Imitating the Weekly

By Chris Roush

March 12, 2008

Daily newspapers are cutting their business sections as they cope with circulation losses. Weekly business newspapers – in the same markets of the dailies – are adding staff members as their circulation continues to rise.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The answer is simple, and it’s one that daily newspapers have ignored for too long. But the fact is that weekly business newspapers do a better job of providing readers with the news and information they want. And that’s why they continue to be successful while the dailies struggle to figure out what they’re doing wrong.

Psst. Here’s a hint. Why don’t you dailies start copying what works for the weekly business papers?

Here’s what I see in terms of the content in the business weeklies that the dailies should imitate if they want to retain readers:

1. More coverage of private companies. The editors and managing editors at the business weeklies know that it’s the private companies that are the bread and butter of their local economy. While the large, public companies get all the ink in the dailies, it’s the private companies where most regional economies see their growth – or their contraction. Small, private businesses comprise more than half of all employers and more than 99 percent of all employment growth in the United States, according to recent statistics. That’s why the business weeklies write so much about them.
   
   
2. Opinion, opinion, opinion. The best business weeklies in the country have an editorial page, with regular columnists and editorials. Let’s face it, daily newspaper editorial pages ignore business and economic issues. What would be so wrong with adding a business-focused editorial page in the daily business section, like once or twice a week, maybe on Wednesday and Sunday?
   
   
3. Scoops and more scoops. When I worked for daily business sections, Fridays always determined whether you had a good week or not. That’s when the business weekly came out, and you perused it to see if you’d been beaten on any stories. Business weekly reporters don’t rely on press releases and company announcements to drive their coverage. They go out and find the news. I don’t see that as much as I’d like with some daily biz sections. Business news consumers want information they can’t get anywhere else.
   
   
4. Understand the reader. Business news readers want information that they can act upon, whether it’s buying or selling a stock or calling a company they read about. Daily business sections seem to have forgotten that. Business weeklies know that’s what drives their readership. If the story doesn’t provide what is an “actionable” piece of information, it doesn’t make it into the paper.
   
   
5. Advise the reader. Business weeklies, because they understand their readers, know that many of them are running small or medium-sized companies. These readers want advice, whether it’s about their own careers or about making their company more efficient. And they know they can go to the business weekly, not the dailies, to get that information on a regular basis. Dailies need to get those readers to come back to their papers.

I’m not suggesting that daily papers throw out their business sections and start over from scratch. What I am suggesting is that if they tweak their coverage, they might keep more readers. The business weeklies have proven that can happen.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism