On paper, Santa Monica looks like an attractive place to run a newspaper.
The city’s only daily was shut down almost a year and a half ago, creating a news and advertising vacuum in one of the more demographically desirable communities in California.
But there’s a funny thing about businesses in Santa Monica: few of them seem to like to advertise much, at least in the local paper. That’s what may have led to the demise of the Santa Monica Outlook, and it’s certainly making things tough for the newspaper hoards that have swarmed on Santa Monica in the hopes of taking the Outlook’s place.
There are at least a half-dozen newspapers virtual and otherwise now covering the city of Santa Monica, backed by everyone from the mighty Los Angeles Times to a guy who founded a video security business. Few if any of them are turning a profit, and a shakeout is almost certainly on the way.
“It’s like Santa Monica is the holy grail of some sort, everybody wants to be here,” said Jeff Hall, editor and publisher of the Brentwood Media Group. “Whenever I hear about somebody starting another newspaper here, I just kind of shake my head and laugh.”
Hall runs a group of free weekly newspapers covering communities on the Westside. After Copley Press shut down the 23,000-circulation Outlook in March 1998, Hall took a monthly paper called the Santa Monica News, changed its name to the Santa Monica Sun and ramped it up to a weekly publication.
Business for the Sun hasn’t exactly been booming. Hall says it is in the black thanks to a strong classified ads section, but it, like other newspapers in Santa Monica, is having a hard time attracting retailers and others to take out display ads.
“Maybe (advertisers in Santa Monica) are paralyzed because they have so many options,” Hall said.
Indeed they do. Three other weekly papers besides the Sun have appeared in Santa Monica since the demise of the Outlook: the Mirror, the News and the Argonaut, the latter two being free weeklies based in Culver City and Marina del Rey, respectively, that have increased their distribution in neighboring Santa Monica.
Then there’s the Times, whose Times Community News division responded to the demise of the Outlook by publishing an insert called Our Times that is placed in the Thursday edition of the L.A. paper for many Westside subscribers.
The most experimental venture of all is the Lookout, an online publication at www.surfsantamonica.com that has no print counterpart. The Lookout is published by Jorge Casuso, a former reporter with the Outlook who teamed up with Web designer Iris Oliveras and posts articles written by former Outlook staffers.
“We’re the only daily left in Santa Monica,” Casuso says proudly, though he admits the online paper isn’t bringing in a lot of money as yet. He’s funding it with credit cards and the revenues from about a half-dozen banner advertisers, who pay $300 a month.
So why do publishers keep coming to Santa Monica given the enormous competition and the apparent dearth of advertising dollars? Most of them believe their product is superior to the other offerings on the market. And they seem unanimous in the belief that the Outlook didn’t fold for lack of ad support, blaming Copley for mismanagement instead.
“In my view, we clearly provide the best and most comprehensive newspaper in town, except perhaps for the L.A. Times. And I don’t think it does justice to Santa Monica,” said Michael Rosenthal, president of Marina del Rey-based video security company Instant Replay Communications and publisher of the 3-month-old Santa Monica Mirror.
While the Mirror has been distributed free to businesses and residents, Rosenthal plans to turn it into a subscription-based paper with a 25-cent newsstand price. He is using his own funds, generated from his other company, to launch the paper.
“If the community supports the paper through its advertising, we have a chance of success. If it doesn’t, we don’t,” Rosenthal said.
The great smokeout
As federal officials this week begin visiting the four competing contractors for one of the biggest available marketing accounts in the country, a handful of Los Angeles agencies have emerged as serious contenders for a chunk of the business.
Up for grabs is an anti-smoking advertising and P.R. campaign worth between $250 million and $300 million a year. The campaign is being sponsored by the National Tobacco Control Foundation, which was set up as part of last year’s settlement between the tobacco companies and the state attorneys general; under the deal, the tobacco companies are forced to contribute to a fund that sponsors the anti-smoking campaign.
Although none of the four finalists for prime contractor are based in L.A., five potential subcontractors are.
Four of them are part of a group led by Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners in New York. If Kirshenbaum wins the mainstream advertising part of the contract, mainstream P.R. would be handled by Century City-based Rogers & Associates; Beverly Hills-based BWR (a.k.a. Baker Winokur Ryder) would handle Hollywood P.R.; various ad duties would be handled by Mid-Wilshire-based Asher & Partners; and West Hollywood-based Western Initiative Media would cover media buying.
The local odd man out is downtown L.A.-based Imada Wong Communications, which would handle ethnic P.R. under a group led by Boston-based Arnold Communications.
The other two prime contractors left in the running are the Richards Group in Dallas and Messner, Vetere, Berger, McNamee, Schmetterer/Euro RSG in New York.
Right now, the competitors are working on creative presentations based on a theoretical assignment proposed by the tobacco foundation. A final decision is expected in late September.
Assistant Managing Editor Dan Turner writes a weekly column on marketing for the Los Angeles Business Journal. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].
