Joan C. Barnwell

Joan C. Barnwell

Name: Joan C. Barnwell

Newspaper: Delaware State News

Position: Customer Service Specialist

Number of Years in the newspaper or printing business: I have worked for Delaware State News paper for 10 years. I was employed in the telemarketing department for 8 and ½ years and in customer service for 1 and ½ years.

Job description: Answer and direct all incoming telephone calls to appropriate departments and personnel; greet customers who come to the office to conduct business with INI; accept and log all cash, checks, money orders and credit cards for subscription and advertisement accounts; restart subscription accounts; assist advertisement departments with ads; work on assigned projects; assist with weekly bulletin and supplies and help out where ever I’m needed.

What I like best about my job: I enjoy helping customers learn how to navigate our web site to research information and just helping people in general.

Most memorable moment with INI: Moving to our new Dover campus on April 24, 2006.

Hobbies/Interest: I am an avid romance novel reader and lover of all music, but jazz and gospel are my favorite. I enjoy singing and sing in two choirs at my church. I also sing in two community choirs when time permits. I have two children; one lives in Georgia and the other in Florida. I love visiting with them and spending quality time with my one and only grandson.

Fun fact about me: I collect magnets from each city and state I visit for the first time. I am a lover of stuffed bears especially white ones and have them displayed in two of my bedrooms and family room. I love watching reruns of old television shows such as Little House on the Prairie, Bonanza, and movies on Lifetime.

Strategies for Independent’s future

Like most publishing companies, we are struggling to maintain healthy profit margins. For us, it has been a bit of a “double whammy” because the overall softening of advertising sales comes on top of the significant long-term investments we have been making in systems and equipment.

It is a comfort that we can thrive on lower profit margins than most companies. We are owned by a non-profit journalistic trust and don’t have to pay dividends to anybody, so 100% of our after-tax profits are reinvested in the company. But we still need profits in order to pay our debts and make investments in new products and equipment.

Together --- supported by our culture of shared leadership and individual accountability --- we will meet this challenge. However, it may require more creative and aggressive thinking than we have done previously. There’s no magic solution. It will require good planning, discipline and leadership from each and every one of us.

A key part of our strategy is to build revenues and profits in three separate areas: newspapers, commercial printing and websites.

a) Community newspapers still have excellent profit potential. It’s a tougher industry than it once was, and will require us to be good operators. We intend to be great operators!

b) By design, commercial printing is becoming a much more significant part of our business with solid double-digit growth rates. Delaware Printing Company is already producing encouraging results, and we see a similar opportunity to take our Arizona printing operation to the next level with a strategic investment in upgraded press equipment.

c) Our online products will eventually make a significant contribution, but they will take a bit longer to develop. However, our Public Forums at newszap.com had more than 10,000 new postings in August alone, and we have over 25,000 local photos and more than a million page views in the Post Your Photos feature. We think we’re on to something really good!

Here are 12 key profit improvement initiatives that we are aggressively pursuing, with the help of all of Independent’s people:

1. Sales accountability. We are committed to steadily increasing our advertising sales and productivity. Each individual member of our sales teams is being challenged to step up and accept personal responsibility for producing positive results.

2. Product closures. This wasn’t easy to face, but we closed five unprofitable Arizona weeklies in August and are eliminating two of our five offices there. We have also closed our unprofitable printing operation in Florida. Now we are focused on making sure that every one of Independent’s business units achieves minimum profit margins in the 5-10% range (which would still only be about half of the “industry standard”).

3. Operation Silver Lining. Good people don’t cost the company money; they help us make money and grow. However, there are times --- for any company --- when downsizing is necessary to match expenses with revenues and maintain profitability. Many companies engage in mass layoffs from which only top management is spared. We take a slower approach that we believe is kinder and fairer. “Operation Silver Lining” allows us to downsize gently via normal attrition (turnover) and by asking some individuals to accept transfers so that essential positions can be filled without hiring from outside the organization. Our people have always been willing to accept these challenges, and they are doing it again this time --- proving once again that our remarkably dedicated and flexible people are the most important key to this company’s success.

4. Delaware Printing Company. Profits will continue to improve at Delaware Printing Company as we continue to build our outside commercial printing sales to take advantage of the capacity, flexibility and efficiency of our new plant and press. We have already added $1.5 million annually in new outside commercial printing sales --- and more is on the way.

5. New press for Valley. We are planning to invest in a new press for our printing plant in Arizona. The new press will be more efficient (saving time and newsprint) and offer higher quality and additional color capacity. This will improve Valley’s profit margins and allow us to build our already successful commercial printing business in Arizona.

6. Free classifieds. We have plugged a profit leak by running free classifieds weekly instead of daily in Cambridge, Dover and Okeechobee, thereby cutting page counts and newsprint usage for our dailies. At the same time, we have protected and increased this important competitive advantage by raising the dollar limit (from $2,500 to $5,000) on items that can be advertised free. We now also offer free classified users the option of running the same ad in the popular Saturday (Cambridge) or Sunday (Dover and Okeechobee) issue for a flat $20, which should delight these advertisers, bring in new dollars and improve our profit margins.

7. Newszap.com advertising. Participation and page views are steadily increasing at our community websites. We expect even more momentum from an upcoming design that puts more emphasis on our highly popular Public Forums, and from new policies that promote “free ads & free speech” and “free speech with civility”. We are introducing new package rates for our newszap.com pages that will dramatically increase sales and profits. The new rates are based on page views and on prepaid annual commitments. The packages will be available online, and they will become an integral part of presentations by our advertising sales people to our clients and prospects.

8. ZapHomes.com. This innovative online real estate product was launched in June on Delmarva and is creating a lot of “buzz” in the market-place. ZapHomes.com already has over 500 listings that have been viewed over 20,000 times, and we expect it to emerge as another financial winner for our company.

9. Online classifieds. We have had a lot of success selling optional “top ad” positioning for online classified ads. We are now expanding this program to give advertisers another opportunity to “stand out”, and to bring in even more profitable “plus” sales. We’re also expanding our “turnkey” capacity to accept classified ad orders placed online by consumers.

10. Editorial system. We have proven that our new turnkey editorial production system works, thanks to the remarkable team of innovative INIers who developed it. We are now planning to decentralize pagination to our Arizona and Florida offices, which will allow us to phase out the company-wide pagination center in Dover. We will use “Operation Silver Lining” (#3 above) to make this transition a smooth one for our people.

11. e-Subscriptions. We are developing e-Editions for all of our print products, cost-justified by the savings we will achieve by eliminating the preparation and mailing of tear sheets. The e-Editions will also allow us to sell paid online subscriptions, which will be highly profitable because there will be no newsprint or delivery costs. We should also be able to use e-Subscriptions to build readership beyond our current distribution areas, to reduce vacation stops, and to promote readership more aggressively.

12. New online products. We have developed a whole new line of new targeted community guides (or Guides to Living) that not only appear in print, but also have complimentary versions online, and we have plans for several new targeted online products that could be launched in conjunction with or independently of complementary print products. These product launches will remain on hold until our overall company profits return to an acceptable level.

(Joe Smyth is the CEO of Independent. He can be reached by email at JoeSmyth@aol.com.)

News Services team member lends a hand with sports coverage.

By Michelle Tennis
News Services Editor/Northeast Valley

When speaking about fulfilling INI’s mission, News Services team member Daniel Quigley certainly works hard to fulfill that key value. And thanks to his hard work, it certainly shows in the North Scottsdale and Town of Paradise Valley Independent papers.

Each week, Dan is out in the field taking sports photos, networking and generating a buzz with our high school sports teams.

And that’s not all.

When he is not out in the field, he is in the office writing sports briefs, calling coaches and team members and bringing in profiles every week.

He works hand-in-hand with news editors and team members alike to make sure we have the most interesting sports news every week.
He makes certain other sports, that do not normally receive coverage, are not ignored. He recently contacted a rugby coach and asked if he would be interested in a profile.

Thanks to Dan, the future looks bright for our sports pages. Stay tuned to see what’s next.

The Journal

Katie Kazimir/Independent Newspapers

Logan Anderson, news services specialist, Jamie-Leigh Bissett, community news editor and Will Cox, sports writer, serve as The Journal’s editorial team – while pictured together here, they rarely see each other in the real world but connect in a virtual one to put out The Journal each week.

By Cathianne Werner-Porterfield

One-hundred-six years ago in downtown Harrington folks at the Harrington Journal worried that when they left the office on Gaines Alley each night after putting the paper to bed that lead liquid used for the paper’s lead type would sputter onto the wood floors of the newspaper’s office and set the place on fire.

And sometime around the turn of the previous century, that’s exactly what happened.

But the Harrington Journal arose from the ashes and this time the paper’s founder, Frank Fleming, rebuilt on Commerce Street and covered the paper’s wooden floors with tin to prevent another fire.

In those early days of the Harrington Journal, folks had a lot more to keep them stressed out than simple deadline pressure. In fact, they’d likely all shake their heads in disbelief to see how this paper has evolved over the decades and how a team of three dedicated journalists provide this community with the news they need, often without having to set foot in an office, let alone worrying about it burning down in their absence.

Much has happened since Independent Newspapers purchased The Harrington Journal from Chesapeake Publishing in 1996.

Community news editor Jamie Leigh-Bissett, who sits at the helm of this paper, now simply called The Journal, can work from home, the office or even on the fly. Thanks to technology, she’s a self-contained, reporting, editing and photo-taking machine.

“Not only am I responsible for making sure the front page is full of exhilarating news stories each week, but I also compile and edit the fire and police briefs, make sure the viewpoints are flowing, edit the photos for clarity, listen to and answer the needs of the community and any other task that will make The Journal the best it can be,” Mrs. Bissett said.

“The paper has made some tremendous progress in recent years and it only promises to get better. The first one that comes to mind is color pictures,” she said. “The addition of a new state-of-the-art printing press at Independent’s new headquarters in Dover has made it possible for readers to truly experience a picture worth a thousand words.”

And that’s just the paper version.

Readers can now benefit from free online subscriptions, she said.

Printing is not the only technology that has increased possibilities.

“In an effort to embrace the 21st century, a PDF version of The Journal can now be viewed online for free and is bringing local news not only to those living within the Lake Forest School District community, but those across the world.”

Subscribers to the e-edition range from local leaders, educators, parents and students to state officials and soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, she said.

“With the ability to reach such a wide range of folks, it has made my job easier by allowing contact with readers I may not have been able to reach in previous years.”

Moreover, she said, the Post Your News forums have enabled The Journal to keep its readers up-to-date on breaking news although the paper is printed just once a week.

All in all, technology has benefited the age-old tradition of newspaper journalism and INI has embraced the concept whole-heartedly.

When Mrs. Bissett, an Annapolis, Md. transplant and Mount St. Mary’s alum, isn’t sniffing out front-page stories and keeping in touch with her globe-trotting readers she’s spending time in Dover with her husband Steve and their boxer Kasha.

She enjoys yoga, playing softball for the Delaware State News Newshounds in a co-ed league, playing the drums and “watching the Washington Redskins tear up the NFL.”

Journal sports writer Will Cox could argue with Mrs. Bissett about that statement, being a staunch supporter of the San Francisco 49ers, but when it comes to local sports, there’s little if no argument that Will has it covered and well.

A relative rookie himself, Will graduated in 2006 from the University of Delaware with a degree in English-journalism and has carved out quite a niche for himself among the Spartan crowd.

“I began this position in February and I immediately tried building relationships in the community through the schools, Little League and Parks and Recreation program,” Mr. Cox said. “I wasn’t familiar with the community prior to working this job, but since then I’ve met a lot of great people in the area who have helped me out tremendously.

He said he knows The Journal is really the sole source of information and recognition for local athletes, so it’s important to cover all aspects from the school teams, to local cheerleading, to people in the area who have excelled in other places.

“This is my first opportunity in the business and covering an area like Harrington and working with The Journal for these eight months has made the experience very enjoyable.”

Nestled between Mrs. Bisset’s front page news and Mr. Cox’s sports page is a wealth of useful community news. That’s where News Services Specialist Logan Anderson comes into play.

After a brief hiatus from INI to pursue an interest in photography and custom framing in late 2006 Logan Anderson returned to the company in News Services.

“When News Services Editor Cat called in early January to see if I would come back and work for editorial I jumped at the chance,” Mr. Anderson said. “I missed INI and I really missed writing.”

Since returning, Logan has been stationed in the Sussex Post and Leader & State Register Office in Seaford, though he can be found in the Milford Office once a week.

“The virtual office concept gives me the freedom to work in any office. I am able to help out with a lot of other stuff too, like the Guides to Living and the other papers in our group. Since returning, I have been able to help out almost every paper we have on Delmarva from my desk in Seaford,” Mr. Anderson said.

While Advertising Manager Sharon Conaway keeps a desk at our Dover office -- good luck tying to find her there.

“I rely heavily on my laptop and cell phone to do my daily duties,” Mrs. Conway said.

Like Mr. Anderson, Mrs. Conaway also left for a while to pursue other interests but has returned.

“I started with INI in June 2003,” she said. “I was a member of a three- person Direct Sales Team. After about 6 months, I was promoted to Classifieds Team Leader. After about a year in that position, I was presented with an opportunity to return to my first love – teaching. I left INI in November 2004 to be Program Coordinator for a federally funded program called High School – High Tech (HSHT). Due to budget cuts and the war on terror, our funds were drastically cut. Thankfully, INI welcomed me back with open arms.”

Mrs. Conaway said she “beats the pavement to sell businesses who don’t advertise with us.”

“I do everything from going to a funeral home (my absolute biggest fear) and being mocked by a talking bird to helping with a grand opening,” she said. “When duty calls, I put my fears aside and answer.”

A Delaware native, Mrs. Conaway knows her territory of Southern Kent County. And more than just a sales territory, southern Delaware really is home to her and husband and their two daughters.

“Being in Milton and Lewes made me the beach bum that I am,” she said. “I love Broadkill, Lewes, Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany and Ocean City. We like to go fishing on the pier at Cape Henlopen State Park or at Broadkill. We also enjoy walking on the boardwalk, hanging out at the Rusty Rudder, or playing games and munching pizza at Grand Slam. I also enjoy bowling and playing Internet games.

Aside from being a great community news source, there is little Harrington Journal founder Frank Fleming would recognize about what the paper he began has become today.

Valley team exceeds challenge!

by Steve Steinke

Click here for related photo of Rob Giarraputo, Mike Jacobs, and Steve at Press Lines' "People in the News with Photos"!

I can't tell you how proud I am of our team at Valley for taking on the challenge of The College Times. As a direct result of the open schedule opportunities we have created over the last year, we finally were able to build a window big enough on Tuesday nights to make a job like this happen.

Without assigning specific actions to anyone in particular, we followed our established guidelines. We began working on every step from running test files, site visits for Marc Tropio and Phil Bisesi, credit and payment history and application through VaRonda Krusemark, and a number of team meetings to share what we were learning. With Mike Jacobs guiding our steps and those of our new client as well, we then worked through the logistics of making it happen.

This is a job that requires high quality files, quick turnaround and inserting of two or more sections, and even loading a specific way on our truck for unloading at their distribution point.

A couple of weeks ago we had our first cycle of activity with this client, and press coordinator Rob Giarraputo stepped up to his challenge by being there through each press run overnight.

Zenaida Matute and Maria Orozco were at the plant into the early AM hours to oversee preparation, inserting, and individual skid-building. That was followed by our driver, Dennis Gonzalez, who arrived promptly at 4 am to wrap and prepare the skids, and then at 5 am by Mike Jacobs for a final check of the sequential loading order of the skids on the truck before Dennis hit the road for a daybreak delivery.

The inspiring part of this team is that while I have encouraged this type of proactive and interactive approach, I never once had to ask anyone to alter their hours or schedule or time commitment to make these things happen. They all did it on their own.

Their own accountability, Valley's reputation as a leader in Arizona, and their own pride and ownership shined through.

This is the first printing of this complex job, but our customer's reaction to our attention, service, and quality was excellent.

Here was a comment we received from one of their key staffers.

Good morning, Marc!

The paper looks beautiful! The color looks great, and the black and white pages are particularly crisp. Thank you so much for all your help … you guys are
great!

Beth

This job represents (on the conservative side) about $320,000 in new annual commercial revenue. And while we had to price it competitively (we were in the running with four printers), we believe that this should be not only an account we can be proud of, but a profitable account for our company.

At a time when competition in this marketplace may see INI and Valley as somewhat tentative, College Times is a leveling factor that keeps the morale high.

As the David among Goliaths, I just wanted to express my pride in how hard our team members are trying to sustain respect here in the Arizona marketplace.

The next time you arrive in Phoenix through Sky Harbor International Airport, check out the newspaper vending machines they allow in their gate area corridors.

Right there among the "biggies" like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today you will find The College Times.

And, as stated by a famous journalist by the name of Paul Harvey. "Now you know the "rest of the story!"

Newszap.com in place to complement,not replace, Independent’s newspapers

By John S. Wolfe
Director of News Development

For about the last seven years, newspaper companies across the country have experimented with how to integrate the Internet in the dissemination of news, the evolution of advertising, and the perpetuation of a market position.

Many companies – large and small – took the approach of essentially putting all of their content online, for free. Not surprisingly, many customers – most with computers or access to one – realized they could get the news they wanted without having to fork over a subscription check every three or six months. (One government spokesman I know recently shared that he had done just that.)

The result has been annual double-digit erosion of many newspapers’ circulations, declines in advertising revenue, and laments about the entire industry’s future. No duh!

Independent, because of our size, decided years ago not to be on the “bleeding” edge of the Internet wave. It never made sense to us to suddenly give one’s products away without a realistic strategy for recouping advertising dollars.

While many companies stepped in line to join the lemmings approaching the cliff, we waited on the sidelines and observed.

Two years ago we made the conscious decision to not create “newspaper” websites for our products. Instead, we saw an opportunity that was a better fit to our company’s mission: to create “community” websites.

We would invite citizens to use the websites as local bulletin boards and offer every local organization and business a free link. We complemented that content with selected front-page stories from our newspapers.

Last year we expanded the offerings with the introduction of Post Your News forums, Post Your Public Event calendars, and Post Your Photos galleries.

The Post Your Opinion forums – giving citizens an online “voice,” crucial to our mission – struck a nerve. It’s been amazing to see vibrant discussions of public issues taking place every day in many of our communities.

The best and most timely news items, comments and photos could be “culled” for use in the newspaper.

Not surprisingly, the number of visits to the newszap websites has jumped in the last year. The number of monthly visitors to the newszap forums has doubled in the last 12 months. The number of registrants to the newszap forums has increased 33 percent in the last six months and the number of posts has consistently increased 5 percent each month.

The number of Post Your Photos users has doubled in the last six months and we now have more than 23,000 community photos online.

We have supplemented this content with selected items generated by the newspaper staffs. Some individuals have begun posting “issue” stories in the forums and daily blurbs in Post Your News to stoke interest in community issues. Comments posted by citizens may be used in the Sound Off and Speak Out columns or provide the staff member with ideas for follow-up stories.

A wide array of photo galleries from community festivals, athletic events and school activities have been created, multiplying the number of names and faces we can “publish” and, thus, touching more people.

Interestingly, many in the industry are coming around to this strategy. Numerous trade-magazine articles in the last six months have promoted ways for websites to engage citizen contributors – by soliciting their news items, their calendar events and their photos. Only a few, however, give more than lip service to the campaign; finding the reader-generated content on a newspaper website can be frustratingly difficult.

Our strategy is to continue to publish viable newspapers with unique, compelling content for a local audience, while offering something different and community-driven online. Each community website can be a hub for news, opinions, calendars, links, and photos.

In this way, the newszap.com websites can serve the community and augment the terrific content we publish in our newspapers. We can use the websites to share breaking news, solicit comments and insights from residents, and disseminate additional information, links and images.

Everyone can be a part of this effort to promote the newspapers and newszap.com!

Every office should have “Post Your …” newszap cards that can be shared with community contributors and contacts. Staff members who take photos can distribute “You’ve Been Zapped!” cards to the people they take photos of, to make them aware their photo will be online. We also have fliers that ask volunteers to participate in the Post Your Opinion forums.

We think the public issues forums are our most unique feature, providing a place for individuals to share their opinions anonymously on local issues. By promoting “Free Speech (with Civility),” we believe newszap.com has the potential to be one of the country’s leading opinion websites.

We will be continuously changing the websites, adding enhancements, improving the design and functionality and encouraging more citizen involvement.

If you have ideas about ways we can continue to make newszap.com stand out, please drop me a line at jwolfe@newszap.com. I’d love hear from you!