Wanted to make sure I was not seeing things when I read that McClatchy plans “a five-point sales strategy” that includes not one, but two butt-stupid ideas.
First, MNI insists on hollowing out newspaper help wanted ads in favor of CareerBuilder.com, an entity that should be sold off before it is too late and social networks completely overtake job hunting. Dumb.
Worse, however, is the announcement that MNI plans to start paying commissions to ad agencies for ad placements. OK, how much revenue could that possibly bring in? Well, if you look to recent history in the Charlotte market, you are starting from a baseline of about 1 percent of revenue. Suppose you double that with the new policy — yippee! Then you are looking at maybe $5 to 6m. a year.
Meanwhile, you’ve utterly gutted your in-house sales staff, the ones who were delivering the bulk of your revenue quarter after quarter. I swear, you could not invent a more inane set of business propositions than the ones McClatchy trots out month after month.
