> The Philadelphia story: PRSA member Brian Tierney takes pride in running his hometown daily newspapers (Public Relations Society of America)
(Via Romenesko)
A must-read, here. Tierney touches on a couple of points that are easily overlooked in our understandably editorially focused discussions about the future of newspapers: marketing and customer service, for both advertisers and subscribers. This, for example, is just mind-boggling:

I noticed that you have been investing heavily in circulation and marketing. Why that focus over content, first?
Because we already had a terrific newspaper. If the answer is to turn this around, to add 500 journalists, I would do that. But when you have a $480 million company, and we were spending $300,000 on marketing, that was a pretty easy decision.

Three-hundred Gs on marketing? For real? Remarkable if accurate, just remarkable. Also, this:

A problem of the business has been that newspapers, up until 2001, 2002, could live kind of a fat and happy life. They were making so much money, and you had advertising sales people who could basically wait for the order. You sometimes had folks running them from a business side who weren’t the savviest people around, whereas now, we’ve got people who get it and are progressive.

Mmm-hmm. I must say, however, that I disagree with him on this point:

The thought of someone holding a device with a 4-inch by 3-inch screen and reading a long editorial in The New York Times — I don’t see that happening, to be honest with you.

I don’t see that happening, either, but not because the screen is too small, which was Tierney’s point. I just don’t see anyone reading long editorials, period, NYT or otherwise.