The changing of The Guardian

The Guardian’s switch from broadsheet to Berliner format has been a prime example of the newspaper’s willingness to embrace radical change, but it’s not the only example.

It is also one of only two UK national newspapers to have merged the production and circulation director roles into a single function (along with the Telegraph), and prominently involved in both of these changes has been Bob Steadman, director of Production, Distribution and Sales (PDS) at Guardian News and Media.

Previously deputy circulation director, and a Guardian man since 1979 in various circulation roles, Steadman’s assent to the top job in the department (which was formed in 2003) came towards the end of last year. He doesn’t pretend therefore to have a fund of technical production expertise in his own head, but he’s surrounded by it anyway.

“I have a strategic vision across the operation and that’s how I can make the role work,” he says, “but I could not do it without a good production team, and we have three fantastic production managers here in Steve Peters on magazines, Peter Mulcahy on newspapers and Peter Harte, who has a finishing focus.”

Steadman explains that his responsibility starts “the moment copy leaves editorial”, and that everything is geared towards producing a quality product that will sell. “For the PDS department everything is about product excellence and operational excellence, but it all goes towards driving sales of the newspaper. I try to make the entire team feel that they’re part of any sales success.”

Of course, the process of successfully merging once independent teams and departments into a unified whole is a tricky one for any organisation, and Steadman admits that knitting production and circulation teams together into PDS took a little while. He’s in no doubt that the company has benefited though, not least from clearer channels of communication when they are most required, as Steadman points out:
“If something goes wrong in a newspaper operation, you often find that production think it is the distribution team’s fault, while distribution think it is production’s, or people think the scheduling was unrealistic, and consequently you can never quite pin down the problem. Once you have production and distribution under the same roof though, they start to think about shared ownership of the problem, and then they’re batting on the same team to make it work.

“I see the benefits all the time, but it’s difficult to quantify. The NFRN (National Federation of Retail Newsagents) gave us the award last year for the best performing newspaper and there are lots of factors in that: good scheduling and planning, good management of print suppliers and our own print sites, good integration with the distribution plan, managing the wholesalers well. When you’ve got all the people responsible for managing all of those interlinked processes under one roof, you have a much better chance of succeeding.”

The move to the Berliner format in 2005 was certainly one project that benefited from an environment in which everyone was pulling in the same direction. Steadman explains that alongside the massive technical production issues, with new presses being installed, the department was also working on the logistics of physically getting the new size to market – what size bundles and how to strap them, for example - while the sales staff worked on issues such as restocking on Point of Sale materials for the new format. There was a lot to plan for PDS, but the department did have a reasonable length of time to get ready for the switch.

“We did have the lead time to plan it properly,” Steadman recalls. “We got the retailers and wholesalers to come in and talk about how we were going to distribute the newspaper, and retail actually became the big opportunity, because having invested significant money in our own POS material, no-one else could fit in it, so we had independent talks with the retailers and it was our USP.”

How long was the lead time for the Berliner change? “It was about a year, which is about 364 days longer than anything else we have ever done, so it was a luxury,” Steadman laughs, adding that this was of course a slight exaggeration, but even so it was “unusual to get that long and to do it on a partnership basis”.

It certainly confirms the importance to Guardian News and Media of the new format and a subsequent sales boost was the newspaper’s reward. The reality of the newspaper world though is that circulation numbers are on a downward curve and have been for years. There is no magic bullet – if there were, it would no doubt have been fired long ago. Occasionally a newspaper might baulk the market trend for a period, and there are big gains when a disaster happens in the world (think 9/11 and the death of Princess Diana), as the public turn to newspapers for analysis and interpretation that they can trust.

Steadman’s appraisal of the economic and market climate is therefore more than tinged with realism, but he speaks optimistically of the opportunities for growth that the weekend market still holds, and he enthuses about The Guardian’s “fantastic success” in selling 37,000 copies at the Glastonbury Festival, from which he has just returned, and for which the newspaper was a main sponsor.

But in the absence of a magic bullet to propel newspaper sales skywards for a sustained period, it’s about maintaining and improving on market share and that means getting the basics right it seems.

“It’s about your products being the best they can be,” says Steadman. “Right the way through the process we make sure the colour, the production, and the images are the best they can be; we get to the print site on time, and we print exceptionally well; we do our work with the retailers with an enthusiastic team and work hard at making our sales the best they can be.”

Steadman’s career has mostly been spent in the circulation field, but he’s had to learn the ropes as a print buyer, since stepping up as director of the PDS department in November. The Guardian was printing a number of its monthly supplements and also Observer magazine at Quebecor World, and it would be fair to say that for Steadman there was barely a honeymoon period as a print buyer, as he explains:
“Quebecor was a baptism of fire, four months into this role. I had to deal with their administrators, and that was my first experience of that. Quebecor was a very good supplier for us though and they did a terrific job. I remember sitting down with one of my production managers on a Friday and we had no-one to print the magazine for the following Sunday.

“Polestar was already printing Weekend for us and we said to them: ‘can you do these other titles for Sunday week?’. They said they could so we had a temporary solution in place. We needed a permanent solution though, so we spoke to a few companies, and in the end Polestar won on a long term basis.”

There were questions internally about the advisability of placing so many of the newspaper group’s titles with a single print supplier, but Steadman says he felt “safe about the decision” after Polestar explained its investment plans and made it clear how much it valued the titles.

Steadman also engages in some extra-curricular industry activity as chair of the Focus on Distribution Initiative (FODI), as well as sitting on the circulation executive of the Newspaper Publishing Association. The FODI role, which he has fulfilled for the last three years, places him squarely in the middle of what often amounts to an argument between newspaper publishers, wholesalers and retailers about arrival and delivery times between the three parties to the newspaper supply chain.
“It’s not the most popular job in the industry,” he observes wryly. “I referee it most of the time.”

Two reviews are about to be undertaken looking at SATs (scheduled arrival times, for newspapers reaching wholesalers) and RDTs (required delivery times, for delivery to retailers). The current measures for RDTs were carried out in 1998, and Steadman points out that “things might have changed a bit in that time”. Fewer retailers carry out home deliveries for a start, and the aim is to identify where time can be given back to the supply chain, though none of the parties wants to be the one giving time back, he says.

“These two reviews are about to get under way, and when they are done they will be fantastically valuable pieces of work that allow us to have informed conversations about improving delivery service.”

Despite the growth in Internet usage and the migration of advertising revenues in that direction, print isn’t going away. Steadman says that the printed newspapers still contribute 85% of the organisation’s revenues, so it remains very important. Making the printed product a less environmentally damaging one is also high up on the agenda.

“I would love to find the perfect replacement for polywrapping the newspaper at the weekend, but we’ve not found it yet,” he admits. “We are improving but we need to find a better solution. Maybe the solution is that we get better at recycling.”