Local pagination better serves readers

by Tom Byrd
Florida VP Operations

As our company moves toward increased emphasis on local responsiveness, we are looking throughout our systems and structures for opportunities to become more nimble and to better serve our readers and advertisers. Community newspapers are our core product, and we want to make them as locally relevant and useful as possible. One way to do that is enable the local editorial staff to have as much control as possible over the placement and assembly of their news content. The move toward “decentralized” pagination will give local editors more control and ownership of their finished product, and our readers and advertisers stand to be the biggest beneficiaries. To that end, the INI Florida team made some major strides forward with the recent conversion to local pagination using the company’s new editorial software platform.

Darin Powell, INI Editorial System Manager, recently spent several weeks in Florida helping with the training. Below, Darin provides a recap of what was accomplished. Using what he learned in his previous installations in Arizona and Delaware, Darin did a masterful job in shepherding this change. I’d like to thank Darin and the entire Florida team for the hard work and efforts that went into this project. It’s never easy to make a significant change in the midst of the ongoing demands of regular tasks, but the conversion was tackled with gusto by everyone involved. What’s particularly exciting is the upside potential and capability we possess, now that the initial conversion accomplished. Congratulations to all, and thanks again to Darin for making that tough trip to Florida in the winter J !



Darin Powell, INI Editorial System Manager, recently spent several weeks in Florida assisting with the move to decentralized pagination. Here he works with Teresa Mataushek learning the Adobe InDesign program.

Hard work pays off for Florida pagination

By Darin Powell
Editorial system manager

INI’s Florida offices began pagination training the last week of February, taking over responsibility for building their pages and sending them to the press.

Staffers in Okeechobee, Clewiston and LaBelle participated in training sessions for Adobe’s InDesign and InCopy software packages and began learning page-design techniques. The Florida team also took over responsibility for posting online obituaries and uploading the each newspaper’s electronic edition.

Each office worked hard to balance new tasks (and training sessions) with existing duties and deadlines and managed to get their publications out on time. The hard work paid off when the Okeechobee News went live with local pagination for the Feb. 29 edition, followed by the Clewiston News, Glades County Democrat and West Palm Beach Sun for the March 13 editions and the Caloosa Belle and Immokalee Bulletin for the March 20 editions.

All Florida editorial staffers participated in InCopy training. Pagination duties were taken on by Katrina Elsken, Dee Hamilton, Tonya Harden, Teresa Mataushek and Diane Timmons in the Okeechobee office, Jose Zaragoza in the Clewiston office and Patty Brant and Dale Conyers in the LaBelle office.

Outside Directors Join INI Board

After several months of planning, the Members of our non-profit holding company have elected a three-member board of directors that includes the CEO and two new independent outside directors. We have previously had a board made up completely of corporate officers.

The newly elected directors are:

RICHARD BRICKER, a lawyer by training, has been an independent business consultant and real estate investor/syndicator since the early 1990's. His prior experience included managing the Southwest operations of a national investment bank’s real estate mezzanine finance group; presidency of a multi-office real estate development, management and investment company; and the chairmanship of a small publicly-owned Canadian financial institution.

PETE EYERLY, a former Member of INI’s non-profit holding company, is chairman of Press-Enterprise, Inc., a family-owned company that owns daily and business journals in Pennsylvania, has developed a significant web offset commercial printing business and has an advertising agency in Bloomsburg, PA. Pete was one of the founders and is a past president of the national PAGE purchasing cooperative for newspapers. He has served on several other corporate and association boards.

JOE SMYTH is chairman and CEO of Independent Newspapers and the holding company. Growing up in a newspaper family, he has done just about everything to be done at a newspaper. He acquired ownership of the Delaware State News in 1969, changed the corporate name to Independent Newspapers, Inc., and expanded it to today's four-state operation. In 1991, Joe transferred ownership to a non-profit holding company, to ensure its continued independence. He was co-founder and first president of PAGE, the national purchasing cooperative for newspapers, and is the author of Newsroom Guidelines for Independent Newspapers.

“The other corporate officers who previously made up our board of directors will no longer be tugged between their primary roles and the very different responsibilities that fall on directors,” Joe explained. “I’m also looking forward to the fresh perspectives and new disciplines that Richard and Pete will bring to our corporate governance --- especially with Richard’s strong financial background and Pete’s knowledge of commercial printing and community newspapers.”

The new directors will focus on the company’s strategic vision, financial goal-setting and performance, governance, management depth, compensation and performance.

INI is a normal for-profit company that is 100% owned by a non-profit holding company. No dividends are paid, so 100% of the company’s after-tax profits can be reinvested in the company’s journalistic mission.

The Members of the non-profit holding company --- currently Jim Binns, Bill Bishop, Mary Lou Fulton, Jerry Oliver and Tom Shaw (with one new Member being elected each year) --- pledge not to benefit financially from their involvement. The Members do not manage the company. They elect the board of directors and appoint the CEO; the directors in turn elect the other corporate officers.

CONCUR …. Who Are They and What Do They Do

We ARE Expense Manager. Concur is the world's leading provider of automated on-demand Employee Spend management business services. Thousands of companies – from organizations with less than 100 employees to 7 of the world's 10 largest companies all trust Concur to help them automate their business processes. The reason? Concur's corporate expense management solutions fit any company’s needs.

In October, 2007, Concur acquired Gelco, and as a result, continues to build the scale and breadth of services that enable the company to continue providing world-class services that help drive down costs in processing employee reimbursements. Concur is the leading provider of on-demand services that make many of the tedious tasks like expense reporting much quicker and easier for every employee. Concur has been helping companies of all sizes manage the expense reporting process since 1993. The company is trusted by over 6,000 clients, with millions of employees now using Concur services around the globe!

Expense Manager, now known as Concur Expense, enables employees to submit their expense reports online from anywhere with just a few clicks. The Concur system is web-based, so you simply point your browser to the login page and you're ready to submit your expenses. Once you're logged on, it's easy to create an expense report and automatically have the Concur system add the appropriate corporate g/l codes along with the charges.

Since it is all online and electronic, the data within each expense report can be reviewed by the employee, managers, accounting and payroll, ensuring that all expenses are in line with company policy. With just a click, the report is routed for appropriate approvals, and the employee is reimbursed either through their direct deposit.

We are proud to say that Concur was listed in CNN Money magazine as one of the 100 fastest-growing tech companies. Concur landed at the No. 28 spot, moving up ten positions from the previous year.

We’re ready to thrive with great systems & LOCAL focus

The newspaper industry is reeling right now, especially with the slowdown in advertising from the auto and real estate segments of the economy. We aren’t immune from this, especially since we have generally operated with modest profit margins that don’t leave us much of a “cushion” in downturns.

Our future is particularly bright, however, because of the strategic investments we have made to position us to thrive in the 21st Century. These investments include the new presses for our commercial printing operations in Arizona and Delaware, the recent redesign of newszap.com, installation of a new company-wide telephone system, development of a new company-wide pagination system, completion of our conversion to Media Plus, and the launching of i-Services and e-Subscriptions for circulation. (If interested, you can see a demo of our e-Editions by clicking on this link.)

With the implementation expenses mostly behind us now, we will enjoy the efficiencies of these projects and the opportunities to develop new revenues for years into the future. More enhancements are on the way in all areas, but we shouldn’t have to make many other significant capital investments in the next several years. This will be an era in which we make full use of the efficiencies and capabilities of our investments, and start paying down debt.

Even while doing an aggressive job with expense control, we have managed to put more “feet on the street” in each of our key local markets --- and we’re focusing more attention on growing our sales by the time-proven method of being more responsive and serving our customers better. While the recession is hurting us (and everybody else) right now, we’ll get through it; and when the economy improves, we will be in GREAT shape.

As noted in the Company News section of Press Lines, we have also strengthened our corporate governance by electing two new outside members to our board of directors. This three-member board will keep us nimble and provide a fresh perspective now, and allow us to gradually increase the size of the board later.

We are also changing our top management structure to become more responsive in each of our local markets. We are, after all, a LOCAL company that provides LOCAL services to LOCAL customers. Our company-wide systems are expressly designed to allow us to take a more LOCAL approach to everything we do --- including more LOCAL decision-making.

To help us develop more intimate relationships with our local customers and communities, several key “corporate” executives have narrowed their focus to specific LOCAL markets.

President Ed Dulin and Director of Advertising Development Chris Engel, for example, are now devoting 99% of their time to our Delmarva operations. Tammy Brittingham has moved to a new position as publisher of our Sussex County weeklies --- back to her roots in community journalism and in Sussex County; and Cat Porterfield and Richard Crumbacker have stepped up as the general managers in our Milford and Crisfield offices.

Bret McKeand, Charlene Patti Bisson and Emily Soccorsy are leading our three Arizona newspaper offices with more of a local team approach, with Mike Mall sparking our drive to build advertising sales for the entire group.

Tom Byrd is stepping up as our “chief operating officer” in Florida and is drawing out more local involvement in the decisions being made in each of our three offices there.

And of course Steve Steinke and Tom Bugbee continue to build terrific commercial printing teams in Arizona and Delaware, while Darel La Prade and John Wolfe continue in their vital roles as VP/corporate operations and Director of News Development.

Those of us in leadership positions are humbled and inspired by the dedicated and caring staff members in every local office. They are the real keys to INI’s success.

I welcome any feedback you might have --- ideas, concerns, questions, suggestions or whatever. You can email me directly at joesmyth@newszap.com, and I will respond personally.

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