Summary

Newspapers today have limited ability to measure the effectiveness of their individual operations. The industry lacks recognised, comprehensive performance measures - or benchmarks - against which papers can evaluate their performance or compare it to their peers in the industry. Trying to improve in the absence of such norms is somewhat like going to sea without a compass. If you don’t know where you are or which way to steer, how will you reach your destination? Competition for advertising placements changed radically during the last decade. The World Wide Web became a household word, and the internet rewrote the rules of business. Newspapers are among those re-inventing themselves to achieve success in the rapidly changing global environment. In order to make informed decisions, they need accurate information on their present status. The Newspaper Association of America and Ifra (an international association for newspaper and media technology) recognised this need for measurable newspaper production information and initiated the NAA/IFRA Production Effectiveness Benchmarking Program. The program was global. Its mission was sweeping: identify and define a common set of production-effectiveness measurements that could be standardised within the newspaper industry and used to profile effective newspaper operations. Initially, all aspects of newspaper production opera-tions, from pre-publishing to the distribution dock, were to be examined. Because the benchmarking process is complex, this objective was refined and narrowed during the course of the study. It was clear, from the outset, that the newspaper industry’s own level of support for benchmarking would decide the program’s success.