S. Lauren Stauffer

Business Manager, The Northside Chronicle

How long have you been in media advertising sales, and how did you get your start?

I joined The Northside Chronicle as the advertising manager seven years ago. Before that, I was consulting with community-based groups, event planning, building websites and selling my handmade, one-of-a-kind wares. Between those endeavors, I became a paying advertiser in my neighborhood’s newspaper. Some of the core values I was searching for in full-time employment at the time were observable in the newspaper business — including working for a product-based company made from renewable materials and that benefitted a community. Within the first year of my tenure, the City of Pittsburgh lost its second daily newspaper, with the one left reducing print editions shortly after that. It was a little scary realizing I had just jumped aboard a shaky landscape, but I focused on rebuilding the website’s advertising options to remain on trend while seeking clients who still valued print.

Who had the most influence in helping you become successful in sales?

My success in sales at The Northside Chronicle comes from our tiny team, and at the helm is Mark Masterson, executive director of the Neighborhood Community Development Fund, the parent company of The Northside Chronicle since the early 2000s. He’s been a mentor to me over the years. He supports my ideas and efforts, particularly with the Pittsburgh Community Newspaper Network concept I developed at the end of 2019. COVID shutdowns accelerated that work-inprogress, and within a year, I could sell placements in seven other community newspapers in the metro area.

From my long-gone designer days, I would need to acknowledge John Barnett, who left this world too soon. He was the sales director for an international furniture and lighting designer based in Philadelphia, where I had the privilege of working as their assistant designer. He showed me the ropes of finding the right price point, positioning the product and, most importantly, being an example of whom to be when working with challenging individuals or situations.

What advice would you give to those struggling with media sales and/or who have become frustrated with the new digital solutions they must master to represent their company to advertisers?

All sales are about who you are in relation to the client, your ability to provide solutions and your availability to grow together in the process. Knowing your client’s business, your strengths and your company’s products inside and out help tremendously. If you think you already know, revisit it from another angle to re-confirm it. This can look like asking more questions and listening before pitching a hit at the first, second or third meeting.

In the world of digital products, start with a foundation of what you know to find out what you don’t know. The tech industry is built on intangible code, which I like to think of as the new artificial disappearing ink. With the incessant pace of updates, bugs, fixes, new A.B. tests, hacking, and tracking, with a little “did you try turning it on and off again,” it gets easier to see how all businesses are their test products for extraction and which trends are worth investing in or those to watch out for. If you’re speaking to a prospective client who is looking for digital advertising, know they are right there with you, and that’s where you start for your company.

For anyone specifically at a newspaper that still prints, I believe it’s also essential to reposition the narrative of the print product as part of a historic archival ecosystem and how it compares to completely digital records. Where continuing to be a ‘paper of record’ might not seem important to advertisers or subscribers today, the ability for future research is impacted with every lost print publication. If a newspaper is geographically bound in reach and reporting, local advertisers will share in that area identity where their businesses are located. If a community’s history is no longer recorded, does it still have an identity? Aligning a client’s business values with your publication’s community mission will reach more local audiences searching for those exact connections. To me, that’s way more noticeable in person than the given impressions from Ai-generated algorithms.