The Philadelphia Inquirer is a typical big city newspaper that's been in retreat for a generation. Now under a unique nonprofit ownership structure, the Inquirer grew revenue last year and turned an operating profit. CEO Lisa Hughes, the former New Yorker chief business officer who took the role in 2020, has focused on shifting to a consumer revenue model — 70% of revenue now comes from readers through subscriptions, events, and donations. She discusses what's working: an AI tool called Scribe that monitors 30 municipal meetings to power hyperlocal suburban newsletters getting 75% open rates, a reinvented sales operation built around branded content and corporate reputation, a content strategy organized around being "useful, revealing, and responsive" rather than chasing prizes, and an aggressive regional expansion into South Jersey and beyond to grow the addressable market. Plus: the case for still printing a seven-day newspaper, why weekend content was a hidden growth lever, and what it means to "feed your Philly bias."

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Welcome to the Rebooting Show.

I'm Brian Morrissey.

this is a treat for me as, a person who grew up, in the greater Philadelphia

area because I'm joined by Lisa Hughes, the CEO of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

We're gonna talk about what's working on the local level.

The enquire is near and dear to my heart because I literally

learned to read, reading the Philadelphia Enquirer before school.

I used to, my mom thought I was like some kind of, sav because like before

first grade I was, I was reading the newspaper, as I waited for the bus.

I was actually just looking at the sports scores.

Lisa.

that listen, and if that's the reason why you read it, I'm all in.

That's fantastic.

But then I would drift in and I started reading

things like Bill Lyons column.

Jason Stark, the Philadelphia Inquires Sports page in

particular, was a formative part

Yeah.

up.

And then my first job in this weird screwed up industry was actually.

The Inquire

No way.

I don't think I knew that.

What, what did you do?

you deliver papers?

Were you a paper?

Yes.

I was a paper boy, um, paper person.

in Avalon, New Jersey, I deliver, I had a bike with two baskets in

the back, one basket in the front.

I was loaded down with newspapers.

I sometimes fell over, but I, I would deliver my papers.

I, I had a good arm.

I tried to throw it.

I sometimes broke things 'cause I was really obsessed with throwing it to on,

And it was, this was seven days a week, right?

Did you do Sunday

a week.

No, no days off.

No days off.

as a 12-year-old, except on Sundays, my mom had to drive me around in

a country squire, station wagon.

I love it.

I love

old days, good old

The good old days where, oh my God, I can't even imagine.

You probably could fit like two in your basket and that was Max.

Oh my

put them together and my mom put them together.

There were three different sections you had to put together.

They arrived over multiple days and that's, that was a different business.

And then I would go and I would sell the newspaper outside of Orlando's bakery.

And you, and did we pay you or is this all free child illegal labor?

no, no, no, no.

This was a very good, thing where the Inquirer basically sold me the

newspapers for like 17 cents, and then I could sell them for like 35 cents.

and they would buy the papers back,

That you didn't sell?

that I did, that I didn't sell, I had like an LLC.

Um,

Your

I made a lot of money.

I

I bet.

Do you know, I wish I had a nickel for every story I heard like this,

so many people were paper boys there.

I don't think there were paper girls.

No, there are

and so many moms got enlisted and actually doing the job with their sons.

Um, and

I'm not gonna give my mom too much of a break.

I mean, she was sending a 12-year-old out to work seven days a week, so

you know, but she, but she, she, she'd take a cut.

She didn't take a cut.

She had?

No, there was no cut.

There was no cut taken.

But it was, it

thank you for your service.

I appreciate

a formative experience.

It taught me a lot about business too, because I sold more papers than the

person who had a better spot, outside of the Waffle House because I asked every

single person if they wanted a newspaper.

you hustled it.

You hustled it.

Yep.

all right?

With that out of, out of the way.

Um.

Let's talk you, you're now six years into, being the CEO of the Inquirer.

you, you came over with an interesting background because you were, the chief

Business Officer at the New Yorker.

You'd been a Conde Nast in various roles, going into local little different,

Yeah.

Yeah.

And newspapers and, and, you know, it, it was entirely different.

the reason I got there was because I was recruited to join the board, who, which

had been set up by Jerry Lenfest when he bought the paper in 2015 at a bankruptcy.

And then he handpicked a board of, of great folks who he really trusted that

were leaders in the business community.

but none of them had content.

Experience.

None of them had digital transformation experience.

And I'd been at the New Yorker for a decade, you know, working with

the great David Remnick and team.

And that's what we had done is really the digital transformation of that business.

Launched, you know, new yorker.com flipped it from a ad revenue business

to a consumer revenue business.

so they recruited me to join the board and at the time I thought.

This will be really fascinating.

Local journalism matters.

I have a lot of friends in Philly.

I've been going down since my, since college.

One of my best friends is, is Mar, is Mar from there and then

married someone from there.

So, I've

Okay, so you knew what you're getting yourself

I, I knew I was getting in, sorta, sorta, not really.

I like, I'd, I'd had a Hogie, I'd been to a Wawa, and I knew

people were nuts about sports.

That's about as much as I knew.

Okay.

Top

level, that's

Top level.

And, and, and I joined the board and, and I was there for a year.

And then the publisher decided to retire.

and the head of the board said to me, Lisa, you should take this job.

And of course I said, no, I'm, I live in New York.

I'm a magazine person.

No.

And the head of the board and the vice chair of the board

just kept working on me.

And, and when I actually did that sort of.

You know, pro con analysis, one does, you know, having something

that is clear about their mission and actually really matters to people.

And of course I had that at, at the New Yorker, you know, deeply

meaningful to people and what's more meaningful than your local paper.

so it seemed like a great idea and I'm so glad I did 'cause it's been

the most interesting job I've had.

And, and I thought the New Yorker was a pretty, pretty good gig.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let's talk about, seem like a good idea.

so as obviously Philadelphia near and dear to, to my heart,

although I don't live there now.

growing up when even before I was a pa, a paper person for, the Inquirer, There

were three newspapers in Philadelphia.

There was The Inquirer, which was The Broadsheet.

There was the Daily News, which came out in the afternoon.

It was a tabloid, and then there was the Bulletin.

I was, I only Hazily remember.

I remember the last, issue of the bulletin.

But my point is it supported three different newspapers.

I remember the Inquire had a Jerusalem bureau, a Jerusalem

I mean, it's insane.

it was Tracy Rubin.

Was

Trudy Ruben still is still on our staff.

She still writes for us.

She's a dynamo.

She has an incredible following.

She is sharp as a tack,

Well, I was reading her growing up, so she's, she's put in her service too.

these markets have, have compressed and I think Philadelphia is an

interesting market because it had a lot of, you know, the same dynamics.

at least in the Northeast you saw a lot of, a lot of the subscriber base ended

up gravitating more towards the suburbs, A lot of economic activity, moved out.

of the city to the suburbs.

I remember my dad commuted into the city every day to work for Smith Cline.

Right.

and the wage tax and all the, I remember growing up hearing all about the wage tax.

We're still talking about the

wage tax.

I just

came from a chamber meeting.

Yes.

It's still, it's still a topic.

and so people moved out to, a lot of people moved out to the suburbs and

then the companies eventually followed.

And I think that really hit the, the, the news, the news industry.

again, I always grew up in, in the suburbs.

But, talk to me a little bit about the journey that you guys have been on.

'cause you have a different kind of structure and the Enquirer went through.

Some really difficult periods.

I remember, you know, just watching it, I had friends who, who wrote

for the Inquirer, after, or reported for it and wrote for

it, after J School and like 2000.

And, and the paper was, was in pretty much a state of perpetual, crisis.

Yeah, well there were multiple owners and Jerry Lenfest, who is,

who was a Philadelphia, you know, visionary business leader and then

philanthropist, bought the paper in 10, exactly 10 years ago out of bankruptcy.

It had multiple owners.

It was in bankruptcy and he bought it to save it.

He wasn't particularly interested in journalism per se, but he

did understand that having a.

Vibrant, successful paper was critical for a, for a city,

certainly the size of Philadelphia.

and he bought it.

And then he established a really interesting ownership structure.

That was the visionary thing, which was he established a Lenfest Institute,

a our nonprofit owner, and we are a for-profit news organization.

He was able to do that through a. Really interesting tax

structure that he figured out.

so I think we were really one of the first ones 10 years ago to have that model.

And what that means is I have an independent board, you

know, Lenfest Institute has no operating control, no oversight.

I report to a different board.

And I don't have, you know, all we have to do is make a dollar.

I don't have to return a profit to shareholders.

I don't have to return a profit to a hedge fund.

I don't have a billionaire owner that has any say in what we do.

So that independence is key.

And two, you know, his point was philanthropy should play

a role in news organizations.

So by setting us up with the Lenfest Institute, we are

able to take philanthropy.

Which was not the norm in news organizations at the time, and

it, but it meant that we also have to succeed as a business.

You know, philanthropy is about anywhere from six to 10% of our, of our mix,

but we gotta succeed as a business.

It's not the whole answer.

And I think those, that was really the innovation.

Okay, so how have you.

What is the business now, right?

Like, so, you know, you, you had come out with a piece, about, and I was

like, I was really impressed that like, you know, you're grow, you're back

to growing revenue, which is good.

You know, growth is, is good.

you got about 200 journalists in the newsroom.

But what really stood out to me was that 70% of revenue is coming

from, from audience revenue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, we really flipped it.

70% from from, from consumers, and that's subscriptions.

Of course, that is.

Ticket sales for any kind of live event that we do, which is a growing

business for us, which I can, I'm happy to talk about in a second.

And also, individual donations, which we don't count as part of that revenue mix,

but that is a growing line for us, which is folks who might be subscribers and also

wanna donate to us, or folks that aren't subscribers, but just like a particular

series that we're doing or whatever.

And then wanna give us 10 bucks or

I would count that.

Why

Yeah.

Well, we do count it.

Do we just count it as a, a different, in a different line item?

but in that 70, you know, 15, mix that I, that I quoted, so

seven 70% is consumer revenue.

About 15% is advertising revenue, five is another.

Partnership, we distribute the times and so on, we distribute our paper.

and then that five to 10 is philanthropy.

and it, and it's really meaningful because it means that ultimately we're,

we're, you know, betting our future on a readership that cares deeply about what's

happening in Philadelphia and the region.

And we are the paper of record.

We have been there almost as long as Philadelphia.

Yeah, and, and you want Philly, like we don't need New York.

Telling us about Philly.

We don't need New York telling us where to eat in Philly.

We're gonna need Philly telling us where to eat.

In Philly.

We need Philly telling us about our sports teams.

We've been in every single locker room, every front office, every game

since the beginning of the teams.

Right.

I, I can attest to that.

I mean, I, I, that's how I followed along.

so what has, what's wor I, like, I I, we, I had asked people like, what's working?

You had sent me in some things.

So like, what is working?

'cause the consumer revenue to me really stands out because it's, it's almost.

Almost a mirror image of another success case, which is the, the Boston Globe.

And The Boston Globe has, has what I understand, basically

70% now is subscriptions, consumer revenue of some kind.

and that that is a much, that is a different type of business and that

is a much more sustainable business.

I mean, these businesses.

Are unlikely to become as, as big as when I was putting together three sections

on a Sunday filled with coupons and ads.

it it's just a different type of business right

Yeah, yeah, we really admire the Boston Globe.

and we talk to them all the time and, and, what's really great about.

Local independent news organizations is that we don't compete with each other.

So, you know, the big ones, the Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star

Tribune was a great paper and, and really well run and Atlanta

Journal Constitution and, and so on.

We talk to each other all the time.

So we really admire the Boston Globe and, you know, pay a lot

of attention to their playbook.

so, so that's certainly an inspiration.

What's, well, we're doing a couple things.

One of the things that we're really excited about that you

and I started to talk about was.

Our expansion into the suburbs and, and hyper-local newsletters.

So of course the in choirs footprint was, you know, what you consider to be the

suburbs of Philadelphia, the main line and, and you know, parts of, parts of, you

know, Southern New Jersey and Delaware are all part of that kind of larger footprint.

So we have been, we launched this this past year.

With philanthropy as underwriting this initiative.

And that's also a really important point.

We go out and raise around things we might wanna do.

And this was, an initiative to say, you know, our news coverage hasn't

been as robust in the suburbs.

We don't have reporters out there in the way that we did when you were a kid.

you know, with a newsroom of 200 we're, we're still a pretty big

newsroom, relatively speaking, but in those days we had 800 reporters.

And we launched in four markets with a weekly newsletter.

And the difference here is that we can use AI to help us cover the community

in a way that we just couldn't before.

So, you know, we can use an A, we've built an AI tools called Scribe,

and what it does is can listen to, you know, school board meetings, you

know, any sort of government meeting.

In 30 different communities, it can flag, you know, we can, we,

we train it for news judgment.

And what does that mean?

It means that we train it to flag us flag reporters when the room is really loud or

the room is really silent, what are they talking about or key into these topics or

tell us what has been discussed across.

30 municipalities that we might not have connected the dots.

And then it can flag certain things for reporters to go in and do the reporting.

So it's a tool.

It's not doing the reporting, it's doing the aggregating, the listening.

I don't have the foot power to have someone sitting in the room at 30

different education board meetings.

and this is, this is, always answering.

The thing with local is it always comes down to.

Who's gonna go to the community board meeting in the New York,

they would say the community

board meeting or the school board meeting, et cetera.

And

the reality is, we have technology now that can go there and be, and,

and be the, maybe not eyes, but eyes and ears on what is going on there.

And then that feeds to, you know, the human judgment.

So you're not having the AI write the stories.

not.

No, no, no, no.

It's a tool so it can flag certain things for reporters,

it can summarize things fast.

It can go through a YouTube video and say, you know, Hey, tell us all about,

you know, whatever they're saying about the new, you know, board president

or whatever you want it to, to do.

It's a tool.

And it just allows you to cover a lot more ground and then go

through and do the proper recording.

and it's, and it's working and it, you know, you keep refining as you do it.

we also built an internal tool called Dewey.

Which scrapes our archive.

and that's now open source and we, where it's being launched with,

Baltimore Banner and Minnesota Star Tribune and Seattle Times.

So that also comes into play where we can say, Hey Dewey, what's everything

we've done on lower Marriott?

And Dewey can then pull for a reporter to say, oh, this is in the, from the food

desk, this is from the real estate desk.

This is, you know, from health.

That might be interesting.

And again, so helping us aggregate our own content as well as aggregate content

from other, you know, local news sources that we might think are interesting

that we wanna put in a newsletter.

So if I'm a reader and I live in, in Lower Merion.

I'd have to go on inquirer.com and then search around for things that are

relevant, you know, hyper relevant.

What are the restaurant openings?

Those are the, those are the things we hear about the most.

Now, I don't have to do that.

I have a newsletter that pulls in all inquirer content about

Lower Marion that I care about.

It also has up to the minute, you know, again, education board, government

meetings that are interesting as well as we'll pull in anything else

local, from local sources, other sources that we think is interesting.

You know, you have an editor, you have reporters chasing this stuff

down, AI's not writing anything.

It's a tool and it's working so lower.

Marion, for example, you, you may remember this is probably has a

population of about, I'm gonna say 65,000, somewhere in there.

and we immediately got to 15,000, signups, I mean with like 70% open rate.

Now, if you think about our addressable market, that 60,000

is not the addressable market.

Let's pretend the addressable market is 30,000.

We're getting like 50% penetration out of the gate.

Incredible.

So we launched four.

and what's cool is, you know, we experiment.

So lower, Marion was an obvious first stop in Cherry Hill,

'cause those are the biggest.

But then we said, as the communities get smaller and smaller, you wanna

be able to knit them together with, with a certain kind of commonality.

Maybe they all share the same education board or maybe culturally they're similar.

So we did this experiment in greater media.

Is Swarthmore and, nether, providence and, and, and media.

And that's working beautifully.

So we'll do another 10 this year and, and probably another 20 last year.

And in terms of, you know, our, our

Wait, wait, so so you're gonna have 30, 30 different.

We'll do, we'll have, by the end of this year, we'll

probably have about, 12 to 14.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

But, And then so what

is,

another 10.

okay.

and these are supported by Phil Philanthropic grants,

Two things.

Two things, well, three really.

One, I mean, the whole play is to build habit and retention,

Mm-hmm.

And These are

isn't the, the newsletter itself is free, but when you click

through, you're gonna, you know, eventually encounter our paywall.

Because the, what you're clicking through is metered.

So what we're seeing is people are reading the newsletter and loving it.

We're seeing the click through rate.

Two stories, like crazy, strong numbers.

The subscriptions from those.

We can see the penetration subscriptions is growing beautifully and the open

rate on the newsletters is like 75%.

I mean, people are really loving them.

We have, I've never, we've never done anything like this where we've gotten

so much reader response that literally writing us emails saying, I have some

quotes here that are just so great.

I mean, people are just have gone bananas.

Just wanted to send a note of gratitude.

I forwarded this newsletter to my dad.

It's cool to see a big paper like the Enquirer cover our small towns.

I mean, it's voluminous and constant.

I mean, I have hundreds of notes like this, so people love it.

And you know, they always, always say all news is local.

Well this is, you really care about what's happening.

You have a snow event like we had, you care what's happening

right in your, on your street.

You care is septa, you know, knocked out.

How am I gonna get to work today?

In addition to what's the cool new restaurant that just opened, you

know, what are fun things to do with my kids in my neighborhood?

So,

So hyperlocal is working, you would say?

For sure, because I think of, to me the, the two things, and we had talked about

this before, I'm like any Philadelphia news, you, you can't miss on sports.

You can't really miss on sports and food.

Like there are two things

And those are two things that Philly has, you know, going for

it.

basically Philadelphia has a lot of different pockets.

I think there's like 762 known variations of accents, although

they're all, kind of merging together.

I've noticed.

I mean, there used to be a very particular accent for say the, say

the Northeast, that the kids from the northeast spoke a certain certain

Mm,

Um, I think Mayor of East Town brought, that sort of upper

Darby tra It's in, it's infected in

yes.

And task.

And task

Yeah.

But the one, the things that like unite everyone in Philadelphia

are cheese steaks, hoagie and Wawa and, and sports basically.

and the, and the Eagles.

And the Eagles.

so, you know, and I think that the, the Enquirer really got hurt by the

fragmentation of sports, because, you know, some of the best writers from the

Enquirer ended up going, going over to like the athletic or, you know, for.

Philadelphia is one of the strange towns, like where, you know, the Eagles

press conference, it has like, you know, like 30 different reporters in it.

It's

We have the best, we have the best seats.

I, I would argue that I think we have a phenomenal sports desk.

It's is, headed up by Mike Wong, who's amazing, who came to us from ESPN

and, and, we brought on board when I came on board and, and elevated

Gabe Escobar to be my editor.

And, and, and Gabe hired Mike.

we have a fantastic desk.

You know, when I got there, there were no women on the desk,

you know, so I, I think it's.

I'm not gonna agree with, it was only glory days.

I think we have the finest desk we've ever had.

and

and I think it's been rebuilding that in some way.

I mean, maybe I haven't like followed it as closely.

I

We, I mean, Jeff McClain is the best beat reporter on the Eagles, on the NFLI

think

He, he, he, mixes it up.

I also, I

He is

in high school, like it's a very small place.

Philadelphia.

I mean, it's a big city, but it's not that big.

He went to McDavid.

I went to LaSalle, so.

Yeah, I know, I know Jeff.

I will put our team up against anybody and, and again, you know,

like anything that is covered a lot, food is another good example.

You just gotta be, we gotta have a Philly angle and a Phil ness

that nobody else can replicate.

You know, I think it's an and not an or.

If you are an Eagles fan, you're gonna read everything that's

good about the Eagles and we just have to be on that list.

We have to be that good that it's worth your time.

so I think that's how we think about it.

you know, we go back to what, what does content have to do?

And, you know, I was interested in, in one of the, one of the, pods you

did about, you know, what buckets, what, what, what itch does it scratch?

And we have, you know, three, which is.

You know, useful revealing, you know, high utility and, look, you gotta be good.

You gotta be relevant.

But I think that's important 'cause there's, and that was

with Dmitri, because it was Dmitri kin about like user needs.

because I mean, if I had a criticism of local paper, and

it's not like a criticism, it's just an observation really is.

It's sort of over, and we talked about this, it sort of over indexes

on like what happened versus like being like, the utility aspect.

It's always been part of like the local news, but you know, the reality is it

can't all be, city council corruption.

You'll

always have

Well, can I,

It will always be a very vibrant area.

Can I, can I push back on that?

Um, so, you know, we, we've gone through, you know, a very

rigorous content strategy, now for four or five years at least.

and we have sort of three, as I said, useful, revealing, and

responsive or sort of the three load stars that we think about.

So useful might be, you know, okay, here are the best dive bars

in Philly and here's the map.

you know, the story's really Philly.

It got phenomenal audience, phenomenal subscription conversion.

It's super Philly.

No one else can do it.

Like we can do it.

The mapping function is really high utility people just went bananas over it.

You just gotta be good and more inventive, you know.

Revealing.

We did a piece, about this cop bar that all the cops go and drink, and there

are a lot of DUIs, and, and deaths from the, from activity in that bar, from

cops going out after drinking all day.

And the coverup that happened around all those DUIs that then went, you know, it's

an, it is a great piece of reporting it.

Yeah, that's

a good story.

I'm

That's a good story.

And it's Philly and it's, and it's a story that no one else is gonna report.

And it's, you know, what we're built to do well and that will change,

you know, that will save lives.

'cause we don't have, we're not gonna have drunk cops, you know, covering it up.

and then you have the responsive piece, which is, let's take the snow event.

We nearly needed our reporting on what was closed, what wasn't,

or septa our favorite topic.

And you make it fun like we have Tom Fitzgerald.

I don't know if you've ever, if you know Tom or you've ever followed him, who is

now our, the most unlikely video star, and he's like killing it on our vertical

video because he is so knowledgeable.

He's got a rye sense of humor, super engaging.

He really knows his stuff and readers are going.

Nuts over it.

So all of this is very Philly.

It's, we're very clear about who we are.

We're very clear about having that Philly lens.

You know, our sort of, irresistible truth is feed your Philly bias.

You want Philly?

Do not pass go.

You gotta go through the inquire.

Yeah, and, and I think the people in Philadelphia have like a

little chip on their shoulders sitting between New York and Washington.

They always have.

so that leads to a very cohesive, I would say, local

Yeah.

It's, it's a, you're, you're absolutely right.

I think it's a, a real positive, it is a real community and

it's quirky in the best way.

And not everybody gets Philly.

I mean, this is our brand campaign behind me, on the wall, you know, weird accent.

What accent.

Right, right.

That is that, that's a

So it's so good.

The brand campaign is great.

It just goes right into that Philly, like everyone underestimates Philly,

everybody thinks they know Philly.

It's like, you dunno, Philly,

Yeah, I, it's true.

Before I went to college, I didn't know that, it was pronounced, water.

I thought it was water.

and then I was reminded mercilessly that the, it is not pronounced water.

I'm gonna send you the funniest video that we used to

open, sales pitches when we go pitch in New York and other places.

that is, exactly that, which is really funny.

Woman says, I didn't, I didn't know that I had an accent until I asked people

in my dorm, where do I wash my towels?

They were like, what do you wanna wash?

He said, my towels.

And they were like, what?

And it's very, very funny.

it's an experience all of us from the region have, have had.

so what are you doing less of?

Because I mean, you talked about like, you know, the, the newsroom

is not as big as it used to be, and you know, I, I, as I said, like

I'll, I'll

used to have a Jerusalem bureau.

It doesn't have the Jerusalem bureau, it shouldn't have added Jerusalem Bureau

probably to begin with.

well, I, you know, it was, it was, that was then, this is

now, I think, I think to your point is what do you stop doing is as

important as what do you wanna do?

and like any legacy business, that's hard to do.

It's a big ocean liner to stop it and turn it into another

direction takes, you know, years.

and content strategy, really has helped us.

Get everybody grounded in, okay, what are we gonna measure?

Let's have one source of truth.

What is the story doing for us?

It's gotta do something for us.

It's gotta, you know, at the big level, change legislation

effect change in a major way.

Policy change.

Okay.

That might be one metric that's longer and harder to measure and,

and might be appropriate for the investigative desk, but you know.

Is it, is it a path towards conversion?

Is it really, really super sticky for subscribers?

You know, is it getting a ton of audience, you know, where

is that audience coming from?

So getting everybody grounded in looking at the numbers, and again,

going through this lens of, you know, useful revealing, you know, responsive.

what we've stopped doing is the enterprise, what we call the

enterprise to nowhere stories where you spend a lot of time.

on a long story, and it doesn't do any of the above, you know, and you love them.

You're proud of the work.

The newsroom loves to do it.

and then it just doesn't perform in any way, shape, or form.

And we were doing a fair amount of that.

and

Like what's, like I, I, you probably don't want to use an

I, I don't have an example.

I, I would tell you, I would tell you, I, I, I wouldn't, I, I, I don't, I, I would

tell you, I just don't have one off the top of my head, but, but you know,

there's always stuff you do that, you know, you put your heart and soul

into and put too many resources into, and then that just doesn't perform.

And so I think we've gotten way better and just less nostalgic about that.

It's like you can't get wedded to it.

Just move on.

That

didn't work.

Let's do.

a postmortem, why not?

And stop.

I'll

give you an example.

Okay.

To win prizes.

We don't do stories to win prizes.

I was gonna say, were you saying you

Well that, that has historically been part of newsrooms.

Like you do, do stories to win prizes sometimes, and I

I mean, we apply for a lot of them.

yeah.

prizes don't pay the bill.

Unfortunately.

I'd like to win some Pulitzers, but prizes don't pay the bill.

no, we don't just do, so we, we've stopped doing things that don't

perform and particularly repeat things, that, you know, just aren't

driving any kind of engagement or audience or doing anything for us.

So, you know, that's, that's something we stopped, we completely

revamped our sales strategy.

Because what we were doing was not working and not sustainable

and not driving enough revenue.

and you know, newsrooms or newspapers were built to answer the telephone

and book a page in a newspaper and, you know, print money basically.

'cause the margin was so good.

And that's how, how sales teams were set up really servicing the

business, not driving the business.

And you know, that's another thing that we stopped doing.

Not servicing, but we stopped, you know, thinking, well, people are

just gonna come to us, we gotta go to them and we've gotta have a reason

for them to wanna advertise with us.

That's different than anything else they could do with anybody else.

So, you know, we've spun up a, a really strong, sort of corporate reputation,

you know, social responsibility, branded content studio that is

now, you know, really working.

We have a, we have a. A feature called Changemaker Spotlight, which is a

profile of a q and a with a leader in Philly that is really, really

successful and totally working and a go-to now for leaders in Philly.

and this is like, this is like a local.

Version of what it powers all the Washington DC publications because

there are different, there are different goals for a lot of advertising and

corporate social responsibility is an

interesting category in that every single company, you know, they

need to affect regulators and they need to affect their images.

And know, I keep hearing like the chief communication officer

is like a new important.

Buyer

yes, yes.

And often has budget, which is really important.

And you know, it isn't also, companies are doing amazing things in Philly,

for Philly, and, and they would like to be proud and talk about it.

And so there's a couple of channels to do that you can pitch our newsroom,

and I encourage them always to do that.

And maybe we'll write about it.

Maybe we won't.

You know, we're not built to be the PR arm of a company, so you know, you absolutely.

I encourage a s smart strategic communication strategy and you know,

here's, here are the key people you need to meet in my newsroom.

I'll have that conversation all day long.

Separately.

Here are the key people you need to meet on the sales team who are marketers.

We're consumer marketers, we're brand marketers, and here's how we

can tell, help you tell your story.

Community and I've got the audience and the con conven convening power

and you know, and the imprimatur.

So we're a great partner to do that.

And it's really working.

The eyeballs, we're getting the audience, we're getting on these, on this, on this

work is, is sometimes double what we're getting on, newsroom produced stories.

So how about events?

I mean, everyone's talking about events.

Getting people together is is

What's old is new.

It's like email being, I listened to that podcast or your, your note.

Your note just yesterday or today even about email is the, is the cool

new thing and, and very important to us events are because again, when

we're talking about being in community and showing up in community, I think

there's a real hunger to get together.

We launched our food festival, this, this past November, and

we'll do it again this year.

And it was, you know, it was a big endeavor.

It's 2000 people.

We had 52 chefs.

We had a dozen bakers.

We had cool performances from Adelphia and Snack time, which

is Jason Kelsey's house band.

we had

The Philly bands have completely changed from my

day.

know the Philly, but you know

the Philly No, the Philly music scene.

I mean, Sigma Studios, I mean, come on.

we could, we could have that whole conversation.

and we had Talkbacks New Yorker festival style with Stephen

Starr and, and, delicious City Podcast and our food critics.

and it was amazing.

And, you know, we sold, of course the, the gate was important.

Tickets were one 50 and two 50, and then we sold big sponsorships.

For clients who really wanted to do something experiential in front of a live

audience, and people really stepped up.

Truist was our presenting sponsor, Lincoln Financial, Uber.

and then we had local folks like peanut chews.

Did you grow up with peanut chews?

Yeah, of course.

Did do you love 'em?

I mean, yeah.

I didn't, I I didn't actually recog there's a lot of things you grew up with

I didn't recognize, at the time, 'cause

I didn't

travel a lot as a child, as affiliate.

Like I thought everyone grew up on tasty cakes.

I didn't know that.

No.

And, and hers potato chips.

Um, well, peanut shoes are delicious.

I'd never had one.

Okay.

See, I didn't even know that until

I now, I, I unofficially say they're the official candy bar of the enquire.

'cause I bring them to every single meeting I have.

And people go nuts because they either remember them as a kid.

And it's their favorite.

I bring 'em to all my board meetings or they've never had them.

And then they become a huge fan and, and they're great to work with.

And, you know, we paired them with a chef who then used them as an

ingredient for a curry and for a pie.

and we just, you know, blew it out on social media for them and they just

got huge, huge traffic and buzz and it was so much fun to work with them.

So, you know, it's fun to do this stuff, you know, and, and

people are really getting into it.

So when you, when you like look at or read about like the, the TLS at a

place like the Washington Post, does any of it like sort of resonate with some

of the challenges that you've faced,

Oh, sure.

It's not an easy business.

Right?

And every year there's another disruption.

I mean, Google is now a answer engine, not a search engine.

Right?

So the impact on traffic is real.

which is why we've all shifted to a retention, you know?

Strategy and that that plays well into a local newspaper because it is a

direct relationship that is different than, you know, a national media where

you maybe can get that somewhere else.

but yeah, listen, it's a tough business.

You know, we, no one wakes up saying.

Gee, I wanna advertise in the Enquirer.

We gotta go make that happen.

We gotta go, you know, create the demand.

That's why I outsold my rival

yes, exactly right.

You, you asked for the business.

I

He just, he just waited for someone to ask for if they

Yeah, no, you cannot do that.

And similarly, you know, for, for subscriptions, you know, the brand

campaign behind me, we were one of the very few local newspapers

to really do a serious brand campaign, which we're still doing.

and that we launched, I wanna say, three or so years ago, and I've

had a lot of our peer papers ask me about it and then do their own.

So we spend a lot.

To drive people to our content, to, you know, and, and we call it, you

know, sort of reframing the value proposition is the marketing speak.

But, we found in our research that we had what we called, what our agency called,

which is Red Emer, who are amazing.

the museum problem.

People are really proud of you.

They're really happy you're there.

They respect you.

they think they know you, but they don't really think they need to visit.

Or maybe they went once, but you know, so we have, you know, the

high awareness 97% or something like

that.

because we are 190 7-year-old

who the 3% are.

They just do, they

right, that 3% they just got there.

but how many, but that consideration and f familiarity, do they understand

your product and would they consider it?

That's the needle we are moving.

With our brand campaign and all of the new content that

we're we're putting out there.

Another area of expansion is two important ones.

Weekend, so you may remember this.

Newsrooms were set up in a Monday to Friday kind of staffing with

a skeletal staff on the weekends.

And who actually kind of sat around hoping that no news would happen.

and we were seeing a real dip in audience on the weekend and we sort of

un uncovered, lifted up that rock and said, whoa, well this is easy to solve.

Like, let's figure this out.

So we did, again, underwritten with philanthropy.

We did a full standup of a whole weekend team and, content redesigned.

So now you see a really robust weekend package for us that looks a little

different than Monday to Friday.

We're experimenting with different kinds of stories.

One of the piece, one of the story formats that we love is the Perfect Philly Day.

And so we have different characters and leaders.

You know, take you through their perfect Philly day.

We had Joe Badilla of Padilla's Pizza.

that's delicious.

The best pizza in the world.

Take us through his day and you learn that he has a bloody Mary at breakfast.

Okay.

All right, Joe.

Good, good to hear it.

and it's just fun because you really hear about how they live in Philly,

where they go, what their order is, what they cherish about the

place, and everyone is different.

how I bought this house.

Field trips, you know, travel within four hours of Philly.

So we're experimenting with all that kind of content.

And it's working, I mean, to see the audience grow and outpace

the weekday on some weekends now since we soft launch, full launch

happens in April, is thrilling.

And then, and then the other big thing we're doing is,

expanding into South Jersey.

So South Jersey is a little bit of a news desert.

You know, we used to be more robust there.

We, you know, pulled back years ago.

And again, we will investment spend against that.

We're hiring about four to six journalists, to reporters, editors.

We'll have a strong Trenton, presence.

And, really we see that as an audience growth play.

So if local is a retention.

Play engagement, retention, play.

South Jersey is an audience growth play.

we did a lot of market research where we, you know, with Harris Poll

where we looked at, okay, affinity.

Do they root for, for Philly teams?

Yes.

No, that's the, you know, biggest indicator.

Do they work in Philly?

Do they, attend to their medical needs in Philly?

for all intents and purposes, they're Philly people.

They just happen to live in South Jersey.

So we're excited about that and you'll see more regional expansion

next year that I'm not ready to talk about, but this is a thing.

Yeah.

So I'm sure like you, you tracked that the Atlanta Journal Constitution,

uh, went digital.

Digital only.

I think they have a really good publisher.

Andrew's a good guy

Yeah.

did you.

Feel any, sort of jealousy at, at the, for just, stopping with the print?

I mean, look, print, print is part of the, the legacy, but, you know, dealing with.

dunno if you guys still print yourselves dealing with printing plants, dealing

with, you know, trucks and everything.

And look, I was personally part of the print supply chain for the

Philadelphia Enquirer, so I have a, I do have a personal attachment to it.

At the same time, I'm a realist.

No, I, no, absolutely not.

No jealousy at all.

We love print.

I love print.

you know, how could I not?

I came up through print.

but print is still really robust for us.

We're still seven days a week.

We have a strong, you know, it's declining, but it still is a

strong part of our revenue mix.

and, you know, there's something about print that is, has a permanence

and a gravitas that people love.

You know, the, the C-suite in Philly, the boardrooms in Philly still read print.

you know, when we do, any sort of major.

Piece or even a branded content piece.

It obviously runs multi-platform.

It's the print that gets the buzziness in the room.

Anecdotally, obviously the tonnage and eyeballs and impressions are

in digital, but We love print.

In fact, this past year we launched 12, what we call Sunday specials, and they're

Sunday magazine type, you know, 36 pages or so on different topic lifestyle topics.

It could be, you know, the 250th anniversary or Friendsgiving,

or very Philly gift guide.

We've done market research, we're getting like 90 in the nineties.

Favorite thing?

Love it.

You look forward to them.

Retain them.

Makes me feel better about my subscription and our hypothesis.

If we can stem the decline by one percentage point,

that is meaningful for us.

So we love print.

We love print, and anything we can cook up

But do you love it?

Like, do you love it as a business or do you love it?

Like, a like, I don't wanna say like with nostalgia, but like,

do you love it, like as a, as a product of what it represents and

no, the point is well taken.

I love it because, you know, I love print and, and I, but I do think

it is a form factor that is still very popular with our readership.

if it were not, we would stop it, but it still is, and it's very significant in

terms of our revenue, the infrastructure.

Associated with print is, is tough.

The fixed cost associated with print is tough to make a business out of.

if you were launching today, you would never launch with print.

we sold our printing plan and outsourced our printing back in 2020 when I

started, that was the first thing I did.

Okay.

So it's rationalizing it to

Yeah.

where, but do you feel like it's a drag on the organization at all?

Like as far as like operating, I mean, you're trying to, you know, look,

the, the, these, these businesses are all gonna be like, you know,

digital first it's newsletters and you're gonna do events and whatnot.

And then you have this print product.

And the print product has a long history as we've gone through it.

I, I just wonder with organizationally, if it becomes not worth it at some point.

Quite possibly, but not now.

You know, as we model out.

At least five years.

You know, if you're modeling out past that, you're just making it up, but

you're, you're even making it up at five.

But, not for the foreseeable future.

Obviously that could change.

it is, you are right in that you really have to streamline operations and we

have spent a lot of time and energy on.

Layout and streamlining that workflow that is critical.

You know, we redesigned the paper in 2022, to, you know, just make it

look more modern and clean it up and hadn't been looked at in 50 plus years.

So we did that and at that time it was not just a redesign of the paper, it

was a complete overhaul of the system.

We went to Roxon, which is a very cool, Layout, platform

outta Sweden, I wanna say.

And, it's amazing.

It's been game changing and, and the amount of man hours,

woman hours, efficiencies.

We could, we could affect from using that and upgrading our systems.

We were using a system that wasn't even supported by the

manufacturer at that point.

So, yeah, and it's, and it's, and we look at it all the time.

How are we producing content?

How are we freeing people up?

Where, where tools can help do that?

you know how to even add layout.

How do we do that more efficiently?

So the last thing is like we've talked about what's working.

What, what is something that if, if we're having this conversation in

a year that you, you think we, we would be, we will be talking about

like with, with what is working.

You know, with, with something that you have either planning or launching

or has just launched and still needs, needs some more time to get going,

Yeah, well the, the regional expansion is a big deal.

Mm-hmm.

That's a big play in south, you know, south Jersey, you know, there's New

jersey.com and there's really nobody else.

We don't think that's, that's, you know, big competition.

and so that's clearly a move for us.

You will see another region next year, which I can't announce yet, but I'd be

There's only a few, there's only a few regions.

Yeah, you can.

Well, you know.

we're taking Delaware.

I don't know.

That would, that would not be a bad guess.

there's only so much of the

Right.

But it makes sense.

It makes sense.

And so you can see

Well, you have to expand the tam, like, I mean,

yeah, we have to expand the Tam ex. Expand the tam.

When I, I believe when I was growing up, like Philadelphia was like the

fifth largest city in the United States.

It is not the fifth largest city in the United States anymore.

The greater region,

I think we're six now,

is it like, I mean, the greater, I mean as far as the

city itself has, has, is, is not.

I don't know.

I, I haven't checked it the, but, so maybe it is back to growing, but, you

know, the, the economic activity has shifted to the periphery and the reality

is, you know, you end up following where the economic activity is.

The greater region has a ton of economic activity is not

yeah, yeah.

We also, when we look at the addressable market, though.

We, when, when we launched our campaign, you know, there is still a,

you know, we largely, it's millennials.

They have, they have cute cohorts that we talk about, the passionate

spenders and the community lovers and within that millennial, market.

But there's still, we have not penetrated the whole market there.

And again, we have an advantage in that everyone's heard of us, but do they

actually know our product offering?

Oh wow.

There's something here for me.

So obviously with weekend and food and sports and you know,

everything else we're doing, we hope.

Yes,

Awesome.

Awesome.

Lisa.

Thank you so much.

let's have a soft pretzel sometime in

That would be good.

Well, come on down.

There's, I mean, the food, as you know, insane.

I just went to, a new restaurant called Amelia last night, which is, Greg Vern's,

new foray and it's absolutely superb.

So

This is new.

I, I left Philadelphia in like 1991.

There, there, was, there,

Do you ever,

scene

existing.

Yeah.

I go back, I go back

All right, well

give us a

have, I still have family.

I still have family

let me know.

Come onto our offices.

We're right across from the Liberty Bell.

Literally, we look at the Liberty Bell, it's really cool.

So we're right there at the Roman House building on Sixth and Market.

There's a ton of good restaurants right around us.

and we'll take you to lunch.

Okay.

Sounds good.

I'll take you up on that.

right.

Thank you, Take care.

Bye.