Media Watch

Times biting the hand that feeds us

Local editorial cartoon is bad for Cape Cod #1 business
It demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the daily's editors

On right is the editorial cartoon at the top of the Cape Cod Times editorial page Saturday April 30, 2011.

It would be a harmful and anti-business thing to publish even if the the point of the drawing were accurate, but it is not.

The editorial page editor has been around Cape Cod for several decades, and unless he's never read anything about tourism in that time, knows as we do what happens to the Cape's tourism when gas prices escalate.

He knows, or certainly should know, that every time there is a hike in gas prices, is HELPS rather than hurts the domestic tourism business.

As recently as this week we reported, once again, that Americans were not curtailing vacations, but were choosing US destinations over ones they had to fly to, and were choosing ones closer to their homes, and Cape Cod is within a tankful of gas from one-third the US population:

Gas prices aren't affecting tourism to Cape Cod
Provincetown among country's favorite

Travel Daily News reports that despite high gas prices, a new survey from HomeAway, Inc. finds the majority of Americans still plan to take a summer vacation, but will adjust their plans in light of rising costs by choosing destinations nearer their homes. Luckily Cape Cod is within a day's drive for one-third of America's population.

According to the survey, 81 percent of respondents report they will take a vacation this summer regardless of the price of gasoline. Of those who typically take a summer vacation each year, 38 percent will not change their vacation plans, saying increased gasoline prices will not affect their travel.

Hawaii was picked as the top "dream" summer vacation spot, but Provincetown is the most popular vacation destination this summer on HomeAway.com. The rest of the top 10 most popular summer destinations are beach areas, with the exception of Las Vegas and New York City.

Read the Travel Daily News  story here.

Cape businesses should ask The Times "why"

Whoever chose this specific Indianapolis Star cartoon was picking it out from dozens available for The Times editorial page and the very start of the tourist season here.

Did that editor think it was funny? Funny for the majority of Cape Cod businesses which depend on our brief summer tourism season for almost all their income each year?

There is not a business here which isn't helped by tourism. Even those not in the hospitality industry directly get much of their business from those which are. One survey claims over 60 percent of all the money earned by everyone on Cape Cod each year comes from our summer visitors.

We hope Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce head Wendy Norcross calls The Times out on this hurtful gesture, as well as the heads of  all the local town chambers of commerce.

You can contact The Times' editorial page editor Williams Mills at (508) 862-1251, or email him at wmills@capecodonline.com.
You may also write CapeCodTODAY an letter at editor@ecape.com.

Yes, Virginia, there was a newspaper...

Reminding most readers who have never seen one what a newspaper was

By Walter Brooks, guerrilla marketer

Older readers are familiar with that old chestnut of a story which newspapers reprint every year around Christmas, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

Editor Church answer, "Virginia, our little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age," wouldn't have sat well with today's tech-savvy kids. Maybe it's the mustache.

Today, however, it is more necessary to remind the vast majority of readers under the age of forty what a newspaper was when there were ones worthy of the name still being published.

Editor Francis Pharcellus Church's response in long-gone New York Sun when eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote to ask if there really was a Santa Claus, compared that belief to the love and generosity and devotion which exist in the human heart.

Today's more skeptical and tech savvy eight-year old readers would be more amused at Editor Church than at young Virginia O'Hanlon, because your grandchildren are years ahead of Virgina at that age, and probably teach you how to use the web, iPhone, and most other gadgets you buy.

And no of the eight-year old today ever read a daily newspaper. Not just kids, less than 19 percent of Americans under age forty read a daily newspaper any longer either.

How to own the heart, minds and wallets of twenty-somethings

When my then thirty-something daughter-in-law Julie Brooks and I launched CapeCodTODAY.com fifteen years ago, we asked every young person between 15 and 20 whom we ran into, "what would have to be on a website for you to want to check it out every day?'

Their collective answers became the nucleus of the first editions of CapeCodTODAY.

The we sat back and waited ten years until those young cyber-savvy children were twenty-five and the kind of 'active consumer' every advertiser wants.

Our format has evolved enormously in fifteen years, but the target remains active consumers who turn out to never read newspapers.

They get their information from non-traditional media like The Daily Show and newssites like ours.

Today the median age of our readers is over fifty, but we still cater to the 'flash mob' mentality because readers really decide which of us succeeds or fails.

Are they reading your newspaper today?

If you are a newspaper publisher or work for one, I guarantee you there is a Walter Brooks and his daughter-in-law Julie in your town who thinks they can own the future instead of you.

You can wait until that happens, and share your present market with some upstarts like us, or allow us to help you compete with yourselves with a CommunityDailyNews.com edition of your own.

In the mean time, read the obituaries in your local newspaper. It will list that newspaper's ex-subscribers who are not being replaced by today's younger readers.

As Claire Booth Luce said, "The money is always out there - only the pockets change."

Canadians say they won?t pay

A new survey predicts only 4 percent will pay for news
Online news is the only area showing growth

The Globe & Mail , the Canadian equivalent of the New York Times and/or Wall Street Journal, reports that a new survey by the Canadian Media Research Consortium predicts that only 4 percent of our neighbors to the north will pay for online news. The survey also suggests that another 15 per cent of the 1,682 Canadian adults polled for the study said they were unsure if they’d pay for their favorite news site.

Perhaps more importantly, an overwhelming 81 per cent said they definitely wouldn’t.

But only online news showing readership growth

The same newspaper, however, reports in another story that online news consumption only area of industry growth. The Globe & Mail quotes an AP report showing that Local, network and cable television news, newspapers, radio and magazines all lost audience last year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research organization that evaluates and studies the performance of the press. News consumption online increased 17 per cent last year from the year before, the project said in its eighth annual State of the News Media survey.

Read how to start your own virtual newspaper here.

The survey states;
The internet survey showed that Canadians are overwhelmingly opposed to fees for content. Ninety-two per cent of those who get news online said they would find another free site if their favorite news sites started charging for content.
Somewhat surprisingly, there is little or no difference among age groups, educations levels or urban and rural populations on this question. At present, approximately 85 per cent of internet users in Canada get news online at least once a month.

Read the Globe & Mail survey story here.
Read the Canadian Media Research Consortium here.
Read the Globe & Mail story on online news gains here.