I hope everyone enjoyed this year's conference. Thanks go out to all who were involved in the planning process. Special thanks to Claudia for all she did to make the conference a success and for her service to the NYSCMA during the past year. Under her leadership the association has grown and I hope to be able to continue that forward progress.
As we turn our attention to the coming year, there are some new and exciting things are on tap to look forward to. At the conference we talked about setting a goal to enhance our ability to service the NYSCMA members. The officers, directors and chairpersons are all working hard to help us achieve that overall goal. While all positions on the board play a vital role I thought I'd highlight some new positions and share some names recently added to the board.
Anne Fabry from the Journal News has joined as chairperson for website development. Anne brings experience with her as she has been personally involved with several website redesigns and sits on the website committee at the Journal News. Anne will work closely with Michelle Giorgianni on updates, adding features and enhancing the design of the site. Their plans center around maximizing the position of the website as a service to the member newspapers and vendors.
Tom Dunn of the New York Post has come aboard and has taken on the new role of director of program development. Tom will focus on developing, collecting and sharing successful ideas from around the state and within the industry. Tom will facilitate the process of communicating ideas among the member papers. I encourage you to share with Tom successful ideas/programs from your paper, or anywhere else you come across them. Tom can be e-mailed at tdunn@nypost.com.
Our other new board members are both connected with carrier day. They are director Dan Riccio and chairperson Elinor Mostert. The carrier day program has been streamlined and newspapers can now nominate an unlimited number of carriers. Dan and Elinor have come up with a novel idea and location for carrier day, namely, a cruise on lake George. Full details are in the nomination packets but mark down Saturday October 13th on your calendars, it promises to be a great event.
One name that is not new to the NYSCMA is Julie Cardinali. While Julie is no rookie, she has taken on the new role of director of member communications. In her role Julie has already brought several ideas to the table. One area Julie is working on that has great promise is improving our ability to use e-mail as a communications tool. Julie is working on getting e-mail addresses from members in an effort to allow us to communicate more easily with each other. She has included a questionnaire which asks a few basic questions. Please take some time today to complete and mail it back to Julie.
Last but not least I need to mention the person responsible for the bulletin you are reading, Elaine Kirsch. In this issue, you will see many of the same features you're accustomed to and some new additions. I know Elaine's goal as bulletin editor is to use the piece to help you all stay informed, share ideas and have a little fun along the way. I think you will find this bulletin reflects that sentiment and all the hard work that Elaine has put into it. We look forward to seeing even more in future issues.
Until then I'd like to extend my best wishes to all of you. I'm interested in your ideas on how we can continue to build on the already strong foundation established by all the past presidents of the NYSCMA. If you have any opinions or ideas on how we can better serve the members, do not hesitate to call or e-mail me at pfelicis@thejournalnews.gannett.com. I look forward to a successful and productive year working with all of you.
Sincerely,
A Single Copy Seminar co-sponsored by Kaspar Sho-Racks and the Albany, New York Times Union will be held Thursday, September 27, 2001, at the Holiday Inn, Albany, NY. The seminar will open at 7:00am with a continental breakfast with a forum to begin at 8:00am.
The session, "Maximizing Sales, reducing Cost and Enhancing Service" will share Sho-Racks ideas on College readership programs and their single copy impact, Smart Card Technology, TK-Advantage software auditing systems, electronic capabilities, all electronic products and 50 Web Newsrack.
Four Chairpersons will speak during the afternoon session: Louis Saccocio, Circulation Sales Manager, Times Union, Albany, NY; Tony Mineart, Director of Circulation Single Copy and Retail Sales, The Washington Post, Washington, DC; Richard Gathen, Retail Sales and Operations Manager, The Hackensack, NJ Record; and Brian McEnry, Circulation Operations Manager, The Hartford, CT Courant.
Following a buffet lunch, Tony Mineart will facilitate round table discussions on Electronic Data Interchange, Scan Based Trading, System Technology and Strategies involved in new ABC rules.
For more information or to make reservations to attend the seminar, contact your Sho-Rack Sales and Marketing consultant or contact:
Sho-Rack Customer Service
at 1-800-527-1134
or custserv@shorack.com.
Here's a recent column on the newspaper industry from Mitch Albom, columnist, radio host, and author of the bestseller "Tuesdays with Morrie."
The Detroit Free Press, the newspaper for which I work, celebrated a birthday this weekend. It is 170 years old. You don't find many things that old in America. Buildings get torn down. Neighborhoods are razed. Dot-coms go boom one year, bust the next. But newspapers go on. The Hartford Courant dates back to 1764, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette to 1819. They have changed names. Changed owners. Changed technology. (You can get a newspaper "delivered" in cyberspace, a concept that still throws me.) But essentially, the product remains the same. Something happens. Someone writes it down. Someone prints it. And you read it. Not tricky. Not complex. Why then, are newspapers so durable? Because in a world that is growing more and more fractured, where doors are locking shut, where town squares are disappearing, where the glue is drying up everywhere you look, newspapers perform a dying art.
They connect.
They connect a son to his father. The first thing I ever shared on an equal
level with my dad was a newspaper. he reached for the business section. I
reached for the sports section. I watched him scan the headlines and tried to
mimic him with my box scores. We sat there, at the kitchen table, for the first
time, eating from the same literary plate. Connected. They connect a lost soul
with his hometown. I cannot tell you over the years how many people say their
parents sent them columns while they were in the military, or on overseas
assignments, or stuck in the hospital, and how happy they were to receive word
from home. Connected.
Newspapers bring a city together under the inky umbrella of a headline, whether through sports ("WE WIN!"), through politics ("MAYOR DECLARES NEW ERA") or through death ("CITY MOURNS A HERO").
And newspapers -- in so many small ways that are often overlooked -- connect people by telling them who's getting married, what jobs are available, what time the movie starts or when the zoning board meets. Although television has usurped audience, it is newspapers that hold up the news business. Most TV outlets get their stories from print. And almost all major investigative reporting -- from Watergate to Pardongate -- is still done by newspapers. No matter how elaborate TV gets, newspapers still let you start a story, skip to another, jump to the comics, scan the sports, read the Sunday magazine, go back to the first story, fall asleep and finish when you wake. And when you get your picture in the newspaper for something, anything, admit it, you still cut it out.
Now, I was never a sentimental person toward a workplace. As a teenager, I looked cynically at adults who retired at 65 to a gold watch. "How pathetic," I thought back then. "You give a company all those years, they give you a trinket."
Well, I have been in newspapers now for 19 years. If I were to quit today, and live to be 80, I'd still have spent a third of my adult life here. And what I realize, more and more, is that the gold watch in newspapers isn't for the finality of your efforts, but for the continuance. I wasn't the first reporter or columnist for the Free Press. I won't be the last. But for a while, my colleagues and I held watch. And -- cover your ears now if you're not into a sappy sentence -- it is still an honor to serve on the post.
No, you so not make history, but you are privileged enough to chronicle it. No, you may not sink the ship, put out the fire or hit the home run, but you tell the people who did. This particular newspaper has done it now for 170 years, more than half of America's life as a nation. And one day, 170 years from now, some kid may be doing a research project for school, and he will punch up on his eyeball-scanning microchip a story I wrote in 1986.