Pressing On

Daily News Publisher Douglas Hanes sees this as an exciting time to be in the newspaper business. Yet even with a rise in circulation at his publication, Hanes knows the future growth will not come from the print product but instead from online and niche publications. The Daily News website and the entertainment-oriented LA.com site bring in about 7 percent of the company’s revenues, with niche publications contributing 3 to 5 percent. Hanes expects to see those numbers triple in the next five years. “Where the core product, the basic newspaper, supports and drives all these new initiatives in the future there’ll be more reliance on online and niche publishing,” Hanes said. Hanes is the fourth person to hold the publisher’s title at the Daily News since October 2006, when then-publisher Tracy Rafter was let go in a round of layoffs. Her successor John McKeon lasted about six months and now works for a paper in Dallas. Former Akron newspaperman Ed Moss had the dual role of Los Angeles Newspaper Group president and Daily News publisher until Hanes assumed the publisher’s spot in September. Hanes was named in 2004 as Senior Vice President of Advertising and Marketing for LANG. He previously served in a similar position with the Orange County Register. His background also includes running a group of weekly newspapers in south Orange County for Media General Newspapers. “If anything I have a strong background in understanding the needs and wants and desires of the local community,” Hanes said. Hanes lives in Calabasas. Question: There has been turnover in the publisher’s spot in the past year. What are you doing to show there is stability in that position? Answer: First of all, most of the turnover you refer to has been planned turnover and very positive for the company. Our company Media News Group has doubled in size over the last year with the acquisitions of Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News. I started here four years ago as senior vice president of advertising and marketing for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. I still oversee that today as well as being the publisher and president of the Daily News. We are involved in positive growth even as people look at our industry and say we are in a declining stage. We are basically reinventing ourselves online. We are dedicated to the Valley. I want the Daily News to be the Valley newspaper it is today. I took the job knowing it’s going to be my entire focus to reach more readers and viewers for not only the daily newspaper but also for the website. Q: How is the paper going about doing that, attracting more readers and visitors to the website? A: In a number of different ways. We define our business in three different strategic silos, if you will. One being the fact that our core product, the Daily News, will be undergoing a major cosmetic facelift. The paper first of all is growing in circulation, which is unusual in today’s industry. The latest circulation for September will show growth in home delivery for daily as well as Sunday. The reason for that is that unlike other regional and national newspapers our newspaper is totally focused locally on the Valley. We want to continue to engage resources with that endeavor. Q: When you say a major facelift does that mean a redesign? A: We have a redesign planned. We haven’t had a redesign of the Daily News in many years. I’m not sure how many far it goes back. The new look is fresh. It’s more up tempo with today’s media environment. It not only keeps the essentials of a good front page like you expect from a daily newspaper it also gives more information about what is going on in the local community and how to navigate further into those particular subject areas using dailynews.com or LA.com. Q: There was a recent redesign of the Daily News website. A: Again the same type of principles online, how do we feature more in depth local coverage with dailynews.com. One of our biggest concerns is traffic congestion. The first thing that you notice when you go to dailynews.com is we have a traffic site on all the major freeways that is updated every 10 minutes. Q: What is the revenue stream for the website? A: It is advertising driven. It represents about 7 percent of our total revenue. We anticipate that tripling in size over the next five years. Q: And why is that? A: If you truly are servicing the local community the lifeblood of that community rests in the small to medium sized merchants. A large percentage of those merchants they have websites and yet where do they go to advertise their particular goods and services. We have an answer to that that we will be unveiling in about a month having to do with our website; where the local merchant would have the ability to run not only text material on the site but also video. We think it is a great initiative. We think the local community will embrace it in a big way. We think it will have great readership and viewership appeal in print as well as online. Q: What do you see as the Daily News’s role in the Los Angeles Newspaper Group? A: We are the flagship newspaper of our nine daily newspapers. We have the largest circulation and the largest revenue base. We also have a huge land mass to target for our readers and advertisers. All of our papers are faced with hurdles in terms of declining circulation. However, the exciting part of it even though the core is a greater challenge than ever before because we are losing readers, especially younger readers, is that we are actually picking them up on our online sites. We own LA.com, which is a tremendous potential site for us. What we are finding out with that particular site in general is that half the people who go to LA.com don’t even subscribe to a daily newspaper yet they want to have the local content. Our business is all about gathering local content and disseminating that to our readers and viewers. Online is a key strategic initiative for us and throughout the organization. As well as niche publishing. Q: What is the paper’s strategy for covering outlying areas such as Ventura County, Santa Clarita and the Antelope valleys. There was a bureau in the Antelope Valley that was closed. A: The strategy of that is we understand the Valley is made up of several geographical components and Santa Clarita is a big part of that. Our printing facility is in Valencia, for instance. It is very important that we gather the news, that we have strong content from all areas of the Valley as well as advertising. We think it is best packaged in a one dimensional environment versus having zones, as you will. It is better from an economic standpoint, it’s better from a viewer standpoint. I think, quite honestly, that most people who subscribe to the Daily News like the fact that we cover the entire Valley, completely. Q: Back in July I went to a meeting of the Alliance of Neighborhood Councils attended by Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller and Managing Editor Leo Wolinsky to discuss their paper’s coverage of the Valley. People in attendance said they preferred the Daily News over the Times. Being Valley focused is how you differentiate yourself from the L.A. Times? A: First, the L.A. Times is a great newspaper. The Times has changed its focus quite a bit over the last five years under several publishers’ leadership. I think David’s leadership is one of creating a great regional and national newspaper. That probably best fits their need. The problem is for them is to try and penetrate whether it be the Valley or Orange County or any of the outlying areas, most people want to have local, local content. We know that on a family-per-family basis the most important thing we can do is give people information they can utilize every day. That comes from the local community whether it be a bus schedule or going online to find out what the (school) cafeterias are going to be serving in a given week. It is things that affect everybody on an everyday basis. That is not the passion or focus that a regional and national newspaper can do. You can’t do both. The reason why the Daily News is one of the few newspapers in the country growing in home delivered circulation is the fact we own the local, local market. We have no ambition of trying to go over the hill and be the second L.A. newspaper. That is not our focus. Our focus is owning the Valley and serving the needs of the homeowners and residents of the Valley as well as the advertising community. Q: ValleyNews.com, the reader contributed content portion of the website launched in August 2006, how do you see that working out? A: Being able to have local participation and blogs, etc. has made dailynews.com extremely successful. What’s hard to believe is that although we put out 150,000 newspapers and have close to a half million readers in print, dailynews.com when you look at the amount of unique visitors going to that is even more than on the print side. It is critical to us to make sure the website is representing the community in which it serves. Part of that is being able to have families and businesses have a chance to express their feelings about certain issues. As long as you have that pipeline you should have an interesting and well-read site, which we think we do. Q: Former publisher Tracy Rafter was visible in the community serving on boards of various organizations and being involved. Do you see yourself serving a similar role? A: Absolutely. I’ve done that all my career. I’ve only been in the job a little over a month right now so I haven’t but I have plans of being part of the community. We are still looking at various organizations where it would make sense for me to belong. I was just recently elected to the California Newspaper Publishers Association as a board director. That’s important from the standpoint that the Daily News and the Valley have a voice statewide in the publishers association. I plan on being active with the chambers; I think that is very important as well as other organizations. At this point in time I haven’t had a chance to get out and meet everybody and see what would be the best fit. SPOTLIGHT – Douglas Hanes Title: President/Publisher, Daily News of Los Angeles Age: 61 Education: BA, International Marketing, University of Oklahoma Career Turning Point: Joining MediaNews Group (parent company of the Daily News) Most Admired Person: My mother for her positive spirit and perseverance Personal: Wife: Carol, Children: Heather, Jori, Cameron and Kelly