By Fred Seely
Editor
(Editor’s note: When newspapers write about newspapers, there’s the danger of using terms which may be too “in-house” to the reader who isn’t familiar with the business. So, we’ve put some in Boldface type and explained them)
Sales in the real estate market are down and others are affected. But, as we all keep telling ourselves, everything runs in cycles and they aren’t forgetting that at One Riverside Avenue in Jacksonville.
That’s the home of The Florida Times-Union, the major link in this area between the building/real estate professionals and the consumer.
“We know where we live and we know people want to live here‚” said the newspaper’s link to our industries, Joe DeSalvo. “It’s coming back. It’s an important part of our company’s future and we’re not slowing down just because the market has.”
The T-U has been forced to devote less space to real estate and construction because the News hole depends on advertising, and the industries are producing less advertising.
It wasn’t always this way and it won’t stay this way, say the newspaper’s executives.
“We believe that print is very powerful,” said Mark Lane, the company’s vice president who oversees its Digital media areas as well as its Classified advertising. “It’s a trusted medium. It’s our job to help our advertisers, particularly in difficult times.
“We’re continually coming up with new programs to help. These will be even stronger when the market comes back.”
Today’s coverage, as any real estate veteran will tell you, is far superior to the distant past when the real estate and construction communities found little help as they tried to reach buyers. There wasn’t anyone devoted to those industries and that all changed in 1996, when the newspaper made the decision to improve its Special sections.
DeSalvo was asked to make a career-changing move. He was the newspaper’s sports editor, a job that gave him experience in other areas of the company, and he was asked to move to the advertising department to become Director of Special Publications.
“Ray Dahlman (then the advertising director) saw the potential to upgrade several areas‚” said DeSalvo. “Building and real estate were major area.”
They surveyed other newspapers and settled on Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach as models. DeSalvo went to work to build a relationship between the newspaper and the industry.
That produced the first section, “Builders Showcase,” that debuted in 1999 as an eight-page Broadsheet section.
Times were good and it was reflected in the product’s growth. They soon had it to 48 pages with an average of 60 percent advertising and 40 percent Advertorial‚ and news copy. Included was a page of news about the real estate community.
“The builders loved the section,” said DeSalvo, “and so did the Realtors. We kept hearing “Why can’t we have one like that? Why can’t we have more than one page? So, in 2004, we started a real estate section on Saturdays called ‘Homes.’”
“I read the Saturday Real Estate section religiously,” said Chris Shee of Jandler & Company. “As an owner and manager of several residential developments, it’s important for me to know how much builders are spending in advertising dollars, the type of promotions being offered, and the inventory level of the builder advertising (if advertising spec inventory).
“Also, when choosing builders for a particular community, their advertising quality and quantity certainly factor in the decision making process.”
The new section contained Advertorial copy, almost all provided by public relations firms, and what has become one of the entire newspaper’s most popular features: “Transactions,” a list of who bought where and for how much.
“It’s a snapshot of the neighborhood,” said DeSalvo. “Builders and Realtors like it because it lists the prices; the regular reader likes it because it tells them who’s moving in and how much they paid.”
That’s the history when times were good. The slump in the market has lowered all ships and real estate and building advertising have plummeted.
“We’re realistic and I know the reader is, too‚” said DeSalvo. “The industry is down.” In June 2008, the advertising had dipped to the point that neither a Freestanding Friday or Saturday section was feasible, so they were merged.
“We’re just like the people who will be reading your story in Realty/Builder Connection,” said DeSalvo. “We know times will get better, and we will get back to our normal business then. Having one section is temporary.”
He and his editor, Craig Richardson, are doing their best to get what once filled up to 100 pages into perhaps one-tenth that, or even less. The press releases have been shortened, the photos are smaller and there’s no Filler to be found.
“We work hard to give added value to our advertisers,” said Richardson, who joined DeSalvo in 2006 after five years of editing one of the company’s military newspapers. “We work with these folks to get stories and photos to present their products in a way that they can’t get across in their ads.
“It’s all value-added.”
Eden Jordan of Vanguard GMAC adds, “I have found that the Times-Union is a great place for press releases and stories about the real estate market. I really took advantage of the paper when they were doing the Clay County section, but due to the internet, the buyers are looking on line so they can see multiple photos and full descriptions of the houses.”
Even though the coverage is on advertisers, the section doesn’t look much different from the regular newspaper.
A column titled “Under the Roof” runs the Rail and contains condensed information. DeSalvo and Richardson want a major feature each week, usually written by staff member Barbara Gavan, and that often takes the rest of the front page.
“Transactions” are fewer — after all, home sales aren’t what they used to be — but still take quite a bit of the precious space.
“I really utilize the recorded deeds and pricing for areas that have interest to me,” said Holly McMurry of The Legends of Real Estate. “I also check pricing of construction and incentives that are offered.”
To make up for the fewer Transactions and less space, the editors had to get creative.
“We started a feature called ‘On the Market’ that has been a tremendous hit,” said DeSalvo. It’s a feature involving one home and one Realtor with a photo and the basic information.
“A Realtor had a home on the market for 18 months,” said DeSalvo. “When we featured it, she had 15 people show up the next day with our newspaper in hand. She came away with three offers and has a contract pending.”
The future, says Lane, will bring changes but the core product will remain the same.
“We believe in Multi-media,” said the vice president, “and there are other ways to help an advertiser reach the buyer. Our website (www.jacksonville.com) is a powerful tool that can be used in many ways.”
He has a fan in Palencia’s Naomi Lumley, who said, “Jacksonville.com ran a banner ad for us promoting the ‘Dancing in the Street’ event. We had over 100,000 hits. And our event was the best one yet.”
That kind of reaction gives Lane plenty of hope for the future, and not only for the internet.
“The newspaper business isn’t going away, either,” he said. “Our circulation is still strong and we reach hundreds of thousands of people each day.”
But don’t we read about the business being in trouble?
“I’m 48 and I plan to be at a newspaper until I retire. And I may not retire until I’m 90,” he said.
Newspaper lingo
Advertorial: A laudatory story about a product. The copy usually is provided by an advertiser and may be part of an arrangement that includes the purchase of advertising.
Boldface: A method of making a word, sentence or paragraph stand out by using type that is thicker.
Broadsheet: The size of the Times-Union newspaper.
Classified advertising: Ads that are placed in categories or “classifications” (such as “Homes - Beaches”.) They usually run in smaller type. Much of this advertising has been lost to the internet and is a major source of today’s problems in the newspaper industry.
Digital media: Methods of reaching readers through electronic devices such as computers or Blackberrys.
Filler: Stories that have marginal value but which are needed to fill remaining space on pages when the editor has exhausted his relevant copy.
Freestanding: A section that is self-contained without any non-theme copy included. The T-U’s real estate section once was Freestanding; the decline of advertising has reduced the size and required information from other areas to be included in order to have enough pages to fill a section. It now often runs with some non-related Classified ads.
Multi-media: The use of more than one medium. For instance, an advertiser can purchase “Multi-media” space from the T-U by using multiple areas–in this case, the newspaper and the website.
News hole: The amount of paper (also called “room” or “space”) an editor has to fill after the ads have been placed.
Rail: The area down the left side of any page, but particularly the front page of a section. If there is one story placed there from top to bottom, it “runs the Rail.” On page 1 of this newspaper, Jim Bailey’s column runs the Rail.
Special section: A section devoted to one subject that often is advertising-based. The space in the Times-Union devoted to the construction industry and real estate are “Special sections‚” even though they may not exclusively fill an entire part of the newspaper. Special sections may or may not appear on a regular frequency - for instance, the building/real estate runs weekly while a golf Special section only is published on the Sunday before The Players Championship.