Member Profile: Joe Green, Green Banner Publications
Joe Green
Green Banner Publications
Pekin, IN
story by Dwight Bitikofer
Joe Green is the third generation of the Green family to publish free papers in southern Indiana. His grandfather, Guy Victor Green, borrowed a car and $10 to attend an auction of the Pekin Banner in 1933. The $10 served as down payment on the paper. Four years later, he was asked by merchants in neighboring Scottsburg to start a community paper for that town. He did and it was a free paper. The Giveaway (circ. 19,000) in Scottsburg has been published by the Greens since 1937.
"I have claimed it to be the oldest continually published free community paper in the United States," said Green. "I usually get a lot of rolling eyes, but never a challenge."
Green did say that he has heard of a couple of possibly older papers that had at one time ceased publication and later resumed.
The other papers that make up the roster of Green Banner Publications include: The Banner-Gazette, Pekin, 18,000 papers; The Leader, Charleston, 14,000 papers; The Washington County Edition, Salem, 12,000 papers. In addition to the free papers, the company publishes two small weekly subscription papers, The Scott County Journal (Scottsburg) and The Chronicle (Austin). All told, the papers cover a 35-mile by 50-mile swath of rolling hills in southern Indiana just above the Ohio River and the Louisville, Ky. metropolitan area.
The free papers are tabloids and carry Wednesday publication dates. They are delivered by private carriers - tubes in rural areas and door-to-door in the towns. The flagship papers are currently running 28 to 32 pages, but Green expects higher page counts in the spring. In the heyday of inserts, the company averaged five per household per week. The company still does 8 or 9 million pieces per year for pizza, fast food, lawn equipment, grocery and hardware stores.
The papers run with 30 to 35 percent editorial content. A priority is given to sports coverage at the nine high schools in the two-plus counties served by the publications. Digital photography makes it possible for the schools to e-mail event photos to the paper. The paper has a "writing staff of five and a half" and its stringers cover major sports events. Green covers his own alma mater, Borden High School.
The business currently has 44 employees plus a similar number of carriers. Most work out of the main plant in Pekin that houses composition, the 4 unit Goss Community press and the Kansa 480 inserter. Management and bookkeeping also take place there. The Banner Gazette pressroom operates about 12 hours a day early in the week and usually one shift late in the week. The company specializes in short-run jobs. They print papers for 13 schools and a significant number of signature book sized club magazines on 50-pound stock. Green has always taken a special interest in the printing operation is proud of some of the innovations they have made doing such things as creating more color availability by using S-wraps.
There are storefront offices in Charlestown, Salem and Scottburg from which writers and sales people work.
The tight economy and spiraling sales at the end of 2008 inspired cost cutting actions. Some hours were reduced and a couple of positions eliminated. The news hole got tighter and deadlines became a little more flexible. One cost cutting idea was to switch from paper to electronic tear sheets sent to customers via e-mail each week.
"We have fewer people doing more work smarter," said Green. "We have insisted on maintaining our level of service. While everyone around us has cut back, we have almost expanded our service."
The plunge in newsprint costs from $750 per ton in December 2008 to just over $500 in February of this year, has helped immensely in the shift from red to black ink. Green expects newsprint to continue rising modestly in 2010, but predicts it will get nowhere near its 2008 price levels.
Green Banner Publications have been online since the mid-1990s. It began as a pretty much static site with that week's classified ads. A popular auction page was added. All display ads for auctions are posted online. Those have brought more auction advertising into the print product. Editors have begun putting some stories online and adding new content almost daily. Green is careful to keep it only to 10 or 15 percent of what readers will find in the papers. A link to the Indiana High School Athletic Association gives access to sports scores that are updated nightly. All of the papers' obituaries also are posted online.
Green entered the company just out of Indiana University in 1977. Although he had always intended to work for the company, his father, Robert "Bob" Green, didn't invite him until his senior year of college. Despite his business degree, his father insisted he learn the business from the bottom up. The company operates its own presses and Green's first job was the dirty work of a printer's devil, doing things like cleaning presses and fetching ink.
"Dad felt the first requirement of managing anything was to know what you were managing," said Green. "I have eventually done every job in the business and redesigned how we do most of them."
In the late 70s Green spearheaded the beginning of a new delivery business operated by the company. R-J Delivery systems not only delivered the company's newspapers, but also set up elaborate networks delivering phone books and product samples in cities around the country. That business has now scaled back to local work, but it was very successful in its heyday.
Under the partnership of father and son the Greens added the Washington County Edition paper in 1980 and they bought the two subscription weeklies in 1982. The younger Green became publisher in 1981 and his father became Chief Operating Officer. Green shepherded the company's transition from Compugraphic typesetters to computers.
Green and his father would sometimes butt heads over management styles. The elder Green was of the belief that managers needed to frequently check up on employees. Joe Green was of a school of thought that if employees are given the tools to do the job and the responsibility to do it, they will generally strive to succeed.
Green cites his long-time production manager Heather Marlman as an example. Marlman is a familiar face at IFPA conferences.
"We have a graphic artist on vacation this week and we have six inches of snow this morning," said Green one deadline day in February. "Tonight Heather will stay here until everything is done to her satisfaction. She takes personal pride in the papers. And if there is a PDF that no one knows how to open or manipulate, I don't have to worry about it. Heather will figure it out."
Joe's father, Bob Green, had gradually taken over the business from his father, in the mid 1960s. Bob Green was one of the founders of Independent Free Papers of America in 1980. He was president of IFPA in the mid-1980s. Bob and Wanda Green were one of the stalwart IFPA couples in the organization's early years.
"Dad would work at least 75 hours a week," said Joe Green. "When they went to IFPA conferences twice a year in St. Louis, that was their vacation!"
Bob Green died suddenly of a heart attack in 1995. Wanda Green, who also worked for the company, died in 2008.
Joe Green has maintained the family tradition of involvement in IFPA. He was an IFPA director from 1994 to 1998. He came back on the board in 2000 and was instrumental in getting the board to adopt the Circulation Verification Council audits as a member benefit. Green was president of IFPA from September 2005 to September 2007. Green has also been actively involved and held offices, including presidency, of the Association of Alternative Delivery Systems and Community Papers of Indiana and Illinois.
Joe Green has been recipient of IFPA's Ben Hammack Award and in the fall of 2009, was presented with IFPA's prestigious Distinguished Service Award.
Green's family members have also been familiar faces at IFPA conferences. His wife Jill, of 29 years, is a doctor of gynecology. Daughter Leslie is currently a senior in high school. Son Roerk is a high school freshman, "6' 1" tall and he looks like me " said Green.
The family lives in Borden, about 10 miles from the Green Banner Publications plant and about 15 miles from Clark County Hospital where Jill practices near the Kentucky state line.
"We are all allowed to live in our house by our four cats," said Green. "They know we all work for them."
Green enjoys spending time with his kids when they will tolerate his company.
"They are dang near as funny as me," he said.
Green predicts that community newspapers have at least 20 years of life left before they transition completely to electronic products.
"We have the advantage of keeping our readers so long as we are engrained into their habits," said Green. "Sometime every Wednesday they read the paper.
"I don't see the Internet being able to localize to the point of being a big threat," he added. "Until people know how to present local news I just don't see them being able to take hold. We have some time to react."
So the presses continue to pump out papers for the hardworking, Bible-Belt, basketball-loving people who live on the farms and in the hills of Southern Indiana. Green hopes to have something of the family legacy that might be of interest to generation number four.
Writer Dwight Bitikofer is an IFPA director
and publishes Webster-Kirkwood Times and
South County Times in suburban St. Louis
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