Representing 90 AAN member papers and many non-members as well, 588 alties converged on Portland for a rousing 30th annual AAN Convention. There were senators, strip club tours, former US attorneys, marching bands, scores of informative sessions, and, of course, parties galore.

Check out convention pics on AAN’s Flickr account. Thanks to all who contributed to the blog!

Arve Overland and Leo Chung of Overland Agency, Inc. gave an informative session called “How to Sell Your Website to Advertisers” during the 2007 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) Convention in Portland, Oregon.

Overland and Chung walked the room through the job of a media buyer; the intermediary responsible for purchasing online ads to meet specific advertisers needs.

My background is editorial, so I found this an especially helpful approach for understanding media buyers and how alternative newspapers can structure their websites to deliver value to advertisers.

Understand the process of buying online ads from a professional media buyer’s perspective, and then use that understanding to guide smaller clients into lasting relationships.

A media buyer’s job is to deliver a certain numerical goal to their client - a certain number of pageviews for a promotional site, or a certain number of coupon-downloads. Online advertising is all about stats - everything is measured, nothing is guesswork.

It is all math.

The media buyer needs to deliver 1,500 coupon downloads to their client.

About 1 percent of your site audience will click through the ad to the promotional site featuring the coupon. About 3 percent of those folks will download the coupon (that’s called a site conversion rate). [These percentages are garnered from industry standards, and then tweaked accordingly.]

To get 1,500 coupon downloads, they’ll need 50,000 people to visit the promotional site with the coupon. And since only 1 percent of your audience will click through, they will need their ad to be seen 5 million times in order to deliver the promised 1,500 coupon downloads to their client.

So, they need their ad seen 5 million times. If you can deliver that amount of pageviews within the campaign timeframe (Chung and Overland stated an average campaign lasted an month or so), then the media buyer will spend their client’s money advertising on your site.

A media buyer wants to spend their money wisely, so they are willing to spend a little more for a targeted audience that is more likely to click through to their promotional site - great news for alts, who can deliver local audiences passionate about specific issues.

By creating sections of your website that feature deep-well interest content, you can garner targeted audiences that your sales reps can help connect with interested advertisers. Putting together an “environmental news” section, for example, would be a great way to appeal to advertisers trying to reach environmentally-minded consumers.

4 Keys to Successfully Selling Your Site

Slide 29, Overland & Chung presentation
1. Understand Your Advertiser/Buyer

• They need to maximize return and show results against quantifiable goals
• Go beyond selling inventory and “space” to selling solutions

2. Communicate Your Website’s Value

• Demonstrate your local, demographic and flexibility advantage
• Leverage your unique position to differentiate and deliver relevance

3. Plan by the Numbers

• Every dollar is accountable and ROI drives online advertising
• Use the ROI model to price your products; demand more for what converts higher and understand what is driving an advertiser’s price pressure

4. Measure Results to Drive Sucess

• Data is key to success during the campaign as well as for on-going strategy and relationships
• Provide your advertisers with knowledge to improve their campaigns and results and they will come back

This article by Bruce VanWyngarden originally appeared in the Memphis Flyer.

It had been a long flight. I dropped my bags on the floor, walked into the hotel bathroom, and snapped on the lights. There was a brief flicker, and then the room was illuminated. I looked at the lightbulbs. They were the curly-cue energy-saving kind. Hmmm, I thought, nice touch.

I relieved myself and flushed the potty. There was a small, quick gurgle that lasted about a second. Ah, I thought, water-saving loos. I sat on the bed and opened my laptop to check my e-mail. The little wireless icon popped and asked me if I wanted to connect to the Internet via the city’s free wi-fi system. Yes, I did. How convenient and simple, I thought.

I spent four days in Portland, Oregon, at a newspaper conference last week, and each day I saw clear evidence of what a difference in a city’s quality of life an enlightened and progressive government can make.

I took light-rail trains all over town. I rode in hybrid taxis. The streets were immaculate. Roses and other flowers bloomed on every corner. The downtown was booming. I saw no vacant buildings, no blighted blocks.

So how do they do it? For one thing, they started 30 years ago by forming Metro, a consolidated elected governing body that is responsible for all urban planning, county-wide. Portland has no sprawl, due to a strictly enforced “urban growth boundary” that separates urban from rural land. The idea is to encourage redevelopment of Portland’s inner core and preserve its tree-lined city neighborhoods.

The Metro consists of seven elected commissioners who oversee transit, waste and recycling, parks, the zoo, the convention center, and fish and wildlife management. There is a mayor, but his role is strictly limited and mostly ceremonial. The current mayor, Tom Potter, lobbied for a reorganization to a “strong mayor” form of government, a measure that was on the city’s May ballot. It was rejected by a three-to-one margin.

As far as I know, the mayor didn’t blame unnamed “snakes” for the defeat. Maybe he just took it as a sign from God.

This article by Ralph Routon originally appeared in the Colorado Springs Independent:

Ron Wyden isn’t running for president, though some of his constituents wish he would.

To most of America, Wyden obviously doesn’t stand out, even after 15 years in the House and 11 in the Senate. At 58, he’s just another little-known member of the ruling Democratic majority in Congress.

Yet the senior U.S. senator from Oregon is among the few lawmakers who opposed the Iraq war from the start. He was one of only 10 senators to vote against renewing the Patriot Act last year, and he supports legalizing same-sex marriage.

Those stances might not win an election in Colorado Springs, but they help make Wyden an influential voice among Democrats inside the Capitol.

Last weekend in Portland, Ore., Wyden spoke to editors and publishers attending the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies national convention. He could talk all day about the war in Iraq, and he makes it clear that “more votes are coming up” to push harder than ever for a timetable to bring troops home.

But this wasn’t an anti-war speech. Wyden used the unusual opportunity of this national audience in his hometown to discuss his other favorite subject:

Health care.

Wyden already has authored bills trying to reform and improve the health-care system, which he refers to as “broken” and “sick care, not health care.” To back up that characterization, he says the amount of money going to health care would be enough to have one physician - making $200,000 a year - for every seven U.S. families. He adds that despite the staggering, $2.2 trillion annual expenditure, Americans’ life expectancy ranks 31st among the world’s nations - just ahead of Albania and just behind Jordan.

Some might wonder why a low-profile senator doesn’t wait to discuss all this until after the 2008 presidential election. Surely then, if a Democrat replaces George W. Bush, the next administration can make major progress.

Of course, what if the next president turns out to be Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson or another Republican? What if the GOP reverses its Senate deficit?

That helps explain why health care is Wyden’s obsessive mission - now. He’s not content to wait until Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards or Bill Richardson prevails. As Wyden puts it, “Everybody running for president has a plan, but I have a specific strategy for how to get there from here.”

In pursuing his crusade, Wyden has proposed the Healthy Americans Act. He’s encouraged for three reasons: He sees an “incredible” about-face in the business community, moving from “we can’t afford to fix health care” to “we can’t afford not to fix health care.” He sees business and labor agreeing something must be done. And he hears conservatives conceding that “if we’re going to fix health care, we have to cover everybody.”

Wyden feels the biggest issue is worsening health insurance through employers because of rate increases mixed with benefit reductions. Wyden says work-based plans are “melting like a Popsicle on a summer sidewalk in August.”

His proposal would end all insurance tied to work, giving employers a break and allowing employees to leave dead-end jobs without losing benefits. Individuals and families would buy health insurance much as they purchase car insurance now. Wyden’s bill also forces insurance companies to “take all comers” and guarantee lifetime coverage at reasonable rates tied to income, even with pre-existing conditions. As he says, “Once you sign up, you’re in forever.”

Wyden’s simple theme: Everybody should have the same secure, affordable, high-quality coverage as members of Congress. It also could solve the rising problem of covering military veterans, especially those who served in Iraq. It would offer incentives for citizens and insurers who give a high priority to wellness and prevention. It could save $1.48 trillion in 10 years (based on current costs and relentless increases) without requiring any new government money.

Hard to argue with any of that. But what happens next? Wyden is working to build a list of backers for his bill, also known as S. 334. He’s hoping people will learn about the proposal (for more, check out wyden.senate.gov) and urge legislators - in our case, starting with Sens. Ken Salazar and Wayne Allard - to become co-sponsors.

In about 45 minutes, Ron Wyden made believers out of many cynics in this audience. He insists he’s just trying to make America a better place.

He could be on the verge of succeeding.

And in perhaps my most-favoritest bit of bloggery regarding the Convention, Hank Sims of the North Coast Journal (Humboldt County, CA) blogs the paper’s acceptance to the illustrious organization that is AAN:

“Yours truly was left to hold down the fort last week while the rest of the staff decamped to Portland for days of drunken revelry with our peers from across North America. So when I got the telephone call Saturday evening, I was inclined to take the news with several grains of salt — in other words, in much the same way that the colleague slurring words into my ear had already taken several margaritas.

But by Monday morning the bigwigs in Portland* had evidently sobered up enough to issue a press release, and lo! It was all true. The North Coast Journal had been deemed worthy of admission into the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, journalism’s most exclusive fraternity. Nineteen papers applied this year; only five were accepted. We made it through on the first round, but we were very nearly done in by the sickly remnants of our public service mission. Here’s what the AAN membership committee had to say about the Journal: “[I]t’s a little too rah-rah — take, for example, the story about the local food co-op and how wonderful it is for the community.”

Hey, it was a slow news week! Luckily it appears that our team’s heroic imbibery in Portland more than made up for our sometimes schmaltzy, substandard copy. But consider us duly chastised. I piss on the Co-op.”

* Technically, we keep our large hairpieces at the AAN office in downtown DC.

San Diego Citybeat’s David Rolland blogs on LastBlogOnEarth.com:

“When it came time to ask questions, I hurried over to the mic and asked about Carol Lam, the former U.S. Attorney from San Diego who also got yanked. In his opening remarks, Iglesias had invoked Duke Cunningham - the former congressman who’s now sitting in a puddle of his own tears while doing time in the federal pen - suggesting that Iglesias truly believes Lam was fired because of her prosecution of Cunningham, and not because of Lam’s performance in fighting gun and immigration crimes. Iglesias noted that it wasn’t just Lam’s work on Cunningham, but also her indictment of Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the former executive director of the CIA who was charged with fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in relation to cases against Cunningham and Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes. He added that U.S. attorneys were given latitude in setting priorities, particularly in immigration-related prosecutions in border states.

But mostly it was the timing of an e-mail sent by Kyle Sampson, who at the time was chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, to William Kelley in the White House counsel’s office, that has Iglesias convinced that Lam was the victim of hardball politics. Sampson’s e-mail, which said there was a “real problem we have right now with Carol Lam,” was sent the day after Lam notified the Justice Department of search warrants in the Foggo and Wilkes investigations.

True, Iglesias told me, this is “circumstantial” evidence, but he said one can be convicted on strong circumstantial evidence. Still, he said, direct evidence is better, and he believes it’s out there in the form of e-mails that have yet to be uncovered. He pins his hopes on ongoing probes by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Office of the Inspector General and House and Senate subcommittees.

Lam, for her part, is keeping quiet, unlike Iglesias. The folks at AAN actually asked me to see if I could get Lam to speak at the convention. My phone call to her represented the first time we’d talked. She was very nice, but she politely declined.”

Kevin Allman continues his bloggings on Kevinallman.typepad.com, this time with musings on the state of cartoons in the alt industry:

“At the Tugboat Brewing Company party on Saturday night, I ran into Shannon Wheeler, creator of the strip “How to Be Happy” (formerly “Too Much Coffee Man”), along with his hilarious friend Sandra “Smartest Woman in Portland” Cho. We tucked in for a couple of beers and started talking about the state of the media and Portland in general. Soon we were joined by his friend Matt Bors, whose strip “Idiot Box” (above) is running in a few alt-weeklies around the country (none in Portland). Both Matt and Shannon had come to the conference hoping to hook up (not that way) with some editors who might give them work.

What’s up with that? Hyper-local coverage is the only way any papers — the big dailies or the alt-weeklies — are going to survive. Local stories, local writers, local concerns. So why not local cartoons? As Matt wrote to me the next day:

Not to bitch (but yeah, to bitch) not many alt-weekly papers seem to support cartoons, especially local ones, enough. There is basically a whole genre of cartooning people dub “alt-weekly cartoonists” that has risen from the industry, but only people like Tom Tomorrow that run 150+ papers can make a living at it.

It goes for the web too. Some run comics, but huge sites like the Huffington Post have blog entries by unqualified celebrities, but not a daily political cartoon or anything. I don’t get it. I know I’m biased, but people like cartoons and it seem like a relatively cheap way to keep a lot of people coming back to a site or altweekly.”

Portland Mercury’s Matt Davis reports on Blogtown.PortlandMercury.com:

“[Rumor excerpted] … Meeker lives on a street that runs right underneath Portland’s silver goddesses [sky trams].

However Meeker, with a publisher’s keen sense for turning lemons into lemonade, agreed to allow Widmer Brothers to plaster a huge beer ad on the roof of his house on Saturday night, after Widmer supplied the booze at the evening’s WW-hosted tram party, which was attended by a national audience of convention-goers from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN).

I bumped into Meeker last Thursday night, while crashing a party (and drinking delicious, free, Widmer beer) hosted by the WW at the Portland Art Museum. “So, you’re the one who wants to take pictures of my house?” he asked - blowing our plans to spring an undercover photographic mission on him without warning. It seems the Widmer promotions people put him onto us after we called up last Tuesday asking “when might be a good time to take a picture?”

We didn’t get a photo in the end, but sources have confirmed they saw the banner on Meeker’s house. Some people have accused Meeker of being a “sell-out.” However, we think he’s discovered a revolutionary new way to recoup lost advertising revenue, and as such, Mercury editor Wm. Steven Humphrey will be covering his roof with a 1000sq.ft Hormel’s Chili ad, as soon as possible.”

[Editor’s note: Personally, anything 1000 sq. ft. and covered in chili sounds great. - lf.com]

Have Trade Show Pics?

Add your pictures from the golfing to this slideshow by emailing your pictures to photos@aan.org with “tag: aan07tradeshow” in the body of your email. ((Photos@aan.org is a branded redirect for our upload-to-Flickr email address.))

Arkansas Times‘ Lindsey Millar posts her take on the the David Iglesias interview at Arkansas Blog:

“More from the city of roses: David Iglesias, the former US Attorney for New Mexico, spoke candidly today to AANers at a lunch talk. He kicked off his speech with some quips about being a disillusioned Republican, who’d, to paraphrase President Clinton he said, “sipped the loyalty Kool-Aid, swished it around, but not swallowed.”

The only real question he wouldn’t answer was who he thought of the remaining US attorneys had prosecuted cases based on politics. That followed him admitting that he thought there were “a couple” out there.

Other things of interest: He said he found Ashcroft to be a straight-shooter, and he said that the shift from Ashcroft to Gonzales was one of working for people doing law enforcement to working for the White House.

He also said that he believes there’s a smoking gun email out there and reminded the audience that forensic investigations dig up “conveniently” deleted emails all the time. That nothing’s ever really deleted.

What else? In the open Q&A, Alan asked if there’s likely to be any fallout with N.M. Representative Heather Wilson and Senator Pete Domenici, both of whom called Iglesias to pressure him to proceed with election fraud charges on Democrats just before the elections last year. Iglesias noted that Wilson only won her seat by some 800 votes, so her position is probably tenuous, but that even though Domenici’s poll numbers are as low as they’ve ever been, the only Democrat in N.M. who could likely unseat him is Bill Richardson, who’s got bigger fish to fry right now.”