danmcdonough.com

Elauwit Media, publisher of The Sun and Telegram newspapers, was named the fastest-growing newspaper publisher in the nation last week, as Inc. Magazine released its list of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in America.

Elauwit Media was ranked 1,577 on the list of 5,000. It was rated 48th in the Philadelphia region, and 20th on the list of media companies. It was the only newspaper publisher in the top 20 ranking of media companies.

There are more than 27 million businesses registered in the U.S., according to Inc. In previous years, the top 5,000 list has included companies such as Microsoft, Timberland, Intuit, Jamba Juice, Oracle and Under Armour.

Elauwit Media posted revenue growth of about 203 percent from 2005 through 2008.

“At a time when many newspaper publishers are making headlines for their bankruptcies and layoffs, Elauwit Media is proud to be rated No. 1 in the nation in terms of growth,” Publisher Dan McDonough Jr. said. “Our business model is unique to the industry – and so are the results we deliver for our advertisers. We are successful because they are successful.”

Elauwit Media publishes community weekly newspapers in Haddonfield, Moorestown, Cherry Hill East, Voorhees, Marlton and Medford. Earlier this year, it unveiled its Strategically Targeted Online Marketing Program, or STOMP, which allows businesses to get maximum return on their online marketing programs.

“We are perfectly positioned to deliver both news and advertising for years to come,” McDonough said. “Our Sun and Telegram newspapers have been embraced by the communities they serve. STOMP is the perfect complement to our printed products and allows advertisers to continue to reach their target markets as we begin the gradual transition to electronic delivery of local news.”

REPRINTED FROM THE HADDONFIELD SUN.

The Christian Science Monitor published today a commentary by myself and Alan Bauer, general manager of Elauwit Media. You can read it by clicking here. The gist of our piece is that there’s only one side of the newspaper story being told — the doom and gloom side. The fact remains that there are solid prospects for a re-engineered business model for the newspaper industry. It’s built on giving away the news, offering total market penetration for the advertiser and creating hyper-local products. It’s what we do at Elauwit Media.

While the major media have been focusing on the big newspaper meltdowns, I believe that the success stories (and we’re just one of those stories) aren’t being addressed — or even mentioned. That was the impetus for the piece Alan and I wrote for the Monitor. When we did some research, we found that the business model has gotten some discussion in the blog space (for instance, this lengthy and thought-out post by Aaron Renn). But there hasn’t been much recognition that some folks are actually executing on a new, worthwhile model.

My issue with Renn’s analysis is that the newspaper business doesn’t need such totally inverted change in order to work. We just took a big leap in a few areas (such as mailing our newspapers for free to the entire markets they are designed to serve). It’s not unlike what Toyota did after World War II with the “kaizen” concept. It’s big change in small areas that makes a business model work. (You’ll be hearing more about kaizen and the newspaper industry from Alan and I soon.)

In sum, I think the tombstone for newspapers is being chiseled way too soon. The business will evolve — and is evolving. It isn’t going extinct.

Jay Leno "reads" The Marlton Telegram during his "headlines" segment on April 27, 2009.

It’s quite amazing to me the things that get public attention.

At Elauwit Media, we launched new Web presences for our newspapers and business publications about a month ago. We provide in-depth coverage of small-scale communities in our newspapers, and now on our Web sites. Our coverage of local budgets and recently candidates for local office is unmatched by any competitor. If it’s about one of our small towns, it’s in one of our newspapers.

Despite all of this depth in coverage about significant local issues, the comments section of our Web sites hasn’t seen much action until a few days ago when we took on Jay Leno.

To be honest, it was all tongue in cheek. Leno manipulated the facts to use one of our newspapers in his “headlines” segment. It was dishonest, but still funny. We decided to take a shot at him and ride the wave a bit when our general manager, Alan Bauer, posted a column about the whole thing.

It got widespread attention.

It was attended to by national journalism blogger Jim Romenesko, the NY Post and a newspaper editor in Florida, just to name a few. And the YouTube video of the segment that we posted garnered well over 1,000 views in just a few short days. The attention even made it’s way to Twitter and Facebook.

What was most interesting was that Alan’s column attracted about  a dozen comments in short order — more than any other items we’ve posted. People have more to say about our response to Leno than they do about the critical issues we cover in their towns.

Check out the video below or check out the story Alan posted here.