participate in iCircular, a business venture of the Associated Press, when it launches later this year. iCircular aims to serve a complementary group of national advertisers, who will be able to offer the mobile-phone equivalent of the specials in preprint inserts, picking their preferred locations among many participating newspaper organizations.
Also in the works is a redesign of the Philly.com site, and Osberg added, “I just received approval from the board to invest in a new publishing and advertising platform to support that.”
The company has not yet picked its beta vendor for the tablet offer but expects to do so within weeks. The target market, Osberg said, ”is going to be tech-savvy young professionals who have not bought yet — not the first adapters” who already own iPads.
Pricing and technology issues make it unlikely the offering will be expanded in future years to the iPad, Osberg said, but the company will simultaneously introduce a new Philadelphia Inquirer iPad app.
The tablets will come equipped with four apps — replica editions of the Inquirer and Daily News, Philly.com for breaking news and another new app heavy on interactive features. The initial offer will be capped at several thousand (the exact number to be determined), given the six-figure investment for hardware involved. But Osberg said that he expects the venture to turn profitable in the course of 2012.
When I asked for metrics on progress to date since the papers emerged from bankruptcy, Osberg said that the company now has 35,000 paid subscribers to its various digital products, six million unique visitors per month and several successful sports-related mobile apps. With a heavier emphasis on local news in the Inquirer, he said, “Sunday subs are up. We’re still challenged on newsstands, but we’re working on that.”
Those gains do not amount to an achieved turnaround, and Osberg has said that even speedy and varied innovation will take years to pay off — if it does. The company shares some competitive issues common to metros, but is unusual, if not unique, in still having two distinct print products under its banner.
After some doubts about whether the new regime was more talk than action, I’m now ready to count the Philadelphia Media properties among those worth watching, because the company is creating aggressive digital transformation rather than just thinking about it.
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