Zeeck, even though he wasn’t at the Tribune when the name changed, lays out why it was a good idea before saying that it’s doubtful the name will change back to the Tacoma News Tribune. He writes:
The paper’s choice was to stay Tacoma-centric and confine its ambitions and future to a smaller area, or to grow and expand as the population and residential geography of the area boomed. They made the right choice – to grow.
What it would take to change it is a publisher and company ownership that saw returning to the name Tacoma as both true geographically and advantageous from a business/marketing perspective. I don’t think either condition is likely.
Dave, I'd like to make my case for putting Tacoma back in your name.
First, I would not disagree that the Tribune made the right choice back in 1987 when they changed the name. Back then, the need was to get the Tribune onto as many doorsteps as possible, which meant that an expansion into a larger coverage area was a good idea.
But a lot has changed since. So let me try to convince you on the terms you suggest: geography and business/marketing.
Geographically, Tacoma is still the county seat of Pierce County. Tacoma may only be 25% of your readership, but I'd wager that they are a plurality of readers, too. We likely also have the plurality of jobs and the plurality of arts and culture too. To put it another way, Tacoma is the "capital" of the South Sound, so it's not unreasonable that its major paper is Tacoma-centric, even if your market has expanded to Federal Way and North Thurston.
Also, geographically speaking, you're competing with you're own company when you expand your coverage and market outside of the county. 49.5% of the Seattle Times is owned by your parent company. And The Olympian is also owned by them. (I'm not going to count the Hearst-owned PI here since it's supported by a Joint Operating Agreement with the Times.) I think there is a good case to be made that Tribune should pull back from Thurston and some of South King County and invest those resources into a Pierce County focus--Tacoma, Gig Harbor, and all of East Pierce County.
On to the Business/Marketing argument.
The trends for consumers to get our national and world news has recently gone to just a handful of major online sources: The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, etc.
Newspapers have responded with a variety of strategies to compete in the new online world, but the most obvious is that they have gone very very local. You made that case last year that newspapers can stay relevant and continue to compete because they have "boots on the ground" and can focus on their local coverage. Limiting your coverage area to Pierce County would pull some of your reporters back from the fringes of your market and increase your hyper-local coverage here, which would hopefully boost local readership to make up for any you lost in South King or North Thurston county (note: lost to another McClatchy paper). You would also save on your marketing in those areas, or be able to reinvest those dollars in Pierce County marketing.
I would also like to point out that online, names are everything, thanks to Google. In seven years we are going to have the US Open here, and millions of people are going to type in "US Open Tacoma" into Google. Same goes for any disaster or breaking news coverage. Nowadays you are marketing your paper to more than just local residents, you are marketing it to anyone who is trying to find out what's happening in Tacoma no matter where they are.
I typed in "Tacoma Foundry Explosion" into Google and the Tribune came up 8th (after the Times, KOMO, and CBS). That's not that bad, but consider this. If I'm in Kentucky, why would I click on a link to thenewstribune.com, when I don't know what city you're in? You could have just gotten lucky on a Google search for all I know. If you used tacomanewstribune.com as your primary domain, not only would you possibly be higher on the page, but you would be more readily identifable to a random searcher as a Tacoma-based paper, something I can't tell from your current name. There might be hundreds of thousands (millions even!) of page views annually that the Tribune could see with a name change.
As I always try to point out when talking about the Tribune, I'm not a hater. I really like the Trib and read it all the time. But I think there's compelling evidence that enough has changed since 1987 to consider going back to Tacoma News Tribune.
UPDATE: Mark Briggs, the on-line editor at the Tribune, has some additional thoughts on the question.
8 comments:
Besides, everybody calls it "the TNT". That first "T" has to stand for something, and calling it "the The News Tribune" is just silly.
I think the name Tacoma was removed because apparently, the brand "Tacoma" had reached such a low point, perhaps the paper did not want to be associated with it.
Secondly, the suburbs had grown out so much and contained so much more buying power than the disinvested city that it made sense to market to them.
Third, Tacoma's identity was apparently so weak, and self esteem so low, the downtown and most of the neighborhood were decimated that there was little protest from Tacomans.
Plus, most of them shopped in the suburbs anyway so they could care less.
Despite the growth the suburbs, Seattle continues to have two papers. Seattle Times and the Seattle PI. The New York Times is read across the world.
However, perhaps Tacoma as a city will sufficiently reconstitute itself once again to have a city newspaper named after Tacoma which is about Tacoma.
Also how come they choose to outsource their political cartoons at a higher cost rather than employ a cheaper and higher quality cartoonist locally?
No wonder newspapers are whiffing it lately.
It is the Tacoma News Tribune, not the "let's pretend to be from the city up north" Tribune.
Also it should come out in the afternoon, and I should be able to pay the carrier a buck extra to throw out the ads, and the sports page.
It is the Tacoma News Tribune, not the "let's pretend to be from the city up north" Tribune.
I am afraid it is not.
Pick up a paper from your local store today. There is no Tacoma in it. It is simply The News Tribune.
I was hoping maybe they'd learn after how much snappier the Sunday 125-anniversary edition looked. The Tacoma News Tribune logo was gorgeous. And Erik is right, there is nothing that connects the TNT to Tacoma or the South Sound at this point.
I've started tracking the "end of newspaper" discussion over at exit133.
I completely agree with Erik. If the TNT were smart it would try not to be all things to all of South Sound. It's a losing battle! If they focused completely on Tacoma then maybe we could expect some in depth reporting and better investigative work. As it is, the TNT is spread too thin and is torn between pissing off the urbanites and alienating the rural folk.
Clearly knowing your local geography is more important than ever, as Seattle's fantastic online journal Crosscut shows. But being local is not enough. There needs to be a strong voice, interesting topics and a sense of mission. Another reason to get more local.
If you LOVED that 125th edition like I did, check out some scans of old issues in their online gallery!
In my mind it is the Tacoma News Tribune.
I don't read it until the afternoon either.
Unfortunatly, I'm having trouble tuning in KTNT these days
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