The Ubiquitous News Doctors

When the going gets tough, the tough get consultants

The Cincinnati Enquirer had a problem. Circulation was slipping, down about 5% in three years. So in 1975 the Enquirer hired Frank N. Magid Associates, a Marion, Iowa, consulting firm, to find a solution. On Magid's advice, the paper added more local news, more sports coverage, more consumer reporting and its first restaurant reviews. Results are not all in yet, but during the past year alone circulation climbed by 3.6%, to 191,800.

The Cincinnati story is typical of a trend that is sweeping the newspaper business. Troubled by drooping circulation--and impressed by the success of consultants in winning bigger ratings for local television newscasts--publishers are flocking to a growing band of specialists who treat circulatory problems. The news doctors, as these practitioners are sometimes called, are secretive about their prices, methods and recommendations, but most major dailies have employed them at one time or another. Their fees can run as high as $80,000 a job.

Magid, whose firm is plunging into newspaper work after becoming the nation's leading television news doctor, is in many ways typical of the bunch. A one-time social psychologist at the University of Iowa, he borrowed $800 from his father and in 1957 launched a market research firm in Marion, a pleasant suburb of Cedar Rapids, where his wife was able to land a teaching job. After helping more than 100 TV stations to retool their newscasts, Magid and his staff of 117 have sold their services to nearly 40 newspapers in the past three years, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Daily News. For print clients, the Magid team undertakes strenuous audience polling, runs the results through a computer and issues recommendations--generally for more consumer coverage, zippier graphics and writing style, more local news and self-help features, less national and international news. Says Magid: "It is really tailoring a product to meet a need."

Earlier newspaper researchers merely found out what kind of product readers liked and let publishers decide how to tailor it. The news doctors typically make specific proposals for reform, and tend to regard newspapers more as packaged goods than as public-service institutions. Says Donald J. Morgan of GMA Research Corp. in Bellevue, Wash.: "We look at the newspaper as a product, just as we would something from Procter & Gamble."

Publishers generally applaud the use of news consultants as an easy way of keeping in touch with the territory. Editors often resent them. "A publisher comes in and wags his finger in the air and tells you there's something wrong with your paper, and he's bringing in this expert to tell you how to straighten it out," says Chicago Daily News Editor in Chief Jim Hoge, who has generally ignored the advice Frank Magid has given his paper during its recent radical redesign. "Before you know it, the expert starts telling you which is left and which is right."

At best, critics say, news doctors prescribe cures that are either superficial or self-evident. "Any editors worth their salt shouldn't have to pay money to consultants," says Charles Whipple, the Boston Globe's ombudsman. At worst, the use of consultants leads to an epidemic of fluff at the expense of hard news. Magid and Dallas' Belden Associates usually advise clients to squeeze some front-page nation al and international news into a box of summaries. After an audience study last year by Belden and some in-house soul searching, the Miami News began to boil much of its copy down to short, brisk stories that could be read more easily by television viewers. Since then, News circulation has for the moment stopped falling, and advertising is up slightly.

Results speak for themselves, say the news doctors, many of whom argue that they are merely trying to give readers the newspapers they want. Old-fashioned journalists, however, believe newspapers are primarily supposed to give readers the news that is important. Those notions are not always mutually exclusive. The Los Angeles Times paid $35,000 this year to have Lieberman Research West, Inc., find out how the paper could be revamped to win new subscribers. One Lieberman recommendation has been adopted: folding subscription cards into the paper. Reports Editor William F. Thomas: "We found that what our market wants most out of the newspaper is what we basically produce: news."

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