By Clint Chan Tack Thursday, March 11 2010

FOR many people, a steaming cup of coffee and a good newspaper are the right way to start any productive working day. In Trinidad and Tobago, the vast majority of persons prefer to read Newsday, “The People’s Newspaper”, to keep abreast of the latest news and current issues as they sip their coffee every morning. These thousands of avid Newsday readers were more than pleasantly surprised last Wednesday when the learnt that something else was brewing other than their regular cup of coffee.

On that day, Newsday launched a partnership with USA Today, the number one newspaper in the United States at a breakfast meeting at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Conference Centre in Port-of-Spain. The meeting was attended by a large cross-section of guests from government and corporate offices, embassies and advertising agencies. Apart from being able to catch up on the latest news in TT and the United States, the partnership of Newsday and USA Today is providing local business persons with an opportunities to tap into the US market and for their American counterparts to see what investment opportunities are available to them.

Persons who obtained a copy of the first edition of USA Today printed at Newsday’s El Socorro pressroom would undoubtedly have noticed that the paper had paid advertisements from local businesses such as Unit Trust Corporation, TSTT and Rituals Coffee.

In an interview with Business Day after the launch, USA Today’s vice president circulation Tom Kelly spoke about how this partnership was formed and some of the advantages which USA Today offers local busines people through advertising in that newspaper. Kelly said the partnership between Newsday and USA Today started with the visit of consultant Rod Arnold to TT last October to see Newsday’s press at El Socorro.

Moments earlier during the breakfast meeting, Newsday’s Financial Comptroller Maria Cooper who was largely responsible for setting up the partnership, said Arnold felt that Newsday would be a “perfect fit” with USA Today and subsequent discussions were started with Kelly.

Kelly said it was hard to believe that he had only met a few moments before with Newsday Executive Chairman and Editor-in Chief Therese Mills and Cooper and “here we are just in March and already launching this partnership.” “We are looking forward to a mutual, beneficial partnership for both our companies,” he said.

‘We are very excited to have Newsday join our print partners around the world. This brings us to eight partners around the world. We have also have print partners in London, Germany, Belgium, Hong Kong. In the Caribbean region, we have Puerto Rico, Nassau, Cancun and now Trinidad,” he stated. Kelly revealed that USA Today does not own many of the sites in the United States where the paper is printed.

“We print in 33 sites. The Gannett Company which is our parent company owns 12 of those sites. The rest are contracted out,” he explained.

Apart from the journalistic similarity which Newsday and USA Today share, Kelly disclosed that USA Today offers a unique competitive advantage both to Newsday and local businesses as well. “When you talk about the different advertisers who would be interested in reaching the travel audience, it’s a good fit to be able to reach that audience. Also for people who come into town that you want to get familiar with your brand,” he said.

Noting that USA Today is the preferred newspaper for many international travellers and hotels around the world, Kelly said in many cases travellers may be reluctant to buy or read a local paper “because they are from out of town.” “USA Today is the hometown paper of the USA. So it’s a brand with familiarity. When they see your branding on our paper, I think that will help you,” he said.

Stating that one of USA Today’s priorities is the creation of online communities that are able to connect to one another on the Internet, Kelly said it was his fervent hope that “our website can tie into your website.” “I hope that people who are looking on the USA Today website that might have Trinidad roots might see a link to Trinidad. That they would be able to quickly hit a link to come to your (Newsday) site,” he said.

USA Today’s partnership with Newsday represents the former’s first entry into the southern Caribbean.

While he could not provide any details, Kelly disclosed that USA Today was looking at entering the markets of other Caribbean countries in the not too distant future.

“I’m discussion with two other countries in the Caribbean. I would love nothing more than to get into five or six more. I think that the market is there in a number of places,” Kelly added.

Acknowledging the success of a special edition about Muhammad Ali which was published by USA Today and is now available in TT and printed by Newsday, Kelly revealed that the paper is considering other special editions which could soon find their way to the coffee tables of Newsday readers. Apart from the publication of a special edition for the 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa in June, Kelly said USA Today is considering the publication of a special edition on cricket even though “cricket is not a US sport.”

“What if we contracted with somebody to create a cricket special of some sorts. We look at it as business opportunity to sell ads and sell circulation and make money,” he stated. “You guys would be the initiators of it. We would support that with our name and some contract writers who could help put the content together,” Kelly said.
How does Newsday compare with the other print partners that USA Today has? “Our partners vary. In Puerto Rico, it’s the largest Spanish paper on the island. So really there’s no comparison there,” Kelly said.

“You’re taking local Spanish content and they have partnered with us to offer an English language general paper to the people of the island. So they look at it as a business opportunity,” he added.
“In Cancun, we have a partner there who creates six pages a day of local content that they also put into the paper. So they basically service the tourist zone of Cancun but they put enough local news and information in there so people coming to visit can be aware of some of the local news and events,” Kelly said.

Explaining that innovation is at the heart of everything that USA Today does and the paper is constantly looking at ways to give its readers what they want, Kelly said: “Editorially, we try to stay on top of what the readers want to read about not necessarily about what the editors want you read but what readers are telling us that interests them, so we can react to that and put those pieces in the paper.”

“We think we are on the forefront of watchdog journalism, influential reporting. We think we are out there trying to make and break exclusive stories,” he said.
Kelly said USA Today also strives “to give our advertisers what they want in order to reach their audiences.” He disclosed that the paper has formed teams between editorial and business persons, “which is trying to mix oil and water at times.” He explained that USA Today adopted this approach because it recognises that advertisers”want to reach different audiences and verticals.”

Noting that many international sporting events have a plethora of corporate sponsors who use those events to promote their respective businesses, Kelly said while USA Today allows advertisers to sponsor some parts of the paper, they do not influence its content. “That would stay editorial,” he stressed.

Recalling that USA Today commenced operations in 1982 with zero circulation, Kelly said: “We built our circulation up to a current rate of about 1.9 million.” “We are the number one paper in the US. We have a market share of 44 percent. With have 3.7 million readers per day. We are a Monday through Friday newspaper,” he added.
In his speech at the breakfast meeting, Kelly said USA Today’s use of short, crisp stories, graphics and snapshots to portray a message to its readers was unheard of in the newspaper business prior to its launch in 1982. “We are not only in the distribution business. We are in the conversation business. We want to be the catalyst for conversation. What we want to create that water cooler conversation where people are talking about what they read in USA Today,” he stated.

Kelly said USA Today’s mission was not just to merely cover the news of the day but “to give the reader something they can pick up and learn which may not be available elsewhere.” In her address to the gathering, USA Today National Circulation/Sales/Travel Manager Jill Heymer said USA Today was created for “the traveller with limited time on the go. “At a time when newspaper readership or circulation has declined a little bit, we have never seen more readers engaged with our content,” she said.

“Last year, our readers took five million international trips. They stayed at 19 million international hotel nights. They rented 17 million cars and they took cruises. We have 22,000 hotel customers in the US,” Heymer added.

Stating that USA Today also has “great partnerships” with airlines such as Lufthansa and KLM, Heymer said a recent survey said 82 percent of hotel guests want to read their news “in a newspaper” compared to 32 percent of guests who prefer to read the news on the Internet. Of those guests who want a newspaper, Heymer said: “Four out of five guests in a hotel want USA Today.”

iIn her address to the large audience assembled in the Port-of-Spain ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel for the launch of the Newsday/USA Today partnership, Mills said:“We often hear of marriages that are made in heaven. While we can’t claim that Newsday’s association with USA Today is a result of any divine intervention, we can certainly say that it represents for Newsday a natural progression in many interesting ways. There are many similarities which make this so.”

“We at Newsday are in our 17th year. USA Today is barely ten years older, founded in 1982. So we are both young newspapers,” she said. “When Newsday started in 1993, we faced enormous challenges as we threw down the gauntlet to two well established national dailies. In four years however, Newsday had become the number one daily newspaper in readership in this country,” Mills continued.

She said findings of the latest Government-sponsored MORI poll indicate that Newsday is the newspaper of choice of 68 percent of readers in TT. Similarly, she said an ABC audit conducted last October, confirmed that USA Today has a daily circulation of 1.9 million copies.

Declaring that Newsday changed the face of newspapers in Trinidad and Tobago with its bold use of headlines and colour, Mills said, “In the early days, we faced much criticism of being too sensational, too colourful. However as we know, imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Today others have followed and have brightened their image with respect to the use of colour.”

She noted that USA Today also took a risk when it launched its own concept with regard to the use of colour, and that the last 28 years “had more than proven the wisdom of that decision made in 1982.”