Taking advantage of the print format with attractive supplements

Although the sharp increase in subscribers is mainly due to the online edition, the print version of "The New York Times", at nearly 900,000 copies, is still immensely important. The "NYT" continues to surprise its readers with exciting sections, such as the monthly "The New York Times for Kids".

"Panorama": Tell us a bit about yourself and what led you to your current position.

Todd Socia: My father, grandfather, and uncles all worked in the newspaper industry, so I grew up listening to their stories and challenges of the day at every family and holiday dinner. As a teenager, my earliest jobs were working for my father at the "Flint Journal" doing everything from sweeping floors, cleaning printing presses, hand inserting fsi’s (freestanding inserts) in the packaging department, to loading and unloading newsprint. With my familial connection and fascination with the production process, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the newspaper industry. 

Upon completing high school, I studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and pursued a degree in Newspaper Operations Management, one of the only newspaper centric operations degrees in the world at the time. While at RIT, I was fortunate to serve two summer internships with Advance Publications at the "Staten Island Advance" (New York), where over the course of the two summers I was exposed to every business department of the paper. 

After graduation, I accepted a position with Advance Publications as Assistant Production Director at the "Times Picayune" in New Orleans, LA. I spent 4 ½ years there, then accepted a position on the supply/sales side of the business with Western Lithotech, a company that manufactured printing plates, chemicals, and automated plate processing equipment for the newspaper industry. 

During my time there, I held several sales-related positions, with my last leading the Newspaper Division as Vice President of Sales. In 2005, after approximately 16 years at Western Lithotech, I accepted a position at "The New York Times" as Managing Director of National Production. Over the past 15 years, I’ve held several positions of increasing responsibility, leading to my current position as Senior Vice President – Print Products & Services. 

Going back to when you started your career in the newspaper industry – what were the big industry topics of the day in 1985?

On the operations side of the industry in the mid 1980’s, one of the bigger topics was the competitive need to print more in color and improve the overall print quality of the product. In the late 1970’s and early 80’s, most US newspapers were still printing mostly black and white pages, had limited color capacity on their printing presses, and if they ran color it was mostly spot color with marginal quality. When "USA Today" launched in 1982, they showed the industry that a newspaper could produce high quality four-color process photos and advertisements on printing presses. Over the course of the mid 1980’s to the 1990’s, most major US newspapers invested in new offset printing presses, often in new mailrooms, to be able to offer their advertisers and subscribers a more colorful and higher quality printed product. 

Fast forward to 2020, what are the hottest topics affecting the newspaper industry today?

Speaking from the print side of the business, the hot topic right now is the massive industry consolidation that’s occurring, with GateHouse’s purchase of Gannett being the biggest example recently. 

Two of the largest American newspaper companies have merged in a deal due to the industry's decline in printed editions. GateHouse Media purchased "USA Today" publisher Gannett. The newly formed company now has more than 260 daily papers along with over 300 weeklies. What do you have to say about this concentration?