Regional front
By : Anna Kocinska
With the national newspaper audience largely locked up, national titles are now taking on foreign-owned chains and local journals in a new battle for regional markets.
Three key regional players have emerged in the last year: Gazeta Wyborcza publisher Agora, which prints 19 regional supplements, Germany's Passauer Neue Presse and a handful of Polish publishers such as Jagiellonia in Krakow or Glos Wielkopolski Oficyna Wydawnicza in Poznan. In addition to trying to stave off competition from national titles, these new regional powerhouses are working to build a new advertising base by convincing local businesses to buy space.
At the same time, the papers are diversifying their activities, plunging into broadcast media and the internet. For its part, Neue Passauer is expanding through the acquisition of community titles in an effort to ensure that it is one of the expected two newspapers in each major city to survive ongoing consolidation in the market.
"Local business is still behind in terms of fueling ad money to newspapers as compared to large cities," said Wlodzimierz Chorazki, an analyst from Krakow's Press Research Center affiliated with Jagiellonian University. "Papers that won't try to seize the local advertising market are doomed to failure."
Print advertising has more than doubled in the three years from 1995 until 1998, hitting zl. 1.3 billion ($371 million) that year and representing 38.2% of all media advertising spending. In that time, Poland's three largest newspapers Gazeta Wyborcza, Super Express and Rzeczpospolita have also solidified their position on the national market and as of 1998 had circulation of 545,812 copies, 496,000 copies and more than 270,000, copies respectively. Those strong circulation numbers have given the three titles a dominant hold on national advertising revenue, leaving regional publications dependent on much lower local spending.
Protecting its territory
Katowice, one of Poland's largest metropolitan areas with a population of 3 million-4 million in the city and surrounding areas, is a prime example of territory under siege. The city's dominant daily Trybuna Slaska is trying to stave off growing competition from regional title Dziennik Zachodni and Gazeta Wyborcza's local supplement GW Katowice.
In terms of advertising revenue, however, Trybuna Slaska has fallen behind. In 1998, Trybuna Slaska generated advertising revenue of zl. 19.5 million ($5.57 million) compared with the zl. 28.93 million ($8.27 million) GW Katowice earned and the zl. 37.79 million ($10.79 million) Dziennik Zachodni generated. Polish publisher Polskapresse owns Dziennik Zachodni.
"GW's supplement is certainly our competition, but our advantage is the fact that we bombard the reader with local news from the very front page," said Tadeusz Ganczarczyk, deputy editor in chief of Trybuna Slaska. "And if you want to find the GW supplement, you need to search for it somewhere in the national edition."
Trybuna Slaska is trying to expand its reach by publishing its own version of a local supplement for small municipalities. On Thursdays, for example, the paper also prints Gazeta Pszczynska Glos Siemianowicki, which is directed at Upper Silesia, as an extra edition.
Trybuna Slaska has had to fight to survive the 10 years of stormy transition on the media market here. Like many national and regional papers, the paper shed its communist skin in 1990, after spending years as a mouthpiece for local party functionaries.
"There was practically no paper in Poland that had been published for more than 10 years and didn't have communist roots," Ganczarczyk said.
Polskapresse owns 65% of Trybuna Slaska while independent Polish shareholders hold 33.5%. Germany's Neue Passauer owns Polskapresse, but despite that, Trybuna Slaska still has a very Polish voice, Editor Tadeusz Biedzki said.
The paper's circulation varies through Monday to Friday, hovering anywhere from 80,000-350,000 copies. The paper employs 70 journalists in its Katowice editorial office as well as local branches in Bielsko-Biala, Czestochowa, Opole, Rybnik, Sosnowiec and Warsaw. With its six local sections, it covers the Slaskie and Opolskie provinces.
According to Jagiellonian University's Press Research Center, in 1997, 34.6% of Trybuna Slaska's readers were high-ranking managers and 22.4% owners of companies.
Taking on Wyborcza
Competing effectively against Wyborcza is proving difficult for many regional titles. Wyborcza's owner, Agora, has deliberately expanded its reach so that advertisers can target their message to national, local and zoned products, depending on their market. At the same time, advertisers can also reach two in one: national readers and a local audience in one fell swoop.
Gazeta Wyborcza has expanded its number of regional supplements from 13 in 1991 to 19 today. Each Monday through Saturday, Wyborcza's readers receive not only a national section, produced by the paper's editorial department in Warsaw, but also a regional section produced by one of 19 regional staffs. To give them a specific identity, the regional sections also sport their own front page.
In addition, Agora publishes five local weekly newspapers designed to further exploit local advertising markets, such as Czas Swiecia and Czas Chelmna in the Kujawsko-Pomorskie province in central Poland.
In 1997, Agora reported advertising revenue of zl. 306.6 million ($95.82 million), 28.5% of which came from regional sections and supplements.
"We are No. 1 in Wroclaw, Warsaw and Czestochowa, and the secret of success lies in combining local and national markets," said Seweryn Blumsztajn, deputy general director of Agora. "It's kind of a combined mechanism that solidifies each other."
To keep Wyborcza and other Polish publishers at bay, Polskapresse tried to branch out at the local level by acquiring community weeklies. The idea is to cater to extremely local readers, offering original content that is not readily available in some of the other regional titles. The acquisitions also allow Polskapresse to bump up its circulation by distributing the community title with a larger paper. Those inflated readership numbers help it to charge more for ad space.
"They keep buying small local papers and periodicals and add them to regional dailies and then try to prove that their circulation increased," the Press Research Center's Chorazki said. "The increase in circulation translates into ad prices."
A traditional reader of Wejcherowskie Widnokregi, which is distributed in northern Poland, can now buy the paper on Friday together with a magazine edition of Dziennik Baltycki.
Agora's Blumsztajn said that Polskapresse's strategy is a very expensive way to increase circulation. "GW will continue to be focused on larger cities' markets. In small cities only a priest, teacher and doctor would buy us, (and) we cannot count on high sales there," he said.
Other independent publishers that do not have the funds to buy readers are trying to concentrate on providing more relevant information for their traditional readers to prevent their audience from migrating to other regional titles.
Such is the case with Dziennik Polski, a paper established in 1945 and now published by Jagiellonia. Owned by Wydawnictwo Pracownikow Dziennika Polskiego, Dziennik Polski attracts 55% of all readers in its hometown of Krakow and has a daily circulation of 85,000-190,000 on Friday. The paper has six local supplements but its management is focused on Krakow's, which accounts for 75% of the entire Malopolska regional market. The paper has no plans to buy other community newspapers.
"Maybe we are not assertive enough but we always followed the rule that it's the reader who attracts the advertiser," said Tomasz Domalewski, editor in chief of Dziennik Polski. "We care about our reader, who keeps our circulation high."
Glos Wielkopolski (GlW), a leading daily in Poznan and successful competitor to Polskapresse's Gazeta Poznanska, is also concentrating solely on its core market. "Our position on the advertising market is not built by local titles," said Marian Marek Przybylski, president of Glos Wielkopolski Oficyna Wydawnicza, GlW's owner.
Advertising in local papers account for a mere 2.5% of all ad revenue in Poznan, Przybylski said.
In the first three quarters of 1998, GlW generated zl. 19.49 million ($5.57 million) from advertising as compared to GW Poznan's zl. 7.73 million ($2.21 million) and Passauer's Gazeta Poznanska's zl. 14.57 million ($4.16 million), according to figures provided by Agora's Lighthouse Press Monitoring System.
Przybylski said he believed that Polish publishers had to diversify their activities to survive. Like Agora, Glos Wielkopolski Oficyna Wydawnicza invests in media ventures besides print. The company has shares in three local radio stations and cable television, owns a national monthly magazine Arkusz, has an internet company Sylaba and owns a private university, Wyzsza Szkola Nauk Humanistycznych i Dziennikarstwa in Poznan.
But, according to Trybuna Slaska's Biedzki, there will be no future for Polish-owned papers if they don't consolidate.
"If not, they will disappear from the market confronted with the powerful, huge media group of Passauer," he said. "Of several significant regional papers only three are now in Polish hands: Glos Wielkopolski, Trybuna Slaska Dzien and Dziennik Polski."
