Newsroom culture of excellence, foundational document No. 2: Plotting product lines
This diagram shows the spread of ‘product lines’ operated by the York Daily Record/Sunday News/York Newspaper Co. One recent addition to the resource list near the top: The offerings of the Pennsylvania/New Jersey Journal-Register news organizations – in Norristown, West Chester and Pottstown, among other Philadelphia-area locations – now are available to York County readers. Those are now sister publications falling under the Digital First umbrella.
Some readers might not associate product lines with newspapers.
Well, newspapers for years have offered a limited number of products: the newspaper, special sections and commercial printing. Actually, special sections were really part of the newspaper, so make that two product lines.
Today, the newspaper is among multiple product lines, ranging from niche publications to Facebook pages. And under within each line, are multiple brands. For example, Flipsidepa.com is our regional entertainment brand in the Web line.
To keep track of it all, we developed the above graphic to communicate the fact that we are no longer a newspaper, but that a newspaper is among the products we offer.
At first, the graphic was meant to be an arrow pointing to an array of products that serve the customer and grow audience.
Over time, the arrow has thickened, ensuring that comedians in our newsroom would label it something else. Like a house.
A house works. There are many rooms inside for each product line.
And we can always build an addition.
Question for readers:
Is this news to anyone? Did anyone think we just produced a newspaper here at 1891 Loucks Road and that was about it?
Also of interest:
Foundational document, No. 1: A clear mission statement. And we’ve created a page for all foundational documents.
*Edited, 12/19/11