Weekly Newspaper Organization Publishing 20+ Mastheads

IDENTIFY WAYS TO IMPROVE QUALITY AND SERVICE while significantly reducing labor costs in a multi-location weekly newspaper

Project Focus

Assessment of workflows, staffing, scheduling, skills and systems related to pagination, ad order entry and editorial.

Financial Benefits

Identified opportunities to achieve:

• 8% annualized labor cost reductions in editorial and production
• 50% reduction in page handling during the pagination process
• 16% reduction in credit adjustments and makegoods
• 20% reduction in operating cost

Recommended Key Changes and Operational Benefits

• Delivered a design to centralize the organization into functional groups versus individual companies
• Recommended reduction of direct reports to GM from 11 to 5
• Completed skills evaluation of all editorial, production, sales and management staff
• Documented 2 detailed workflows; 1 for the pagination process with 3 distinctive processes/flows and 1 for ad order entry process from sales inception with 4 distinctive processes/flows
• Identified 9 “Quick Hits” improvements for immediate implementation related to process and workflow, and systems, technology and reporting
• Developed new models for editorial and ad order entry-each model included:
• Functional organization structure
• Standards of performance
• Roles/responsibilities
• Staffing models
• Workflows
• Outline of critical skill requirements
• Outline of procedure requirements

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