To advertisers, no one is more core. And don't think for a moment that this doesn't play a large part in determining how much emphasis the papers are putting on parenting and family issues. Because although radio and TV advertisers want to reach impressionable youths, traditional newspaper advertisers--think Foleys, think furniture, think car dealerships--want Mom and Dad. And they prefer Mom, since most believe that a family unit's buying patterns are established by her.
"Oh, they definitely want our ad dollars," says Joylyn Niebes, publisher of Dallas Child and Fort Worth Child. "I've seen it in the national press, and I've certainly seen it in the local press. I see what they're trying to do, but they won't succeed."
If it's Tuesday, it must be kid coverage in both local dailies. The Morning News, above, doesn't quite make it as official as the Star-Telegram, next image, which calls its entire Tuesday section "Family Day."
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Niebes says that, like most moms (three kids, from 4 to 16), she doesn't have time to read a paper every day, anyway--and advertisers know that about moms. "At the end of the day, I still have an unread Morning News in my hand, and it gets thrown in the trash, because I still have parenting to do," she says. "That's why magazines like ours are so effective. Not only are we cheaper for advertisers, but we provide service stories and information once a month, so a mom can have us around for when she needs to use us as a resource.
"No matter how many stories they do about parenting, newspapers are not going to reach more moms because they ask moms to adapt to the newspaper's schedule, not the other way around."
So, all this fawning over munchkins ain't workin', right? "Well, I haven't seen any research, but there's no question that there's anecdotal evidence that it's working," Newton says. "We get tons of feedback, a bunch of letters every week, phone calls, everything. Stories and contests we do in 'Family Day' almost always draw more feedback than anything else we do."
Anecdotally speaking, I have to agree with that. Although I still roll my eyes at the unending stream of family-first stories, I'm not the person the paper is worried about losing. That person more resembles my wife, who picked up the eye-roll-inducing "Today" section from this past Saturday--the one with the feature story giving tips to parents who take their kids to water parks--and said, "Oh! Now there's a story I'll actually read." When I told her I thought it was more...oh, say, pandering claptrap, she correctly noted that if I spent more time taking my daughter to the water park, as she had, I'd realize what a good service piece it was.
So the Morning News is better at reaching my wife than I am, which brings us back to why I wish you'd attended that focus group, so I wouldn't have had to write this column and reveal that fact.
