Publishers Offering All the News That’s Fit to Fax
News delivery is taking a different route these days.
For political junkies in Washington, for advertisers in Effingham, Ill., for diplomats in Moscow and for insurance companies in Connecticut, the fax is competing with old-fashioned doorstep delivery.
It’s working better in some places than others.
“It’s been kind of tough going,” says Dennis Schain, a spokesman for Connecticut’s Hartford Courant, which started the first general news summary put out by a newspaper five years ago. “It hasn’t been a runaway success in terms of revenue and numbers of subscribers.”
By contrast, Jack M. Schultz, who last year started a free fax newspaper in Effingham in 1989 and another in Bloomington, Ill., reports that the business is profitable and says he’s talking with franchise owners about expanding to other Midwestern cities.
“We are totally advertising-supported, and that’s where we get our revenue,” Schultz said. “The others have taken the approach of selling the information for $600 to $1,000 a year, and we think that because it is a new concept people have difficulty seeing the value of that.”
Other entries in the field include the American Political Network in Washington, whose four publications include Political Hotline and Daily Report Card, dealing with education; the National Journal, which publishes a daily faxed newsletter about Congress; and the Los Angeles Times, which provides a free summary of news via fax to government officials and diplomats in Moscow.
The Hartford Courant--which is owned by Times Mirror Co., publisher of the Los Angeles Times--charges $600 a year for a one-page legal-size document delivered to offices by 4:30 p.m. Subscribers include insurance companies, Hartford’s best-known industry, as well as other businesses and some public officials in the state capital.
“It’s an up-to-the-minute mid-afternoon news summary with a business and local slant, and a pretty good reflection of what the Courant is shaping up to look like the next morning,” Schain said.
Unlike most such publications, it has an advertising strip across the bottom, which sells for $100 for a single ad, or $70 each for three.
“That runs hot and cold,” Schain said. “It’s in a little bit of a trough now, but there are times when it’s booked every day.”
Schain said the summary had outlasted most of its imitators, but the Courant isn’t “100% sure” it will be continued.
“We think there will always be a newspaper, but there may be products that supplement it for special audiences,” he said. “They may not be delivered by fax paper. There may be other ways to do it.”
The recently launched Daily Report Card is also looking at other methods of delivery. Beginning July 22, it made the publication available by computer modem.
“The advantages of on-line delivery are obvious,” Daily Report Card told its subscribers. “There is no waiting for fax delivery or postal service.”
The magazine Congressional Quarterly, which also publishes Congressional Monitor, a hand-delivered daily newsletter running 20 pages or more with hearing schedules and other information, considered and rejected the idea of going to fax.
“We talked to customers and the response was not overwhelming,” said ‘s Bob Smith. “We would have had to add something, to make it selective or timely.”
Meanwhile in Effingham, the efforts of Schultz, an entrepreneur with no newspaper experience, spurred the Illinois community’s afternoon daily, the Effingham Daily News, to start a free fax paper of its own, distributed in the morning.
The fax paper doesn’t take advertising, so it hasn’t made money. But it has helped orient the News’ staff and readers to new ways of disseminating and receiving the news, said Marketing Director Chris Kade. “I think newspapers have got to do stuff like this,” he said. “We have got to start thinking of ourselves as information providers, or time will eventually pass us by.”
