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Thank you so much to Beehiiv for their support. Welcome to the Rebooting Show. I am Brian Morrissey.
This is a treat for me as a person who grew up in the Greater Philadelphia area because I'm joined by Lisa Hughes, the CEO of the Philadelphia Inquirer. We're gonna talk about what's working on the local level.
The Inquirer is near and dear to my heart because I literally learned to read reading the Philadelphia Inquirer before school. I used to...
My mom thought I was, like, some kind of savant because, like, before first grade, I was, I was reading the newspaper as I waited for the bus. I was actually just looking at the sports scores, Lisa. [laughs] That...
Listen, and, if that's the reason why you read it, I'm all in. That's fantastic. But then I would drift in, and I started reading things like Bill Lyon's column.
Jason Stark, the Philadelphia Inquirer's sports page in particular was a formative part of- Yeah... growing up. Yeah. And then my first job in this weird, screwed-up industry was actually with the Inquirer.
No way. I- I don't think I knew that. Yes. What, what did you do? I- Did you deliver papers? I delivered- Were you a pa-... the Philadelphia Inquirer. Yes. I was a paperboy- I love it... paper person
in Avalon, New Jersey. I'd deliver... I had a bike with two baskets in the back, one basket in the front. Oh my God. I was loaded down with newspapers. I sometimes fell over, but I, I would deliver my papers.
I, I had a good arm. I tried to throw it. I sometimes broke things 'cause I was really obsessed with throwing it to, on, on the porch. And it was also seven days a week, right? Did you do Saturday as well?
Seven days a week. No, no days off. No days off as a twelve-year-old. Except on Sundays, my mom had to drive me around in a Country Squire station wagon- I love it... because those papers- I love it... good old days.
Yeah. Good old days, Lisa. The good old days were- They were really heavy. Oh my God. I can't even imagine. You probably could fit, like, two in your basket, and that was max. Oh my goodness. I put them together...
And my mom. Put them together. There were three different sections you had to put together. They arrived over multiple days, and that's, that was a different business.
And then I would go, and I would sell the newspaper outside of Roslanda's Bakery. And you, and did, did we pay you, or is this all free child- No... legal labor? No, no, no, no.
This was a very good thing where the Inquirer basically sold me the newspapers for, like, seventeen cents, and then I could sell them for, like, thirty-five cents, and they would buy the papers back from a twelve-year-old.
That you didn't sell. That I [laughs] didn't sell. Like- I had like an LLC. [laughs] Crazy. Your first startup. I made a lot of money. I made a lot of money. I bet.
You- do you know, I wish I had a nickel for every story I heard like this. So many people were paperboys. There... I don't think there were papergirls. No. There were a couple.
And so many moms got enlisted in actually doing the job with their sons. Well, I'm not gonna give my mom too much of a break.
[laughs] I mean, she was sending a twelve-year-old out to work seven days a week, so- You know, but she- What do you expect? But she d- she, she'd take a cut. She didn't take a cut. She had... No, there was no cut.
[laughs] There was no cut taken, but it was, it was, um- Well, thank you for your service. I appreciate it. Yeah. It was a formative experience.
It taught me a lot about business, too, because I sold more papers than the person who had a better spot outside of the Waffle House because I asked every single person if they wanted a newspaper. You hustled it.
That's what you do. You hustled it. Yep. All right. With that out of, out of the way- I love it... let's talk... You're, you're now six years into being the CEO of the Inquirer. You, you came over- That's right...
with an interesting background because you were a chief business officer at the New Yorker. You'd been at Conde Nast in various roles. Going into local, little different. Yeah. Little different. Yeah.
And newspapers, and, and, you know, it was entirely different.
The reason I got there was because I was recruited to join the board, w-which had been set up by Gerry Lenfest when he bought the paper in twenty fifteen out of bankruptcy, and then he handpicked a board of, of great folks who he really trusted that were leaders in the business community, but none of them had content experience.
None of them had digital transformation experience, and I'd been at the New Yorker for a decade, you know, working with the great David Remnick
and team, and that's what we had done is really the digital transformation of that business, launched, you know, newyorker.com, s-flipped it from a ad revenue business to a consumer revenue business.
So they recruited me to join the board, and at the time I thoughtThis will be really fascinating. Local journalism matters. I have a lot of friends in Philly. I've been going down since my, since college.
One of my best friends is, is mar- is mar- from there, and then married someone from there. So I've been going down to Philadelphia- Okay. So you knew what you were getting yourself into going to Philadelphia.
[laughs] I, I knew I was getting... Sorta. Sorta. Not really. I like, I'd, I'd had a hoagie, I'd been to a Wawa, and I knew people were nuts about sports. Okay. That's about as much as I knew. Okay.
Top level, that's, that- Top level... excellent.
And, and, and I joined the board, and it, and I was there for a year, and then the publisher decided to retire, and the head of the board said to me, "Lisa, you should take this job." And of course I said, "No.
[laughs] I'm, I live in New York. I'm a magazine person. No." And the head of the board and the vice chair of the board just kept working on me.
And, and when I actually did that sort of, you know, pro/con analysis one does, you know, having something that is clear about their mission and actually really matters to people, and of course I had that at, at the New Yorker, you know, deeply meaningful to people, and what's more meaningful than your local paper?
Yeah. So it seemed like a great idea, and I'm so glad I did, 'cause it's been the most interesting job I've had. And, and I thought the New Yorker was a pretty, pretty good gig. Yeah. Okay.
So let's talk about seemed like a good idea. So as, obviously Philadelphia near and dear to, to my heart, although I don't live there now. Growing up, when, w- even before I was a pa- a paper person for- Mm-hmm...
the Inquirer, there were three newspapers in Philadelphia. Mm-hmm. There was the Inquirer, which was the broadsheet. [laughs] There was the Daily News, which came out in the afternoon. It was a tabloid.
And then there was the Bulletin. I was... I only hazily remember. I remember the last issue of the Bulletin. But my point is- Mm-hmm... it supported three different newspapers. Yeah.
I remember the Inquirer had a Jerusalem bureau. A Jerusalem bureau. I mean, it's insane. Imagine. Yes. I think it was Tracy Rubin was, was there? Trudy Rubin- Trudy Rubin... still is still on our staff. Yeah. Yeah.
She's- She still writes for us. She's a dynamo. She has an incredible following. She is sharp as a tack- Well, I was reading her growing up... and a delight. So she's, [laughs] she's put in her service, too.
These markets have, have compressed. And I think Philadelphia- Yeah... is an interesting market because it had a lot of, you know, the same dynamics, at least in the northeast, you saw a lot- Mm-hmm...
of, a lot of the subscriber base ended up gravitating more towards the suburbs. A lot of economic activity moved out of the city to the suburbs. I remember my dad commuted into the city every day to work for SmithKline.
Mm-hmm. Right? And the wage tax and all the... I remember growing up hearing all about the wage tax. And- We're still talking about the wage tax... are tax. [laughs] I just came from a chamber meeting, yes.
It's still- And-... still a topic. And so people moved out to, a lot of people moved out to the suburbs, and then the companies eventually followed. And- Yeah...
I think that really hit the, the, the news, the news industry. Again, I always grew up in, in the suburbs. But talk to me a little bit about the journey that you guys have been on.
'Cause you have a different kind of structure. And the Inquirer went through some really difficult periods. Yeah. I remember, you know, just watching it.
I had friends who, who wrote for the Inquirer after, or reported for it and wrote for it after J-school in, in like 2000. Mm-hmm. And, and the paper was, was in pretty much a state of perpetual crisis. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, there were multiple owners, and Gerry Lenfest, who is, who was a Philadelphia, you know, visionary business leader and then philanthropist, bought the paper in t- 10, exactly 10 years ago out of bankruptcy.
It had multiple owners. It was in bankruptcy, and he bought it to save it.
He wasn't particularly interested in journalism per se, but he did understand that having a, you know, vibrant, successful paper was critical for a c- for a city, certainly the size of Philadelphia.
And he bought it, and then he established a really interesting ownership structure that was the visionary thing, which was he established the Lenfest Institute, a, our non-profit owner, and we are a for-profit news organization.
He was able to do that through a really interesting tax structure that he figured out. So I think we were really one of the first ones 10 years ago to have that model. And what that means is I have an independent board.
You know, Lenfest Institute has no operating control, no oversight. I report to a different board, and I don't have... You know, all we have to do is make a dollar. I don't have to return a profit to shareholders.
I don't have to return a profit to a hedge fund. I don't have a billionaire owner that has any say in what we do. So that independence is key.
And two, you know, his point was philanthropy should play a role in news organizations.
So by setting us up with the Lenfest Institute, we are able to take philanthropy, which was not the norm in news organizations at the time, and it, but it meant that we also have to succeed as a business.
You know, philanthropy is about anywhere from 6 to 10% of our, of our mix, but we gotta succeed as a business. It's not the whole answer. And I think those, that was really the innovation. Okay. So how have you...
What is the business now, right? Yeah. Like so, you know, you, y- you had come out with a piece about... And I was like, I was really impressed that like, you know, you're grow- you're back to growing revenue- Mm-hmm...
which is good. You know, growth is, is good. You got about 200 journalists in the newsroom. Mm-hmm. What really stood out to me was that 70% of revenue is coming from, from audience revenue. Yeah. Yeah.
You know, we really flipped it. 70% from, from, from consumers, and that's subscriptions of course.
That is-Ticket sales for any kind of live event that we do, which is b-a growing business for us, which I can, I'm happy to talk about in a second. Mm-hmm.
And also individual donations, which we don't count as part of that revenue mix, but that is a growing line for us, which is folks who might be subscribers and also wanna donate to us, or folks that aren't subscribers but just like a particular series that we're doing or whatever and then wanna give us ten bucks or, you know, twenty bucks.
I would count that. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Well, we do count it. We just count it- Okay... as a, a different, in a different line item.
But in that seventy, you know, fifteen mix that I, that I quoted, so seven-seventy percent is consumer revenue, about fifteen percent is advertising revenue, five is another, you know, partnership.
We distribute the Times and so on, we distribute our paper, and then that five to ten is philanthropy. And it, and it's really meaningful because it means that ultimately
we're, we're, you know, betting our future on a readership that cares deeply about what's happening in Philadelphia and the region, and we are the paper of record. We have been there almost as long as Philadelphia.
And, and you want Philly, like, we don't need New York telling us about Philly. We don't need New York telling us where to eat in Philly. We, we need Philly telling us where to eat in Philly.
We need Philly telling us about our sports team. We've been in every single locker room, every front office, every game since the beginning of the teams. Right. I, I can attest to that. I mean, I, I...
That's how I followed along. Yeah. So what has... What's wor- I-- like, I, I, we-- I'd ask people, like, what's working? You'd sent me- Yeah... and some things. So, like, what is working?
'Cause the consumer revenue to me really stands out because it's, it's almost, almost a mirror image of another success case, which is the, the Boston Globe. Yeah.
And the Boston Globe has, has, from what I understand, basically seventy percent now is subscriptions, consumer revenue of some kind.
And that, that is a much, that is a different type of business, and that is a much more sustainable business.
I mean, these businesses are unlikely to become as, as big as when I was putting together three sections on a Sunday- Mm-hmm... filled with coupons and ads. It, it's just a different type of business right now. Yeah.
Yeah. We really admire the Boston Globe, and we talk to them all the time and, and what's really great about local, independent news organizations is that we don't compete with each other. Right.
So, you know, the big ones, the Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, which is a great paper and, and really well run, and Atlanta Journal Constitution and, and so on, we talk to each other all the time.
So we really admire the Boston Globe and, you know, pay a lot of attention to their playbook. So, so that's certainly an inspiration. What's... Well, we're doing a couple things.
One of the things that we're really excited about that you and I started to talk about was our expansion into the suburbs and, and hyperlocal newsletters.
Of course, the Inquirer's footprint was, you know, what you consider to be the suburbs of Philadelphia, the Main Line and, and, you know, parts of, parts of, you know, Southern New Jersey and Delaware are all part of that kind of larger footprint.
So we have been-- we launched this, this past year with philanthropy as underwriting this initiative, and that's also a really important point. We go out and raise around things we might wanna do.
And this was an initiative to say, you know, our news coverage hasn't been as robust in the suburbs. We don't have reporters out there in the way that we did when you were a kid.
You know, with a newsroom of two hundred, we're, we're still a pretty big newsroom, relatively speaking, but in those days we had eight hundred reporters. And we launched in four markets with a weekly newsletter.
And the difference here is that we can use AI to help us cover the community in a way that we just couldn't before.
So, you know, we can use an a- we built an AI tools called Scribe, and what it does is can listen to, you know, school board meetings, you know, any sort of government meeting in thirty different communities.
It can flag, you know, we can... We, we train it for news judgment. What does that mean? It means that we train it to flag us, flag reporters when the room is really loud or the room is really silent.
What are they talking about? Or key into these topics, or tell us what is being discussed across, you know, thirty municipalities that we might not have connected the dots.
And then it can flag certain things for reporters to go in and do the reporting. So it's a tool. It's not doing the reporting, it's doing the aggregating, the listening.
I don't have the foot power to have someone sitting in the room at thirty different education board meetings. It's amazing. And this is, this is always answering the thing with local, is it- Mm-hmm...
always comes down to who's gonna go to the community board meeting. In New York, they would say the community board meeting- Right. Right... or the school board meeting, et cetera. And- We did...
the reality is we have technology now that can go there and be, a-and be the, maybe not eyes, but eyes and ears- Ears... on what is going on there, and then that feeds to, you know, the human judgment.
So you're not- Yeah... having the AI write the stories. Of course not. No, no, no, no. Okay. It's a tool, so it can flag certain things for reporters. It can summarize things fast.
It can go through a YouTube video and say, you know, "Hey, tell us all about," you know, whatever they're saying about the new, you know, board president or whatever you want it to, to do.
It's a tool, and it just allows you to cover a lot more ground and then go through and do the proper recording. And it's, and it's working. And it, you know, you keep refining as you do it.
We also built an internal tool called Dewey, which scrapes our archive, and that's now open source, and we, where it's being launched with Baltimore Banner and Minnesota Star Tribune.And Seattle Times.
So that also comes into play where we can say, "Hey, Dewey, what's everything we've done on Lower Merion?" And Dewey can then pull for a reporter to say, "Oh, this is in the...
from the food desk, this is from the real estate desk, this is, you know, from health that might be interesting."
And again, so helping us aggregate our own content as well as aggregate content from other, you know, local news sources that we might think are interesting that we wanna put in a newsletter.
So if I'm a reader and I live in, in Lower Merion, I'd have to go on inquirer.com and then search around for things that are relevant, you know, hyper-relevant, what are the restaurant openings?
Those are, those are things we hear about the most. Now I don't have to do that. I have a newsletter that pulls in all Inquirer content about Lower Merion that I care about.
It also has up-to-the-minute, you know, again, education board, government meetings that are interesting, as well as we'll pull in anything else local from local sources, other sources that we think is interesting.
You know, you have an editor, you have reporters chasing this stuff down. AI is not writing anything. It's a tool, and it's working.
So Lower Merion, for example, you, you may remember this, this probably has a population of about, I'm gonna say 65,000, somewhere in there, and we immediately got to 15,000 signups. I mean, with like 70% open rate.
Now, if you think about our addressable market, that 60,000- Yeah... is not the addressable market. Let's pretend the addressable market is 30,000. We're getting like 50% penetration out of the gate. Incredible.
So we launched four, and what's cool is, you know, we experiment. So Lower Merion was an obvious first stop, and Cherry Hill, 'cause those are the biggest.
But then we said as the communities get smaller and smaller, you wanna be able to knit them together with, with a certain kinda commonality.
Maybe they all share the same education board, or maybe culturally they're similar.
So we did this experiment in Greater Media, which is Swarthmore and Nether Providence and, and, and Media, and that's working beautifully. So we'll do another 10 this year and, and probably another 20 last year.
And in terms of, you know, our, our funder- Wait, wait, so, so you're gonna have 30, 30 different- Well, dude, we'll have... By the end of this year-... suburbs... we'll probably have about 12 to 14. Oh, okay. Okay.
But, and then so what is- And then next year, another 10. Okay. And these are supported by phil- philanthropic grants, but- Two things. Two things. Okay. Well, three really.
One, I mean, the whole play is to build habit and retention. Mm-hmm. Right? This is- These are free. These are free, right? This is- The newsletter itself- Okay...
is free, but when you click through, you're gonna, you know, eventually encounter our paywall, because the... what you're clicking through is metered. Okay.
So what we're seeing is people are reading the newsletter and loving it. We're seeing the click-through rate to stories are like crazy strong numbers.
The subscriptions from those, we can see the penetration and subscriptions is growing beautifully, and the open rate on the newsletters is like 75%. I mean, people are really loving them. We have... I've never...
We've never done anything like this where we've gotten so much reader response. They're literally writing us emails saying, I have some quotes here that are just so great. I mean, people are just have gone bananas.
"Just wanted to send a note of gratitude. I forwarded this newsletter to my dad. It's cool to see a big paper like The Inquirer cover our small towns." I mean- Mm... it's v- voluminous and constant.
I mean, I have hundreds of notes like this, so people love it. And, you know, they als- always say all news is local, well, this is... You really care about what's happening.
You have a snow event like we had, you care what's happening right in your, on your street. You know? You care, is SEPTA, you know, knocked out? How am I gonna get to work today? Yeah.
In addition to, what's the cool new restaurant that just opened? You know, what are fun things to do with my kids in my neighborhood? So, you know, it's a- Okay, so hyperlocal is working- It's working...
you would say, for sure. 'Cause I think of- Mm-hmm... to me the, the two things, and we had talked about this before. I'm like any Philadelphia news reporter, you, you can't miss on sports.
You can't really miss on sports and food. Like, there are two things that unite- And those are two things that Philly has, you know, going for it. Yeah. Basically- You know, the many...
there's a lot of different pockets. I think there's like 762 known variations of accents, although they're all kinda merging together, I've noticed. Yeah.
[laughs] There used to be a very particular accent for, say the, say the Northeast, that the kids from the Northeast spoke a certain, certain way. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
I think Mayor of Easttown brought that sort of Upper Darby stre- Yeah. It's in- Oh, yes... it's infected my family. And Task. And Task is also- Yeah. [laughs] But the one...
The things that, like, unite everyone in Philadelphia are cheesesteaks, hoagies, and Wawa and, and sports, basically. And the, and the Eagles. And the Eagles.
So, you know, and I think that the, The Inquirer really got hurt by the fragmentation of sports because, you know, some of the best writers from The Inquirer ended up going, going over to, like, The Athletic or, you know, for...
Philadelphia is one of the strange towns, like, where, uh, you know, the Eagles, uh, press conference, it has like, you know, like 30 different reporters in it. It's like a very- We have the best, we have the best seats.
I, I would argue that. I think we have a phenomenal sports desk.
It's, it's headed up by Mike Wong, who's amazing, who came to us from ESPN, and, and we brought him board when I came on board and, and elevated Gabe Escobar to be my editor and, and, and Gabe hired Mike.
We have a fantastic desk. You know, when I got there, there were no women on the desk, you know, so I, I, I think it's-I'm not gonna agree with it was only glory days.
I think we have the finest desk we've ever had and I think- No, but I think it's been rebuilding that in some way. Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe I haven't, like, followed it as closely. I just know the, you know- We...
I mean, Jeff McLane is the best beat reporter- Right... on the Eagles, o- o- on the NFL- I, I give-... I think in the country. He, he, he, he mixes it up. I also... I knew Jeff in high school. He's awfully good.
Like, it's a very small place, Philadelphia. [laughs] It's a small- [laughs] I mean, it's a big city, but it's not that big. I'll put our team up against- He went to McDevitt, I went to LaSalle, so yeah.
[laughs] I know, I know Jeff, actually. I will put our team up against anybody. And, and again, you know, like anything that is covered a lot, food is another good example, you just gotta be...
We gotta have a Philly angle and a Philly-ness that nobody else can replicate. You know, I think it's an and not an or.
If you are an Eagles fan, you're gonna read everything that's good about the Eagles, and we just have to be on that list. We have to be that good that it's worth your time, and so I think that's how we think about it.
You know, we go back to what, what does content have to do, and I, you know, I was interested in, in one of the, one of the pods you did about, you know, what buckets, what, what, what itch does it scratch?
And we have, you know, three, which is, you know, useful, revealing u- you know, high utility. And- Yeah... look, you gotta be good. You gotta be relevant. But I think that's important 'cause there's...
A- and that was with Dmitry because it was- Yeah... Dmitry Shishkin about, like, using these. Yeah.
Because, I mean, if I had a criticism of local paper, and it's not like a criticism, it's just an observation, really- Mm-hmm... is it's sort of over... And th- we talked about this.
It sort of over indexes on, like, what happened versus, like, being, like, the utility aspect. It's always been part of, like, the local news, but you know, the reality is it can't all be city council corruption.
You will always have that- No, well, can I, can I push back?... in Philadelphia. [laughs] It will always be a very vibrant area. [laughs] Can I, can I push back on that? Okay.
So, you know, we, we've gone through, you know, a very rigorous content strategy now for four or five years at least, and we have sort of three, as I said, useful, revealing, and responsive are sort of the three- Okay...
lodestars that we think about. So useful might be, you know, okay, here are the best dive bars in Philly, and here's the map. You know, the story's really Philly.
It got phenomenal audience, phenomenal subscription conversion. It's super Philly. No one else can do it like we can do it. The mapping function is really high utility. People just went bananas over it.
You just gotta be good and more inventive. You know, revealing, we did a piece about this cop bar
that all the cops go and drink, and there are a lot of DUIs and, and deaths from the, from activity in that bar from cops going out after drinking all day, and the cover-up that happened around all those DUIs that then went...
You know, it's an, it's a great piece of reporting. It... We just ran it. Yeah, that's a good story. I'm into that story.
That's a good story, and it's Philly, and it's, and it's a story that no one else is gonna report, and it's, you know, what we're built to do well, and that will change, you know, that will save lives 'cause we don't have- Yeah...
we're not gonna have drunk cops, you know, covering it up. And then you have the responsive piece which is, okay, let's take the snow event.
Like, we nearly needed our reporting on what was closed, what wasn't, or SEPTA, our favorite topic. [laughs] And you make it fun. Like, we have Tom Fitzgerald.
I don't know if you've ever, if you know Tom or you've ever followed him- No... who is now our, the most unlikely video star, and he's, like, killing it on our vertical video because- Okay... he's so knowledgeable.
He's got a wry sense of humor, super engaging, he really knows his stuff, and readers are going nuts over it. So all of this is very Philly. It's... We're very clear about who we are.
We're very clear about having that Philly lens. You know, our sort of irresistible truth is feed your Philly bias. You want Philly, do not pass go. You gotta go through The Inquirer. Yeah.
And, and I think the people in Philadelphia have, like, a little chip on their shoulder sitting between New York and Washington. They always have, so that leads to a very cohesive, I would say, local culture.
Yeah, it's, it's a- I know Boston has it a little bit too... you're, you're absolutely right. I think it's a, a real positive. It is a real community, and it's quirky in the best way, and not everybody gets Philly.
I mean, this is our brand campaign behind me on the wall. You know, weird accent- Mm-hmm... what accent? Right? Right? That is [laughs] that, that's a funny- So it's so good. I- The brand campaign is great. Huh.
It just goes right into that Philly... Like, everyone underestimates Philly. Everybody thinks they know Philly. [laughs] It's like, you don't know Philly. Yeah. I- that's true.
Before I went to college, I didn't know that it was pronounced water. I thought it was water, and then I was reminded mercilessly that the, it is not pronounced water.
[laughs] I'm gonna send you the funniest video that we use to open sales pitches when we go pitch in New York and other places that is exactly that, which this really funny woman says, "I didn't, I didn't know that I had an accent till I asked people in my dorm 'Where do I wash my towels?'"
And they're like, "What do you wanna wash?" She said, "My towels." And they were like, "What?" And, and it's very, very funny. It's an experience all of us from the region have, have had. So what are you doing less of?
Because, I mean, you talked about, like, you know, the, the newsroom is not as big as it used to be. Yeah. And, you know, I, I, as I said, like, The Inquirer- I'll, I'll tell you. No, no, no...
used to have a Jerusalem bureau. It doesn't have the Jerusalem bureau. Correct. It shouldn't have had a Jerusalem bureau probably to begin with. Well, I b- you know, it was, it was, that was then, this is now.
I think- Yeah... I think to your point is what do you stop doing is as important as what do you wanna do. Mm-hmm. And like any legacy business, that's hard to do.
It's a big ocean liner to stop it and turn it into another direction takes, you know-... years. And, uh, content strategy really has helped us get everybody grounded in, okay, what are we gonna measure?
Let's have one source of truth. What is this story doing for us? It's gotta do something for us. It's gotta, you know, at the big level, change legislation, affect change in a major way, policy change.
Okay, that might be one metric that's longer and harder to measure and, and might be appropriate for the investigative desk, but you know, is it, is it a passwords conversion?
Is it really, really super sticky for subscribers? You know, is it getting a ton of audience? You know, where is that audience coming from?
So getting everybody grounded and looking at the numbers and again, going through this lens of, you know, useful, revealing, you know, responsive.
What we've stopped doing is the enterprise, what we call the enterprise to nowhere stories, where you spend a lot of time on a long story and it doesn't do any of the above. You, and you love them.
You're proud of the work. The newsroom loves to do it, and then it just doesn't perform in any way, shape, or form. And we were doing a fair amount of that. And, and it's good work.
Like, what's, like, I, you probably don't wanna use an, a specific example. [laughs] I, I don't have an example. I w- I would tell you. I would tell you. I, I, I wouldn't, I, I, I don't, I w- I would tell you.
[laughs] Give me something off the top. I just don't have one off the top of my head.
But, but you know, there's always stuff you do that, you know, you put your heart and soul into and put too many resources into, and then it just doesn't perform.
And so w- I think we've gotten way better and just less nostalgic about that. It's like you can't get wedded to it. Just move on. Yeah. That didn't work. Let's do a postmortem. Why not? Right.
Sometimes you do stories to win- And so I'll give you an example... I bet... to win prizes. We don't do stories to win prizes. I was gonna say, were you saying you do stories to win?
Yeah, well, that, that has historically been part of newsrooms. Like, you do do stories to win- Yeah... prizes sometimes. And I don't think, you know, a lot of times- I mean, we apply for a lot of them. Yeah.
So go ahead. Give me an example. Prizes don't pay the bill- [laughs]... unfortunately. That's fair. I'd like to win some Pulitzers, but prizes don't pay the bill. No, we don't just do...
We, so we, we've stopped doing things that don't perform, and, uh, particularly repeat things that, you know, just aren't driving any kinda engagement or audience or doing anything for us.
So you know, that's, that's something we stopped. We completely revamped our sales strategy because what we were doing was not working and not sustainable and not driving enough revenue.
And, you know, newsrooms, uh, or, or newspapers were built to answer the telephone and book a page in a newspaper- Yeah...
and, you know, print money, basically, 'cause the margin was so good, and that's how, how sales teams were set up, really servicing the business, not driving the business.
And you know, that's another thing that we stopped doing, not servicing. But we stopped, you know, thinking, "Well, people are just gonna come to us."
We gotta go to them, and we've gotta have a reason for them to wanna advertise with us that's different than anything else they could do with anybody else.
So you know, we've spun up a, a really strong sort of corporate reputation, you know, social responsibility, branded content studio that is now, you know, really working.
We have a, we have a, a, a feature called Changemaker Spotlight, which is a profile of a Q&A with a leader in Philly that is really, really successful and totally working, and a go-to now for leaders in Philly.
So you know, I- And this is like- Mm-hmm... this is like a local version of what it powers all the Washington, DC publications.
Because there are different, there are different goals for a lot of advertising, and corporate social responsibility is an interesting- Yeah, yeah...
category in that every single company, you know, they need to affect regulators, and they need to affect their images. And you know, I keep hearing, like, the chief communication officer- Mm-hmm...
is, like, a new important buyer- Yes, yes... for a lot of publications. Yes, and often has budget, which is- Yeah... really important. And you know, it isn't...
Uh, also companies are doing amazing things in Philly for Philly, and, and they would like to be proud and talk about it. And so there's a couple of channels to do that.
You can pitch our newsroom, and I encourage them always to do that, and maybe we'll write about it, maybe we won't. You know, we're not built to be the PR arm of a company. Yeah.
So you know, y- absolutely, I encourage a s- smart, strategic communication strategy and, you know, here's, here are the key people you need to meet in my newsroom. I'll have that conversation all day long.
Separately, here are the key people you need to meet on the sales team who are marketers. We're consumer marketers. We're brand marketers, and here's how we can tell, help you tell your story in the community.
And I've got the audience and the conve- convening power, you know, in the promater. So we're a great partner to do that, and it's really working.
The eyeballs we're getting, the audience we're getting on these, on this, on this work is, is sometimes double what we're getting on newsroom-produced stories. Hm. So how about events? I mean, everyone's- Yeah...
talking about events. Yeah, what's- Getting people together is, is always a good idea these days. What's old is new. It's like email th- being, I- Yeah, exactly...
listened to that podcast or your, your no- your note just yesterday or today even- Yeah... about email is the, is the cool new thing and, and very important to us.
Events are because, again, when we're talking about being in community and showing up in community, I think there's a real hunger to get together.
We launched our food festival this, this past November, and we'll do it again this year, and it was, you know, it was a big endeavor. It was 2,000 people. We had 52 chefs. We had a dozen bakers.
We had cool performances from Zenadelphia and Snacktime, which is Jason Kelsey's house band. We had talk backs with, uh- The Philly bands have completely changed from my day. I know.
The Philly ba- well, you know, the Philly- No Hooters. [laughs] No Hooters. [laughs] The Philly music scene, I mean, Sigma Studios, I mean, come on.We could, we could have that whole conversation.
And we had talkbacks New Yorker festival style with Steven Starr and, and Delicious City podcast and our food critics and it was amazing and, you know, we sold of course the, the gate was important.
Tickets were one fifty and two fifty, and then we sold big sponsorships for clients who really want to do something experiential in front of a live audience and people really stepped up.
Truist was our presenting sponsor, Lincoln Financial, Uber, and then we had local folks like Peanut Chews. Did you grow up with Peanut Chews? Yeah, of course. Did you love them? [laughs] Are they your favorite?
I mean, yeah, I didn't, I, I didn't actually recogn- there's a lot of things we grew up with I didn't recognize at the time 'cause I didn't- That's the thing... travel a lot as a child. That's a Philly thing.
[laughs] As a Philly, like, I thought everyone grew up on Tastykakes. I didn't know that [laughs] No, and, and Herr's Potato Chips. Yeah. Well, Peanut Chews are delicious. I'd never had one 'cause I'm not from Philly.
See, I didn't even know that until today.
I now, I, I unofficially say they're the official candy bar of The Inquirer 'cause I bring them to every single meeting I have and people go nuts because they either remember them fr- as a kid as their favorite, I bring them to- Yeah...
all my board meetings, or they've never had them and then they become a huge fan and, and they're great to work with and, you know, we paired them with a chef who then used them as an ingredient for a curry and for a pie, and we just, you know, blew it out on social media for them, and they just got huge, huge traffic and buzz, and it was so much fun to work with them.
So, you know, it's fun to do this stuff, you know, and, and people are really getting into it.
So when you, when you, like, look at or read about, like, the, the travails at a place like The Washington Post, does any of it, like, sort of resonate with some of the challenges that you faced- Oh, sure...
over the last six years? It's not an easy business, right? Yeah. And every year there's another disruption. I mean, Google is now a answer engine, not a search engine, right? Mm-hmm.
So the impact on traffic is real, which is why we've all shifted to a retention, you know, strategy, and that, that plays well into a local newspaper because it is a direct relationship that is different than, you know, a national media where you maybe can get that somewhere else.
But yeah, listen, it's a tough business. You know, we... No one wakes up saying, "Gee, I wanna advertise in The Inquirer." We gotta go make that happen. We gotta go, you know- Yeah... create the demand.
You know, we- That's why I outsold my rival at the waffle house. That's exactly right. You, you asked for the business. I go ask for the business. He just, he just waited for someone to ask for if they, for a newspaper.
Yeah. No. I'm like, "No, no, no." [laughs] You cannot do that.
And similarly, you know, for, for subscriptions, you know, the brand campaign behind me, we were one of the very few local newspapers to really do a serious brand campaign, which we're still doing, and that we launched, I wanna say, three or so years ago, and I've had a lot of our peer papers ask me about it and then do their own.
So we spend a lot to drive people to our content, to, you know, a- and we call it, you know, sort of reframing the value proposition is the marketing speak, but we found in our research that we had what we called, what our agency called, which is Red Tetamer, who are amazing, the museum problem.
People are really proud of you. They're really happy you're there. They respect you. They think they know you, but they don't really think they need to visit, or maybe they went once, but, you know.
So we have, you know, the high awareness, 97% or something like that- Yeah... because we are a 197-year-old brand, and- I wanna hear the 3%. Do they just, do they just arrive? [laughs] Right.
That 3%, they just got there. But how many... But that consideration and f- familiarity, do they understand your product, and would they consider it?
That's the needle we are moving with our brand campaign and all of the new content that we're, we're putting out there. Another area of expansion is two important ones. Weekend. So you may remember this.
Newsrooms were set up in a Monday to Friday kind of staffing with a skeletal staff on the weekends. Mm-hmm. And who actually kind of sat around hoping that no news would happen.
And we were seeing a real dip in audience on the weekend, and we sort of un- uncovered, lifted up that rock and said, "Whoa. Well, this is easy to solve. Like, let's figure this out." So we did.
Again, underwritten with philanthropy, we did a full stand-up of a whole weekend team and content redesign, so now you see a really robust weekend package for us that looks a little different than Monday to Friday.
We're experimenting with different kinds of stories.
One of the piece- one of the story formats that we love is the perfect Philly day, and so we have different characters and leaders, you know, take you through their perfect Philly day. We had Joe Badia of Badia's Pizza.
That's delicious, the best pizza in the world. Good guy. Take us through his day, and you learn that he has a bloody Mary at breakfast. Okay. All right, Joe. Good. Good to hear it.
And it's just fun because you really hear about how they live in Philly, where they go, what their order is, what they cherish about the place, and everyone is different.
How I bought this house, field trips, you know, travel within four hours of Philly, so we're experimenting with all that kind of content, and it's working.
I mean, to see the audience grow and outpace the weekday on some weekends now since we soft launched, full launch happens in April, is thrilling. Mm.
And then, and then the other big thing we're doing is expanding into South Jersey. So, South Jersey is a little bit of a news desert. You know, we used to be more robust there.
We, you know, pulled back years ago, and again, we will investment spend against that. We're hiring about four to six journalists to reporters, editors.
We'll have a strong Trenton presence.And really, we see that as an audience growth play. So if local is a retention play, engagement retention play, South Jersey is an audience growth play.
We did a lot of market research where we, you know, with Harris Poll, where we looked at okay, affinity, do they root for, for Philly teams? Yes, no, that's the, you know, biggest indicator. Yeah. Do they work in Philly?
Do they attend to their medical needs in Philly? For all intents and purposes, they're Philly people, they just happen to live in South Jersey. So- Yeah... we're excited about that.
And you'll see more regional expansion next year that I'm not ready to talk about, but this is a thing. Yeah. So I'm sure like you, you tracked that the Atlanta Journal Constitution- Yeah [laughs]...
went digital, digital only. I think they have a really good publisher. Andrew's a good guy and really smart. Did you feel any sort of jealousy at, at them n- for just stopping with the print? No.
I mean, look, print, print is part of the, the legacy, but, you know, dealing with... I don't know if you guys still print yourselves, dealing with printing plants, dealing with, you know, trucks and everything.
And look, I was personally part of the print supply chain for the Philadelphia Inquirer, so I, [laughs] I have a- It, it- I do have a personal attachment to it. You do. At the same time, I'm a realist. No.
I- no, absolutely not, no jealousy at all. We love print. I love print. You know, how could I not? I came up through print. But print is still really robust for us. We're still seven days a week. We have a strong...
You know, it's declining, but it still is a strong part of our revenue mix. And, you know, there's something about print that is, has a permanence and a gravitas that people love.
You know, the, the C-suite in Philly, the boardrooms in Philly still read print. You know, when we do
any sort of major piece or even a branded content piece, it obviously runs multi-platform, it's the print that gets the buzziness in the room.
Anecdotally, obviously the tonnage and eyeballs and impressions are in digital, but we love print.
In fact, this past year we launched 12, what we call Sunday specials, and they are Sunday magazine type, you know, 36 pages or so on different topic, lifestyle topics. Mm-hmm.
It could be, you know, the 250th anniversary, or Friendsgiving, or Very Philly Gift Guide. We've done market research. We're getting like 90...
In the 90s, favorite thing, love it, you look forward to them, retain them, makes me feel better about my subscription. And our hypothesis, if we can stem the decline by one percentage point, that is meaningful for us.
Okay. So we love print.
We love print, and anything we can cook up to be- But do you love it, like do you love it as a business or do you love it like, uh, like, uh, I don't wanna say as, like, with nostalgia, but, like, do you love it, like, as a, as a product of what it represents- Yeah...
or whatnot? No, the point is well taken. I love it because, you know, I love print and, and I... But I do think it is a form factor that is still very popular with our readership.
If it were not, we would stop it, but it still is, and it's very significant in terms of our revenue. The infrastructure associated with print is, is tough.
The fixed cost associated with print is tough to make a business out of. If you were launching today, you would never launch with print. We sold our printing plan and outsourced our printing back in 2020 when I started.
That was the first thing I did. Okay. So, and- So it's rationalizing it to the point- Yeah, yeah... where- Yeah, so you- But do you feel like it's a drag on the organization at all, like, as far as, like, operating?
I mean, you're trying to... You know, look, the, the f- these, these businesses are all gonna be like, you know, digital first, it's newsletters- Yeah... and you're gonna do events- Yeah...
and whatnot, and then you have this print product. Yeah. And the print product has a long history as I, well, have gone through it. I, I just wonder with organizationally, if it becomes not worth it at some point.
Uh, quite possibly, but not now. Okay. You know, as we model out at least five years, you know, when, you know, if you're modeling out past that, you're just making it up, but- Yeah, exactly...
[laughs] you're even making it up at five. But not for the foreseeable future. Obviously, that could change. It is...
Y- you're right in that you really have to streamline operations, and we have spent a lot of time and energy on layout and streamlining that workflow. That is critical.
You know, we redesigned the paper in 2022 to, you know, just make it look more modern and clean it up, and hadn't been looked at in 50 plus years.
So we did that, and at that time, it was not just a redesign of the paper, it was a complete overhaul of the system. We went to Roxen, which is a very cool layout platform out of Sweden, I wanna say, and it's amazing.
It's been game-changing. And, and the amount of man-hours, woman-hours, efficiencies we could, we could affect from using that and upgrading our systems.
We were using a system that wasn't even supported by the manufacturer at that point. [laughs] So yeah. And it's, and it's... And we look at it all the time. How are we producing content?
How are we freeing people up where, where tools can help do that? You know, how to e- even ad layout, how do we do that more efficiently? So the last thing is, like, we've talked about what's working.
What, what is something that I- if we were having this conversation in a year that you, you think we, we would be t- we will be talking about, like, with, with what is working?
You know, with, with something that you have either planning or launching or has just launched and still needs, needs some more time to get going. Yeah. But, uh, where do you see the growth?
Well, the, the regional t- expansion is a big deal. Mm-hmm. Right? That's a big play in South, you know, South Jersey. You know, there's newjersey.com.And there's really nobody else, we don't think.
That's, that's, you know, big competition. And so that's clearly a move for us.
You will see another region next year, which I can't announce yet, but I'd be delighted to come back on the show- There's only a few regions. [laughs] Yeah. You can- well, you know. We're taking Delaware. I don't know.
[laughs] That would, that would not be a bad guess. There's, there's only so much of the Delaware Valley- Right... to go around. But it makes sense. It makes sense. And so you can see how- We have to expand the TAM.
Like, I mean- Yeah... I, I don't know, it's like Philadelphia as a city- Expand the TAM. Ex- expand the TAM.
When I- I believe when I was growing up, like Philadelphia was like the fifth largest city in the United States. Yeah. It is not the fifth largest city in the United States anymore. I think we're sixth.
The greater region- I think we're sixth now, aren't we? Is it? Like, I mean, the greater, I mean, as far as- Yeah... the city itself has, has, uh, is, is not... I don't know.
I, I haven't checked, uh, the- but so maybe it is back to growing.
But, you know, the, the economic activity has shifted to the periphery, and the reality is, you know, you end up following where the economic activity is.
The greater region has a ton of economic activity that's not captured- Yeah... within the city limits- Yeah... of Philadelphia.
We also, when we look at the addressable market though, we, when, when we launched our campaign, you know, there is still a l- you know, we... Largely, it's millennials.
They have, they have cute cohorts that we talk about, the passionate spenders, and the community lovers, and within that millennial market. But there's still, we have not penetrated the whole market.
There, and again, we have an advantage in that everyone's heard of us- Right... but do they actually know our product offering? Oh, wow, there's something here for me.
So obviously, with weekend, and food, and sports, and, you know, everything else we're doing, we hope yes. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. Lisa, thank you so much. Let's have a soft pretzel sometime in Philadelphia.
That would be g- well, come on down. [laughs] There's, I mean, the food is, you know, insane. I just went to a new restaurant called Amelia last night, which is Greg Vernick's new foray, and it's absolutely superb.
So good. This is new. I, I left Philadelphia in like 1991. There, there was, there, there w- I don't remember- Do you ever-... a food scene- Do you ever get there? [laughs]... existing. Yeah, I go back.
I go back, uh, every now and again. All right. Well, give us a call. I still have- Come on over. I still have family, I still have family there, so- Let me know... I come back every now and again.
Come on to our, our offices. We're right across from the Liberty Bell. Literally, we look at the Liberty Bell. It's really cool.
So we're right there at the Roman Haas building on Sixth and Market, and there's a ton of good restaurants right around us, and we'll take you to lunch. Okay. Sounds good. Meet you. I'll take you up on that.
[upbeat music] All right. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you. Take care. [upbeat music]