A newspaper is a continuous publication that contains news, informative articles and advertisements. It is usually printed on a low-grade paper by the news organizations to publish the information about the events going on all around the globe. The paper studies the history and present status of a leading newspaper in the United States of America, namely Houston Chronicles and identifies the problems faced by the printed version of the company. Along with that, the paper presents a test that provides outcomes to be used by Houston Chronicles to survive and seek success in the world of global digitalization.
The Houston Chronicle is the largest selling newspaper in Texas, the United States of America. Houston Chronicle has it's headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building at Texas Avenue. The Sunday circulation in the United States stated Houston Chronicle to be the third largest newspaper in the country. After a long term rivalry against the Houston Post, the Chronicle became the primary newspaper in Houston. It is owned by Hearst Corporation, which is a private multinational media corporation with revenue of $4 billion. The paper employs around 2000 people that include around 300 journalists, photographers, and editors. It has bureaus in Austin and Washington D. C. It has been found that the company has around seventy-five million visitors to its website every month. It mainly serves as a newspaper of record for the Houston area.
The history of the newspaper takes us back to the 14th century. During the Renaissance in Europe, handwritten newsletters were distributed privately among the businessmen. It helped to pass on information regarding wars, social customs, economic conditions, and human interests. The first printed newspaper was published in the 1400’s in Germany. It was published in the form of a pamphlet that enclosed highly sensationalized contents. The first English newspaper was Corantos that was produced by the occurrence of events that were worthy to notice. The first successive newspaper was The Weekly Newes in the year 1622. The first actual English newspaper came that was named as London Gazette in the year 1666. It was only officially approved newspaper for a long period. But, the printed newspaper started changing with the addition of commercial advertisements that converted it into a business to earn huge revenue.
On January 1901, a young reporter named Marcellus E. Foster was assigned by the Houston Post to cover up a chronicle of a first oil well at Spindletop in Beaumont. While covering the story, he gambled $30 and earned $5000 out of it. He returned to Houston with his newly found wealth and dreamed of owning his newspaper. He found investors of an additional $20000 and started the splendid business with the foundation of Houston Chronicles on 14th October 1901. The newspaper started getting recognition and became the daily essentials for the people in Houston. With growing popularity, Houston Chronicle became the US’s third largest selling newspaper.
A hypothesis statement presents the assumed ideas that will be analyzed in the paper to carry out a testable assumption. The three hypothesis statements that will be used in the paper to perform the test are presented in the points given below:
H1: Preservation of the heritage can lead to failure of its business policies in the battle of digitalization.
H2: Houston Chronicle needs to implement digitalization to survive in the present business environment.
H3: Implementing new ideas and talent resources can lead to the growth of the business.
Houston Chronicle’s current business model has been operated to achieve the vision, mission, aims, and objective. Considering the global trend of digitalization, it is competitively difficult for a print media business to run in a fluent order. At the modern age of digitalization, Houston Chronicle has offered newspaper to its target demographic profile. According to the marketing team of Houston Chronicle, thirty percent of the printed newspaper has been marketed directly to the customers’ doorsteps. Added to that, seventy percent of direct business offers printed advertisements that include commercial printing, projects, information and graphical advertisement.
Currently, Houston Chronicle provides tactical circulation method to impress the target demographics. Through their traditional printed newspaper as well as the website, they operate the news to complement each other. In the modern phase of digital technology, without website diversification, only printed media of Houston Chronicle cannot become successful in front of the readers. At present, some tenured employees are working with this printing organization. Meanwhile, most of the organizational human resources are not trained to use digital media in order to deliver digital news products to the technology savvy people (Cummings). Within the printing press and media office of Houston Chronicle a hybrid human resources environment can be found. Considering the latest technology development, some of the business production must be changed to become more digitally confidence.
Meanwhile, in operational section of the business, Houston Chronicle offers significant reward and compensation to the employees, distributors, suppliers and organizers. Strong, reliable editorial sources, community preference of Houston Chronicle’s print media and consumer reach of the paper have significantly supported the business structure of the newspaper organization. Some of the expert news reporters and classified advertisers of the organization have created opportunity in the news space to improve the further business growth in this competitive market of digital printing.
Fundamentally, Houston Chronicle is determined to improvise within this sort of digital savvy industry. Understanding the key points of success, Houston Chronicle is trying to implement the emergent plans to stay in the market. Being a print media organization, Houston Chronicle has maintained strict business strategic plans and obvious goals. Considering the growth of digital media marketing, the organization has identified its key organizational resources to develop a precise strategy to impress the business clients (Masirevic). Analyzing the people, subscribers demand from the newspaper, and the company has influenced to provide the same to the customers at a reasonable price range. Apart from that, for advertisers, Houston Chronicle provide significant quality printing, branding tactics, ideas and marketing concepts to get the appreciation of the valuable customers. Considering the essence of holding the old clients, strategically Houston Chronicle supplies better opportunity and concepts.
The role of the editorial manager, printing consultant, designer and media marketing manager is very imperative to make further organizational goals. Strategic profit managers must identify the scope and opportunity to the limited resources to set legitimate objective and rationales for the same. Currently, interdependency of the departments of Houston Chronicle has convincingly utilized to make proper development. In the strategic analysis, digital media competitors have been recommended as one of the fundamental obstacles (Gray and Rumpe). As a result of the same, Houston Chronicle offers printed advertisement at the cheapest rates to impress the advertising agencies. Furthermore, some of the collaboration prospects have been going on to get a competitive field in the market. On the basis of strategic background, Houston Chronicle has tried some of the advertising marketing to find some additional support from the client base. The primary objective of Houston Chronicle is to impress the buyers to pick newspaper and advertisement providing innovative featured views and marketing ideas.
It can be seen from the present statistics that the revenue earnings of the company have gradually declined in the past few years. But, the profit margin of Houston Chronicle has increased due to a reduction in the cost of production. Houston Chronicle uses the digital media or an online portal to reach a number of customers in the age of digital media. It reduces the cost of printing that has led to increasing the profit margin of the company. It has been found that the business earns its 62% revenue from advertisement, 8% from commercial printing and rest of the 30% comes from consumer newspaper. Along with that, the company also earns a small amount of revenue from event hosting. Due to increased digitalization and threats from free online sources of advertisement, the revenue earnings for the company have decreased at a high rate. Hence, the company needs to take necessary steps to mitigate those risks and seek success in the world of digitalization (Tenner).
Houston Chronicle has continuously developed its HR structure to meet the changing needs of the business environment. It has developed the responsibilities and roles of the human resources to develop a sustainable organization culture. Along with that, the company has improved its talent management and performance management system by implementing new strategies to gain a competitive edge over its rivals (Masirevic). The company does not have a proper career path for its employees that acts as a problem for it recruited employees. It uses season workers to meet the seasonal volumes during the 4th quarter of the year that has some holidays. Hence, the company does not focus on having permanent staffs and do not concentrate on providing proper facilities to the employees.
A SWOT analysis is used to analyze the strategic performance of the Houston Chronicle. It helps to analyze the external and internal environmental factors that influence the business of the company. The SWOT analysis presents the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Houston Chronicle that are presented in the points given below:
Strengths
Speed to market: Houston Chronicle is a well-reputed newspaper that has a high-speed marketing capability. It helps the company to market a lot of products in the minimum span of time.
Consumer Reach: The ability of the company to arrive at a large number of consumers acts as strength for it. The high market reach helps the company to gain good recognition in the market.
Radio and newspaper properties: The newspaper is available in printed media as well as in voice media that makes it more popular in the market.
Customer volumes: Houston Chronicle has a high customer volume that increases the daily sales of the printed newspaper and provides the company with a high revenue earning.
Ability to leverage company magazine: It can influence publications of other company. The competitors are quite concerned about the contents of Houston Chronicle while preparing their magazines.
Voice of the community: It acts as the voice of the community. Houston Chronicle presents the views and feedbacks of the public on any issues taking place worldwide.
String reliable source: Houston Chronicle believes in presenting the truth to its customers. Hence, it is a reliable source of information that can be used for any purpose.
Weaknesses
Weak digital branding: The Company has a weak digital branding that acts as a weakness for it.
Declining circulation volumes: It has been observed that in few years the circulation volumes of printed media has declined at a great rate because of growing digitalization.
Management philosophy: The management of Houston Chronicle believes in maintaining the heritage policies to carry on its business. Hence, it makes the company out dated that acts as a weakness for Houston Chronicle to meet the changing business environment.
Changing management: The changing management team is also another weakness of it. It becomes difficult for a new team to understand the present situation of the business and take prompt steps to meet the uncertainties.
Opportunities
Grow internal digital products: The growing internal digital products provide Houston Chronicle to grow its business in the age of digitalization.
Improve profit margins: The improved profit margin due to lower cost of production provides the company with an opportunity to grow its business.
Consolidating support structure: The consolidating support structure of Houston Chronicle acts as an opportunity for it to grow its business.
Threats
Online classified advertisers: Advertisement is an important source of revenue for the company. The online classified advertisers act as a threat to the company.
Free news sources and social media: The free news sources and social media have become important sources of news for the present generation of people. Hence, the number of customers for paid news companies has gradually declined.
At the age of digital media, the internet and social media, it is really difficult for any print media such as Houston Chronicle. The publication house deals in newspaper and magazines only. Therefore, proper website marketing is mandatory for promoting the print media business. In the human resources management, digital talent must be added to grow the knowledge of digital media within the enterprise organization. For digital print advertising media, precise competitive measures and deals must be evaluated to create definite market impact. In order to stay firm in the time of digitalization, strategic alliances can be termed as one of an essential business tactics (Gray and Rumpe). Therefore, Houston Chronicle should look to build third party media providers to compete with the other digital media giants of the industry. In the digital advertisement space, such tactics can be mentioned as very logical decision to cope up with the current business position of Houston Chronicle.
In the case of developing a partnership with the distributors as well as suppliers, Houston Chronicle must utilize strict pricing policy. Regarding distribution cost, low costing and extra benefits must be given to the suppliers who directly deal with the customers (Nitsche). Added to this, digital contact script must be developed to restrict the clients from canceling jobs. Meanwhile, digital website popularity and social media presence of Houston Chronicle must produce efficient outcomes. In this way, Houston Chronicle can grow their revenue of the business. Furthermore, digital media promotion and website functionality should provide additional marketing prospects to get new clients essential for the business environment. Evidently, to make significant growth in the printing market, merger, acquisition and alliance with famous printing media business can set the business tone in a positive way (Trpovski). Such effective decision making can eventually help the business to grow further as well as generate advertising revenue.
The paper has been critically developed on the basis of Houston Chronicle’s performance and plans. Considering the global digitization of marketing sector, Houston Chronicle must understand the current position of their business and modify the business terms as per the requirement. If the print media publication house can utterly preserve its heritage, the same step can lead to failure of the organizational business policies. As the market is going to adopt digitalization, the company will suffer heavy losses in terms of revenue figures (Trpovski). Added to that, there is actual evidence that can prove that can show Houston Chronicle must implement digitalization to its business to stay in the competition with other market giants. Last but not least, in order to make further growth in the market, new ideas, talent resources, and strategic alliance can be the major arsenals for Houston Chronicle.
Following the measures in the tough business environment, Houston Chronicle has developed significant organizational culture, business terms, social benefits and business diversification in order to maintain a competitive ground in the market. Understanding the proper business model for such critical time, leaders and management of Houston Chronicle have retrieved economic policies and guidelines to get the maximum output from the human resources. Logically, the trend is completely against Houston Chronicle. As one of the leading newspaper publication house of the USA, it is very surprising how digitalization in marketing and advertising can create significant challenges for a well-established print media organization. Invariably, the marketing team and editor’s performance can be mentioned to find out essential monitoring strategies to rotate the scale of success. Affirmative decision making and proper analysis of the strength and weakness of the digital media counterparts have helped Houston Chronicle to take competitive business actions. Active system monitoring and business implications have guided Houston Chronicle to achieve the market share. Therefore, progressive changes in the technology have defined the future of the print media such as Houston Chronicle.
The paper has produced sufficient options to Houston Chronicle to create further market development and competitive approaches. In the age of digitalization, strategic alliances, and corporation acquisition can be termed as the most effective process of success to stay competitive in the digital print media market. As most of the distributors, advertising agencies and marketing houses prefer to choose an online platform in case of promotional activities, pricing of services and advertisements can be reduced to get the pricing advantage. Besides, proper reimbursement for distributors and suppliers can motivate the business resources to extend their arms. Meanwhile, Houston Chronicle must create its presence at the online to stay ahead. Through website marketing, the services and advertisement campaigns must be encouraged to grow the revenue figure. Proper analysis of market and requirement of the business clients can eventually help to make a positive statement to impress the consumers. Possibly, Houston Chronicle must consider digital savvy marketing people and talented workforce who can provide digital ambiance within the organization. Such active hiring and attributes can encourage the rest of the human resources to promote practical business concepts helpful for business growth.
Work Cited
Cummings, Dean C. "Digital Broadcasting: An Introduction To New Media". Digital Journalism(2016): 1-3. Web.
Gray, Jeff, and Bernhard Rumpe. "Models For Digitalization". Softw Syst Model 14.4 (2015): 1319-1320. Web.
Masirevic, Ljubomir. "Implications Of Digitalization For The Future Of The Book". Kultura 147 (2015): 82-99. Web.
Nitsche, Michael. "Performance Art And Digital Media". Digital Creativity 24.2 (2013): 93-95. Web.
Tenner, Scott. "Print And Digital Media Review". Gastroenterology 147.6 (2014): 1437. Web.
Trpovski, Zeljen. "Technical Aspects Of The Digitalization Of Media". Kultura 135 (2012): 205-216. Web.
