Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Eds in Butterfly Project meeting today in Louisville

And I'm told the meeting of top newspaper editors will continue through tomorrow at the Courier-Journal Building in Louisville, Ky. It's about the Butterfly Project rollout, and comes in advance of another round of subscription rate hikes this year, according to one of my readers.

14 comments:

  1. Any "generic" story that is well-written and tightly edited can be localized by someone with a high school education. A few quotes from Pam in Poughkeepsie or Lanie in Lafayette and you have your butterfly; opening and fanning it's beautiful wings for all to behold.

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    1. You assume "well-written and tightly edited". Hahahahahahaha.

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  2. I think we do that today, but it's an interesting idea. How would anyone know?

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  3. During the July 22 conference call with Wall Street analysts, CEO Gracia Martore said:

    "Now we continue to work on, and will begin to test, other opportunities to add value to our print and digital subscribers, which will further enhance future circulation revenue. And we're going to have more news on this front in the fall."

    During the Q&A portion, she talked about "a fairly exciting add to the consumer experience by blending some assets that Gannett is uniquely positioned to do. I can't say more about that, but that's something, as I alluded to in my remarks, that we're going to be looking at very, very carefully over the next few months and expect to have some news on probably in the late fall."

    "Blending some assets" may well refer to the Butterfly Project, where the community papers will be using more and more USA Today content.

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  4. BTW, small question but I'd like to get this right since we're going to be hearing a lot more about this:

    Is it called Butterfly Project, or Project Butterfly?

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  5. Are all the editors at this meeting or just a select few?

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    1. My guess is that this group is, once again, the "T-31" newspapers -- those 31 with the highest annual revenue.

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    2. My site isn't in the T-31 group, I'd like to know what we're in for eventually. Anyone out there able to share more?

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    3. Smaller newshole, more USAT copy, less control over what runs on your features pages -- through shared content. For example your features front might have the same main display story as a lot of other papers. My suggestion is to find ways to increase your local content.

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  6. The name is so unfortunate. The Project is established to keep people from "cutting?" You can't make this stuff up.

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Butterfly%20Project

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  7. In addition to the USA Today-supplied page that is already used, the "nation/world" stories used on other pages in last Sunday's Post-Crescent was primarily USA Today stuff.

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    1. Yes, and Oshkosh thought the autism story on the USA Today page was so good they ran it again on the front page today!

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  8. It'll be fascinating to see the reaction of legacy subscribers when they get hit with another big price increase this fall -- including at The Des Moines Register.

    I reference Des Moines also because of a memorable exchange then-Publisher Laura Hollingsworth had with readers a year ago when she was trying to justify rate hikes as high as 40%.

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