Traditional newspaper monitoring as a business got its start in America in 1888, long before the advent of mass communication technology such as television or the internet. For many generations, hardcopy newspapers were acquired by the monitoring companies and then readers would read through each individual paper looking for relevant keywords for clients. When results were found, they were cut or ‘clipped’ from the paper, glued to cardstock, compiled in a book and sent to the client. Even though the process has changed over the years, the foundation of traditional newspaper monitoring remains the same; the source material Newz Group uses is still newspapers in their hardcopy form.

Newz Group was founded in 1997 and has kept the tradition of hardcopy newspapers alive and reinvented it for our digital world. Rather than sourcing our hardcopy content from newspaper websites or only monitoring the largest newspapers in a state, we work with state press associations and individual publications across America to provide access to newspapers all of shapes and sizes.

This is a piece of equipment used in the 90’s when print clips were still delivered to clients in the mail. ‘The Tab Monster’ kept all of the tabs organized and secured so they could be placed on client clips. 

There are several advantages to having traditional newspaper monitoring as a part of your media monitoring suite that no other media monitoring channel provides. With traditional newspaper monitoring, newspapers with little to no online presence can be monitored and captured. This is especially crucial for receiving mentions from smaller newspapers and publications in rural areas. Newz Group has access to hundreds of publications that are unmonitorable by any other means. Additionally, with traditional newspaper monitoring, clients receive articles in their entirety in PDF and plain text in the client portal; there is zero content received from traditional newspapers that is blocked by paywalls. 

Unlike online articles that can be removed from the internet for a variety of reasons, content that runs in a newspaper is captured and will remain the same as long as the file is retained. Not only does Newz Group use our access to newspapers to provide our clients with the most comprehensive media monitoring, we also archive the newspaper editions, so the history captured in the pages can be maintained and preserved for generations to come. Another plus is that hardcopy print monitoring benefits and supports community and local journalism across America. For every article that Newz Group captures, royalties are paid back to the state press association, allowing them to help community journalism succeed in their state. To date, Newz Group has sent over one million dollars in royalties to state press associations across America and has recycled millions of pounds of newspaper.

Newz Group has always been dedicated to providing what our media monitoring clients need while also protecting the content we are entrusted to process. The innovation of Newz Group’s processes has been driven by our desire to create systems that meet the ever-changing needs of the client.

-Ian Buchanan, Newz Group CEO

 Even though we at Newz Group strongly believe in traditional newspapers and monitoring, we have also been committed to modernizing the newspaper monitoring process to better serve both our clients and publication partners. For about the first ten years of business, newspaper monitoring was done in the traditional way. Papers were sent to our offices, sorted, read by our analysts, marked, tabbed and processed and then sent to clients via the US Mail in packets. This process could mean a delay of months in between a story running in the newspaper and a client seeing the mention. While print monitoring was being done in the traditional format, the Newz Group development team began exploring and testing improvements to the press clipping production model in the mid-90s. In 2001, we started emailing articles and clips to our clients, and in late 2008, Newz Group started receiving its first PDF editions for digital processing. This was a critical step in innovation. It improved the turnaround time on delivering relevant content to clients and allowed the organization to better leverage technology to improve the monitoring practices.

Even though these days most newspapers are sent to Newz Group in a digital form, we still receive and scan physical newspapers at our office in Columbia, Missouri.

Newz Group’s commitment to digital innovation and pioneering did not stop in 2008; in the past 12 years we have continued to work hard to modernize the hardcopy print monitoring process, include additional services such as online and social media monitoring, and give our clients access to even more data from their results. Even though some newspapers are currently still sent to Newz Group via the US Mail, the vast majority of content is received digitally. This means that even with processing and monitoring by our reading analysts, content can be sent out to clients in a matter of days vs weeks or months.

With traditional newspaper monitoring, you are able to get the entirety of the story from both popular newspapers and hard-to-source publications without worrying about being unable to view content due to paywalls or deleted web pages, while also helping to support community journalism across the nation.

By partnering with state press associations, not only do we have access to the content in the smaller and more rural publications in a state, but we also have access to the largest publications in a state. For example in Texas, we like to say that we cover everything from the Austin American-Statesman (Circulation: ~130,000) to the Zapata County News (Circulation: ~1,400). Also in Texas we monitor notable papers such as the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, and the San Antonio Express-News. This pattern holds true in all the states that we monitor. We treat all publications as equally important, no matter their publication schedules or circulation numbers

Celebrating its 25th year, Newz Group provides state press associations with publisher support and archiving services alongside the most comprehensive newspaper monitoring in the greater Midwest. Newz Group is the primary media monitoring source for over 1/3 of American newspapers. For more information visit: www.newzgroup.com

Jenn Langdon is the Business Development Director at Newz Group. She has also been a contributing writer to the Sedalia Democrat and The Kansas City Pitch and was recently named the 2nd Best Newspaper Columnist by Missouri Magazine. Jenn has been with Newz Group for almost two years and can be reached at jlangdon@newzgroup.com