Jerry Bellune July 29, 2013

In 30 years in publishing, we’ve had our failures.
We’ve helped bury three failing newspapers.
The first died for lack of community support.
We won a trunkload of awards.
But our competition connected with advertisers.
We failed where it counted – at the bottom line.
Advertising pays 80% of the bills.

The second died in a highly competitive market.
Our competition poured millions into the battle.
They were willing to pay whatever it took to win.
We were badly over-matched. We lost.

The third died because we failed to make a profit.
This was a puzzler. We knew how to fail.
We were determined not to fail a third time.
But we did. It was a bitter reminder.
There are no sure-things in business.

There are three big lessons in all this failure.
All have to do with relations and the bottom line.

1. Know who you are there to serve.
We weren’t there to win awards although we did.
We were there to connect readers and advertisers.
Our competitor did it better than we did.
Lesson: Never blame others for your failures.
Learn from your shortcomings.
Always accept responsibility for what happens.

2. Stay out of high stakes games you can’t afford.
We thought we had the resources to compete.
We didn’t know our competitor had even more.
He was willing to spend whatever it cost.
We lost $2 million the last month we published.
This is how wars are won and lost.
The deeper pockets usually win.

3. Don’t cut costs that will cut your throat.
As profits fell, we were forced to cut and cut.
Finally there wasn’t much more than bones.
We tried competing on the cheap. It didn’t work.
Readers expect quality we didn’t deliver. Our fault.
We see this going on in daily newspapers.
We’re fortunate. Local newspapers are doing well.

Next: Courage and common sense.
Copyright 2013, The Bellune Co. Inc.
Jerry Bellune and his family own and operate book, digital, newspaper, newsletter  and niche publishing companies in Lexington. For a complimentary copy of his Put Romance in Your  Advertising, contact him at [email protected]