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The Paid Readership Imperative on March 22 – Building subscribers and holding onto them

The New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA) and the Northeast Association of Communication Executives (NEACE) are collaborating on a special, two-part program at NENPA’s spring convention in Waltham on March 22.

The Paid Readership Imperative brings together experts on building and retaining online subscribers led by Tim Griggs, founder and CEO of Blue Engine, a company successfully working with publishers to grow digital business.

Griggs is the former head of revenue products at The New York Times, a former publisher at the Texas Tribune, a former coach with the Media Transformation Challenge at Harvard University, and the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill. Griggs also led the Table Stakes program for commercial television at Arizona State University, he was the co-creator of the American Press Institute’s Better News hub and co-author of Table Stakes: Getting in the Game of News. Griggs will offer best practices in subscription sales and retention during the first half of the program.

Following his presentation, John Harrison, vice president of Customer Experience at Wallit, a software company providing e-commerce and customer management services for digital publishing, will lead a discussion among New England newspaper executives on what is working at their operations. Harrison is on NEACE’s board of directors and will facilitate a discussion that will also include fellow NEACE board member Gary Lavariere, chief revenue officer at The Berkshire Eagle, Tim Dwyer, publisher of The Day in New London, Conn., Jim Falzone, publisher for CNHI’s North of Boston Media Group, and Allie Ginwala, audience engagement editor at the Concord Monitor.

They will discuss the success of their paywalls, audience building, and other strategies in helping to grow subscription revenue

NENPA’s spring convention is scheduled for March 22-23, 2024, at the Westin Waltham Boston in Waltham, Mass. This program is slated for 1 p.m. Plan to join us for this interactive session where you’ll learn new strategies being implemented at news organizations around New England. We will also break into roundtable discussions to delve deeper into solutions.

We are extending NENPA-member pricing to NEACE members so they can register using the NENPA member options for Individual or Group Registration on the registration form. If you have any issues with registration or questions about the program please contact, Tara Cleary at t.cleary@nenpa.com.

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Jim Falzone

Jim Falzone is the publisher of the seven newspapers that comprise North of Boston Media Group in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In addition, he serves as vice president of production for parent company CNHI, LLC, and is president of the Northeast Association of Communication Executives.  Before working at North of Boston Media Group, Falzone held editorial, ad production, and operations roles at Gannett newspapers in upstate New York.

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John Harrison

John Harrison is a digital publishing industry professional with over 20 years of experience in product management, marketing, and sales. He is VP of Customer Experience at Wallit, providing publishers subscription management and web content paywall services to help capture revenue from digital and print products.

Previously, while at Tecnavia, he helped news publishers implement new e-edition digital reader platforms, websites, apps, and paywalls. John was also the Worldwide Director of Marketing for Agfa’s Systems unit based in Mortsel, Belgium, where he led the development and introduction of the industry’s first PDF-based, pre-press workflow system. John is a board member of NEACE.

Earlier in his career, John handled product management and marketing of pioneering systems in ad typography, technical documentation, pagination, digital type fonts, imagesetters, color management, and screening.

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Support Student Press Freedom Day On Feb 22

The sixth annual Student Press Freedom Day is Feb. 22. It is an opportunity for us all to recognize the increasingly critical role student journalists play in our communities, but also to support the student press through legislation, legal and educational resources, and mentorships.

Justin Silverman of the New England First Amendment Coalition and Josh Moore at the Student Press Law Center are co-writing a forthcoming op/ed your publication can run in celebration of Student Press Freedom Day. NENPA will distribute the op/ed through our email lists on Feb. 16, 2024.

Student Press Freedom Day is an initiative by the Student Press Law Center where students, advisers and press freedom groups work together to:

  • Raise awareness of the vital work of student journalists
  • Highlight how censorship threatens that important work, and
  • Empower student journalists to take action to restore their First Amendment Freedoms.

Each year, Student Press Freedom Day grows in scope as more students write op-eds, create videos, host events, tell their stories and build momentum for New Voices campaigns in their state.

The theme for Student Press Freedom Day 2024 is Powerfully Persistent.

Learn more about Student Press Freedom Day

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Gary Lavariere

Gary Lavariere is a forward-thinking leader who possesses a wealth of knowledge relative to data and digital strategies that drive success. He is currently the Chief Revenue Officer overseeing the business unit at New England Newspapers, Inc. (NENI). In his seven years as a media executive at NENI & the Las Vegas Review-Journal, he has quickly risen to a leadership role and is highly regarded in the industry.

He is a firm believer that the future for media will be driven by the digital subscription business. To that end, he engages deeply in development of lifecycle journeys, digital funnel development, data-driven campaign management, and constant testing to improve conversion and engagement rates.

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Allie Ginwala

Allie Ginwala has been the audience engagement editor for the Concord Monitor since March 2021. She manages the opinion section and oversees various community and audience engagement initiatives including the Monitor’s reader advisory board, annual Impact Report, the News for Your Neighbor program, and an opinion writing workshop series.

A New Hampshire native, she graduated from UNH and has written for several New Hampshire publications, including The Hippo Press and Keene Sentinel. Before joining the Monitor, she earned her master’s degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and coordinated The Open Newsroom, an initiative in NYC to make local news more collaborative.

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Tim Griggs

Tim is the founder and CEO of Blue Engine Collaborative, a coaching and consulting organization that has helped thousands of publishers around the globe generate hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental revenue to support good journalism. Tim understands the power that comes from a helping hand in the face of needed transformational change. He’s the former head of revenue products at The New York Times, where he was responsible for growing the digital subscription business and all other digital revenue products. In his 15 years with The New York Times, he also served as director of strategic planning and was the executive editor of a local NYT-owned newspaper in Wilmington, N.C. He’s also served as publisher of the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan startup based in Austin, Texas.

Tim is a former coach in the Media Transformation Challenge at Harvard University and the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill; former program lead for the Table Stakes for commercial television program at the Cronkite School at Arizona State University; co-creator of the American Press Institute’s Better News hub; and co-author of Table Stakes: Getting in the Game of News.

He’s a recovering Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu addict and hopes to make his children laugh at least once per day.

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Timothy Dwyer

Timothy Dwyer is the president & publisher of The Day.

Dwyer began his career at The Boston Globe while a student at Northeastern University. Upon graduating from Northeastern with a degree in history, The Globe hired him as a staff writer. After seven years at the Globe covering everything from cops to politics, Dwyer joined the staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer. He received the George Polk Award for national reporting, along with colleague Robert Frump, in 1983 for a series of investigative stories on the U.S. maritime industry.

He was a national reporter based in New Orleans and a foreign correspondent based in London while at The Inquirer before joining the sports staff as a general assignment reporter. He served as deputy sports editor, a general sports columnist and sports editor. His work has appeared in The Best American Sports Writing literal anthology. Dwyer covered three Winter Olympics games, the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup Finals, the NBA playoffs, the NCAA basketball tournament, the Ryder Cup, the America’s Cup and World Cup skiing.

After 20 years at the Inquirer, he became a metro reporter at The Washington Post. Dwyer covered President Bush’s second inauguration, Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia Tech massacre, and the trial of the only terrorist convicted in connection with 9-11, Zacarias Moussaoui.

He became Executive Editor of The Day in July 2007, and President and Publisher in February 2019.

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Register now for How to Engage, Excite, and Sell MORE with New England Data from Pulse on Feb 22!

Join us for our first NENPA University webinar of 2024! The event is free for NENPA members and $15 for non-members.

Sammy Papert, long-time New England Representative for Pulse Research, shares highlights from the 2023 New England Pulse of America (POA) survey research. POA is an annual national purchasing survey that captures shopping and purchasing intentions and spans 500+ business types and several thousand products and services. Sammy gives his recommendations on how to use the survey data to position yourself for success, sell more, prospect more effectively, and grow revenues! There will be plenty of time for Q&A and you’ll also learn how to participate in the 2024 survey for free and get your own research this year!

Register Now

Why attend:

  • Review of 2023 Pulse survey research findings
  • Best practices to sell with data
  • Real-life examples of how to use data
  • One fully functional QR Teaser of your choice
  • Your own copy of the 2023 New England research data
  • Access to recording and slide deck after the presentation
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Students apply for a paid AP Vote Entry Operator position and work with AP to gather and report voting results from across the US

The Associated Press is offering students at universities and colleges an opportunity to pioneer the development of a Nationwide pool of special AP Vote Entry Operators working with AP to gather and report voting results from across the entire United States throughout 2024, beginning with the Super Tuesday primaries this March.

Approximately 100 students will be selected from this pool to work on the March 5 Super Tuesday primaries and paid $17.00/hour to be trained remotely in February in the use of AP’s proprietary election reporting systems and paid to work remotely with AP gathering primary election results for reporting world-wide to AP clients.

Before the 2020 election, AP worked from election centers set up in several locations around the country, but COVID issues required AP to switch to working remotely with individuals from their own homes. Now, students from across the country will be selected to comprise the first cadre of more than 500 students who will be hired to work with AP throughout 2024, covering the results of dozens of primaries across the nation and eventually election returns the night of the General Election November 5, and possibly beyond.

Participating students will be gathering the actual voting returns reported by AP news stringers from every part of the United States, helping AP inform citizens of the actual voting results, not predictions, estimates or exit polls. Participating directly in this essential civic activity is a wonderful opportunity for students to obtain first-hand knowledge of how the country’s voting system works, how news coverage of those results is managed, and also gain a valuable resume cite while being paid.

All training and work gathering election returns are performed remotely, allowing students to work in comfortable, secure environments of their choosing to ensure accurate gathering and reporting of results. AP staff emphasize that the accurate and timely gathering and reporting of election returns is the organization’s highest priority, ensuring citizens receive the most reliable results possible. Students will be working with AP professional staff and AP “stringers” who will be reporting the results directly from the more than 3,000 counties, cities and towns across the United States and its possessions.

FUNDING:
Applicants will be paid both for time spent working the election events and for time spent in remote live training sessions in the use of AP’s systems. Requirements for participation and applying for positions are on the attached flier.

Students are encouraged to participate in this essential civic responsibility while earning money for themselves.

Participants are paid $17 an hour for attending training and election night data gathering.

TO APPLY:
Have students email their contact information (name, email address, cell phone number) to VEOpool@AP.org. AP will contact them directly to determine their availability for specific training dates and to ensure they have the appropriate computer capabilities to participate.

While students can apply for participation at any time, those wishing to participate in the March Super Tuesday election coverage should submit their applications as soon as possible to give AP time to process them and include them in training sessions in February.

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