The Daily Press in Newport News, Va., hopes to breathe new life into the concept of newspaper/TV partnerships when it kicks off a news sharing initiative with local CBS affiliate WTKR this month.

Daily Press Publisher Digby Solomon knows partnerships among newspapers and television stations are not new — he’s seen a number of them during his tenure with Tribune Co., including the partnership his paper recently ended with the local NBC affiliate. But a new focus on the evolution of news consumption in this multimedia age is what he believes will set this one apart.

“We’ve looked at how to create better products for our readers that recognize that a typical news consumer isn’t just consuming one type of medium, but is basically on a continuum where they may start the day with newspaper or TV and then go into the Internet and then look at television shows at night,” Solomon said. “So how do we capture them at different points, and understand that for them getting news information is more of a daylong cycle that allows them to tap different media that works based on where they happen to be at the moment?”

The typical partnership pattern that’s emerged, which consists of newsrooms exchanging story ideas, doing cross-promotion, and sharing video and news stories, didn’t tap into the potential that can be achieved, Solomon said.
 

Challenging the Web

The Daily Press and WTKR-CBS intend to explore new frontiers in the medium that has been challenging most traditional media — the Internet. The first step in doing that, Solomon said will be revamping the Web sites of the Daily Press and WTKR with cross-promotion, and eventually creating a combined Web site.

A successful combined site, Solomon said, will focus less on pride of authorship, and more on being a good resource for its audience.

“If you look at the people that have really succeeded in the Web space, they’re not really creating their own content — Matt Drudge, for example, does a good job of aggregating everything and everyone and letting people know that if they want to know what’s going on they just need to go to him,” Solomon said.

Solomon envisions a Web site that does the same for the Hampton Roads marketplace.

“Our own brand may be about our own exclusive content, where our jointly shared site would be about pointing in all kinds of directions, including blogs as long as they’re relevant to this market,” he said.
 

Hard habits to break

Sharing content is something competitive media have been trained not to do, and breaking free from the mentality of scooping the competition may take some practice. Both the Daily Press and WTKR see the benefit in breaking those boundaries though, to offer a new kind of multimedia to audience and advertisers alike.

“The most important thing is really the sharing of our news resources between the paper and the television station, using the resources of both newsrooms to make sure we give our viewers and readers the best possible coverage for the local area,” said Dave Bunnell, president and general manager of WTKR.

News coverage will be a big part of that, Solomon said, and the two will even share reporters and work in each other’s newsrooms, when practical.
 

Swapping roles

“Some of their reporters may write stories in the Daily Press if they’re in Chesapeake and something of interest happens and we don’t have a reporter there, or we may have a person over at their office in Newport News ” Solomon said.

And there will be plenty of cross promotion in advertising as well. Advertising is the area where, according to Solomon, a lot of partnerships typically break down.

“The sales piece is always the first to fall,” he said. “Sales people are competitive — the TV station is afraid of the newspaper taking their money and the newspaper is afraid of the TV station taking theirs.”

But the unique regionalism in the area might also help the deal thrive since the Daily Press’ circulation dominates on the north side of Hampton Roads, while WTKR tends to do better on the south side.

“So together, and with a Web site that has no geographical boundaries, we think we can actually grow overall audience for everybody and grow revenues for everybody,” Solomon said.

The two hope to clinch the advertising piece by making multimedia buys more attractively priced than separate ad buys for a targeted group of regional advertisers.

“There’s a lot of fragmentation in advertising and we want to show advertisers that a certain type of buy in the paper, a certain type of buy on WTKR reinforced by this Web presence will give them a reach and frequency that they’d normally have to pay a lot more to get,” Solomon said.

Steering readers to useful classifieds, meantime, could also drive profits.
 

Video key weapon

Video will be a key part of the deal and something that Solomon said the Daily Press hopes to exploit wherever it makes sense.

“Obviously in a Web site it’s less about thoughtfully and expensively crafted packages and more just about showing straight video of a fire we’re covering, for example.”

The Daily Press also hopes to drive more user-generated video.

“There’s a lot more of them out there than there are of us and they hit on interesting news stories that photographers and reporters can’t always get to,” Solomon said.

Conversely, all of the Daily press’ photojournalists are trained in videography and can provide video back to WTKR and to the Web site.

The Daily Press also hopes to expand its consumer affairs reporting and Solomon said WTKR may eventually have a consumer affairs column in the Daily Press.
 

Managerial involvement

Both Solomon and Bunnell agree that involvement at the top level will be instrumental in making the partnership a success. To that end, the two will hold monthly meetings on the initiative.

“Having that management eye is important because we all tend to be competitive — and that’s when you need to  make sure the troops are aligned,” Solomon said.

There will also be plenty of communication between the Daily Press’ editor and WTKR’s news director, and between the paper’s vice president of ad sales and WTKR’s general sales manager.

“The cooperation and spirit level from both newsrooms in fantastic, they are really looking forward to working together and doing something different,” Bunnell said.