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Bulletin photo by Jordan Griffin
NENPA Fall Conference
Newspapers
now need to
be all-information portals
By Kristen
Lee
Bulletin Staff
Steve Yelvington
thinks that the key to newspaper companies growing their audience is
to abandon their narrow view of what a newspaper company’s product
line is and instead to become the answer to all the information needs
that people might have.
“News simply
isn’t enough,” Yelvington said.
Yelvington is soon
to become audience vice president of Morris Publishing Group, based
in Augusta, Ga., and publisher of 12 daily newspapers and 30 nondailies
in the South, Midwest and Alaska.
Yelvington presented
his audience-building strategy called “Audience First” at
the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s 2012 Fall Conference
Oct. 11 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Natick, Mass.
Yelvington noted
that companies such as Google, Amazon, and Wal-Mart have functions that
newspaper companies should also have. Google, for example, offers many
different services, such as Google News, Google Maps, Google Local,
Gmail and more. Google packages its services so that viewers have access
to all of them and can get them in one place. In a fast-paced world,
it is efficient and convenient for people to be able to visit one site
to get the information they need.
“We should
be doing this. We should be solving these problems,” Yelvington
said. “Google is in every part of the chain.”
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