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Reporters asked to sell subscriptions

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by littlehurt98, Mar 6, 2009.

  1. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    the shitter at my shop is plugged, bold. think you can come unplug it?
     
  2. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    If they can afford to pay me for an hour to sell subscriptions, they can afford to hire someone actually trained in marketing to do it for the same hour.
     
  3. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

  4. ZummoSports

    ZummoSports Member

    This happened to us when our online photo galleries, which were basically a way to sell more photos went up two years ago. Management gave us a stack of business cards to hand out to people.

    After the meeting, the SE threw them in his desk and we decided to start giving them out when we saw some of the money from the photos we took sold. You know at least 85 percent of any photos sold are most likely sports photos. No one wants to buy a picture of Mayor Jacknuts at a council meeting.

    The cards are still in his desk two years later.
     
  5. FuturaBold

    FuturaBold Member

    good point ... all i'm saying is we news folks would do well to have better marketing skills and business savvy, both personally and for the products we work for.

    Like it or not, we're in a business and that business has to make money. Period. Or we all go home (like many on here already have). To just thumb your nose at attempts to sell our product because "we're reporters and we just don't that" is pretty arrogant and self-defeating.

    By the same point, our bosses would do well to know, like RickStain just said, that many of us aren't the best ones to step out on the front lines of sales, and that company money would probably be better spent hiring marketing pros and letting us do what we do best, put out newspapers... and Tom P, I don't do toilets! That's a job for circulation ;-)
     
  6. 2muchcoffeeman

    2muchcoffeeman Well-Known Member

    It has nothing to do with being "arrogant and self-defeating." It has everything to do with the credibility of the product being put out. Newspapers have departments that sell advertisements and subscriptions specifically so nobody can say something like "You only cover people who advertise with you" or "You only write nice things about your advertisers/subscribers and everybody else gets trashed in print."

    It's a very necessary division of labor due to that need for credibility with all of our readers, not just the readers who also buy big display ads or 7-day subscriptions. And the only way to achieve that credibility is by separating the task of reporting the news from the task of selling the news.

    And if, back when I was a reporter, somebody from circulation had suggested that I go door-to-door selling subscriptions on my days off, I would have politely suggested that he or she bone up on the concept of overtime pay.
     
  7. CM Punk

    CM Punk Guest

    Same kind of "contest" going on at my paper.

    Sure, I'll sell some subscriptions. Now fire someone in circ and give me his salary. If I have to do his job and mine, then fuck him. Ethics of mixing news and sales aside, I'm being asked to do someone else's job because that person has failed.
     
  8. tapintoamerica

    tapintoamerica Well-Known Member

    Amen to the words of 2muchcoffeeman: We are reporters and we don't do that.

    Just as bus drivers don't fix the bus when it breaks down.
    Just as nurses don't perform surgery.
    And hundreds of other examples.
     
  9. HorseWhipped

    HorseWhipped Guest

    Happened to me once.

    We made it clear right away that the circulation manager has no authority to direct the newsroom in any way. We also copied the memo to the advertising director, just for sport.

    We never heard from either of them again.

    Funny point, though: The circulation director said in the meeting: "Hell, nobody cares what's in the paper. We just have to get it there on time."

    That's when we told him to fuck off.
     
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