Industry News

Distinctly Montana Magazine

Distinctly Montana Magazine has been sold by founder Michael Blevins to Bill Muhlenfeld and Anthea George of Bozeman, Montana, according to John Cribb, Cribb, Greene & Associates, who represented the seller in the transaction.

Distinctly Montana Magazine is a high quality glossy product published quarterly and distributed throughout Montana and most of the nation. The magazine, founded in 2001, is a resource guide for all things Montana and includes local features, literary pieces, and high quality art and photography. Included in the sale is the magazine website at distinctlymontana.com.

According to Anthea George, "Distinctly Montana is a quality publication with a great concept and a focused mission. We look forward as new owners to bringing the best of Montana to residents and visitors alike."

Cribb, Greene & Associates is an eighty-seven year old publishing company merger and acquisition firm with offices in Bozeman, Montana and Charlottesville, Virginia.

Shaw Newspapers Using 34" Tab

July 14, 2008

Towards the end of 2006, publisher Sam Fisher of the Bureau County Republican in Princeton, Illinois noticed that every time they shrank the web-width of the newspaper, less and less of his GOSS Community press was being used. "I noticed we were still using a 35" plate but actually printing on less and less of it," Fisher said.

That is when Fisher started to discuss the advantages of taking this Shaw Newspapers tri-weekly to a 34" tabloid – or as they call it, to the EZ Read format.

After a lot of research and discussion they were convinced when they made the switch on February 2nd of this year, that the move would:
• Use 32% less newsprint per page than going to a 25" broadsheet.
• Be utilizing almost all of their presses designed width capacity.
• Get twice as many color pages utilizing the same number of color units.
• Save in plates, film, and potentially labor, since it took half the number of black units for the same number of pages.

While Fisher was nervous about how readers and advertisers would react, he found that it instead was a great success, with positive comments outweighing negative comments by five or six to one. One reader called him and said, "I really wanted to be upset because I'm generally not for change, but this morning was the first time I could read the paper without having to move my coffee cup off the table."

Fisher said that they had prepared their sales reps to handle advertiser objections by downplaying the smaller physical size of each column inch and promoting the fact that the same size ad would now dominate a larger portion of the pages. A 30" ad would represent 31% of the page, rather than 23% of the page with a regular broadsheet – a 34% gain for the same money.

Because their advertisers are generally small space advertisers, they didn't have to contend with full page advertisers. They also hand insert, so the move to tabloid didn't create any post-press issues.

The one investment they made during the move was to buy all new racks from Steel City that were designed to show the full tab pages in the front of the rack. Fisher feels this investment was well worth the money and has helped make the move positive in the community.

For more investment on how to make a successful transition to the "EZ Read" format, feel free to contact Sam Fisher at sfisher@bcrnews.com.

Back...