TT Publishing's 'World Class' Vision

TT: Why did you leave Journal

f Commerce Inc. and the Economist Group to come to a trade association?

RAST: That’s a good question, because I was really enjoying my work at the Journal of Commerce. Basically, I saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at ATA to help shape a major organizational restructuring at a key Washington lobbying group and to build a world-class information and publishing operation that would capitalize on my diverse experience in journalism and publishing over the past 25 years.

RAST: We created an ATA Information Services Group under my supervision. The group consolidates TT Publishing, ATA’s graphics department, its economic and statistical analysis department, Trucking Information Services Inc., the ATA Survey Center, the ATA Information Center, management information systems and a new Internet development team. Each of these departments either gathers or delivers information, so there are obvious synergies. The new group will work in concert to modernize ATA’s technical infrastructure, improve the quality and efficiency of all ATA information delivery, including revamping Transport Topics and its sister magazines, and give the American Trucking Associations a world-class electronic information service.

TT: Transport Topics is billed as the “national newspaper of the trucking industry,” but some wonder how objective a newspaper owned by a trade association can be. How do you answer those skeptics?

RAST: Is TT Publishing owned by the ATA? Yes, and I don’t apologize for that. But I’d caution critics to judge us by our actions, not by rumors. There’s an advocacy side and a business side to a trade association — and the advocacy side doesn’t bring in a penny of revenue. The business side, of which membership dues and products like Transport Topics are a part, helps underpin the lobbying and advocacy functions. We have to produce publications that executives, whom advertisers want to reach, feel they have to read in order to stay competitive in a tough business environment.

At Transport Topics, we have a fully paid circulation, and many of our readers are chief executives and line managers who make purchasing decisions. And most of our subscribers aren’t members of the ATA.

I come from a hard-news, business-to-business journalism background. I directed coverage of trucking and the overall transportation industry at Traffic World, I’ve been a national economics correspondent, investigative reporter and electronic publisher at organizations ranging from the Associated Press and Washington Post to Traffic World, Journal of Commerce and the Economist Group. My goal is to make Transport Topics the must-read publication for everyone in trucking and its surrounding industries. And I have ATA President Walter McCormick’s commitment, and a mandate from the Wren Committee, to help me do it.

TT: But can TT cover both the ATA and trucking objectively?

RAST: Not only can TT cover trucking objectively, but if you think about it, TT has access to better sources than virtually any other publication in the field. There’s a whole building full of people at ATA whose job it is to formulate policy, lobby Capitol Hill, conduct research, and keep track of economic performance and business trends in trucking. I want TT’s reporters to have access to those resources. It’s like any other news beat. The writers have to find out who’s got the information and build relationships with those people. That can be a great advantage in picking up news trends before our competitors do.

As for impartial coverage, when Walter asked me to join ATA’s senior management team, he told me he wanted TT to write about the American Trucking Associations the way any other top-notch news organization would. We’ll write about ATA just like we’ll write about any other association, by telling both sides of the story as completely as we can. There may be times when TT’s coverage is critical of Walter or the ATA. But, in Walter’s words, if TT uncovers a problem at ATA, it’s his job to fix it. So, in a perverse sort of way, we’re helping the trucking industry when we point out things that the association could do better.

And in looking back over TT’s coverage of ATA in recent years, I think it sometimes went too far in the other direction to prove that it was “objective” and didn’t pay enough attention to what this association was doing. There’s a tremendous amount of activity going on here that affects the entire trucking industry.

TT: What about complaints of too much ATA coverage in TT recently?

RAST: Again, 1998 has been an extraordinary year for American Trucking Associations. After his appointment last fall, Walter McCormick formally started as president in January and inherited an organization that was in disarray.

In response to demands from its members, the association’s executive committee called for a new ATA — a member-driven, member-owned organization focused on trucking advocacy and information. The Wren Committee hammered out a strategic plan for change after eight months of hard work, and it won overwhelming passage in August. So there was a lot of news to report. And there will be in the future.

In addition, change creates uncertainty. There were significant layoffs in the spring, and reporters at TT, just like other employees at ATA, didn’t know whether they’d have jobs. Some good talent jumped ship. There was concern that Walter would come in and want TT to be an ATA “house organ,” and it led to some confusion in how stories should be played.

Frankly, I think TT did a very credible job of reporting about the ATA restructuring under very difficult circumstances. There also was a hiring freeze in place until the new management team could be assembled and make some reasoned decisions. That meant TT was understaffed in some areas, and somewhat demoralized, and that hurt coverage a bit.

TT: And where is TT now?

RAST: We’re in a major rebuilding mode, and we’re building on a solid foundation to create an “A” Team of transportation journalists and editors that will outshine all other publications in the field. Despite changes in the reporting staff, we have very good talent upon which to build. And we were fortunate to be able to hire Howard S. Abramson, one of the nation’s top transportation journalists, away from Bloomberg News to become vice president and editorial director of TT Publishing and editor of Transport Topics. Howard is a first-rate journalist and editor; he was instrumental in Journal of Commerce Inc.’s purchase of Traffic World from International Thompson in 1990, and was TW’s first editor under JoC ownership. He rebuilt that magazine to national prominence and went on to become managing editor of The Journal of Commerce before moving to Bloomberg.

TT: Nonetheless, some of your competitors in the trucking news arena are saying Transport Topics is vulnerable and that its coverage will only echo ATA executive policy.

RAST: Let me answer that question from two perspectives — circulation penetration and advertising penetration. With respect to circulation, there are 80 to 90 publications that target the trucking industry. Transport Topics is the only fully paid publication in the entire market serving trucking, and the only one that submits to ongoing thorough audits by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Nearly 30,000 fleet executives pay a subscription annually to receive TT. Our renewal rate runs at roughly 80% — a renewal rate that rivals the most successful publishing titles, like National Geographic. Those executives subscribe to TT because they know they can trust the coverage. We intend to make it even more comprehensive and timely. I expect we’ll see circulation grow as a result.

The second category where we lead the marketplace is in paid advertising pages. It’s difficult to make absolute comparisons between a weekly newspaper and a monthly, but I’d suggest that for the past five or six years we have captured a dominant share of advertising when compared to four of the primary monthly fleet titles. Again, the reason is that we have an audience willing to pay for Transport Topics’ content, and because advertisers know that that audience is comprised of business decision-makers.

For the past eight years, TT Publishing has retained Competitive Media Reporting, of New York, to measure every ad appearing in every issue of our title plus the four core fleet magazines. In 1994, according to CMR figures, we assumed the No. 1 position among the five titles. Since then we have increased our market-share penetration to 28.2% of all of the ads placed among the five titles — and that doesn’t even consider the 800-plus pages of classified advertising we carry annually.

What we do understand is that it’s a lot harder to stay at No. 1 than it is to get there, because everybody is shooting at us . . . that fact hasn’t escaped our attention. That speaks to why I was hired, and why I hired Howard Abramson and why we’re in the process of adding new reporting positions and a full-time Internet team to beef up our online products. I’m flattered that some of our competitors would like to take aim at us. I enjoy a challenge.

TT: What are your immediate goals?

RAST: Some of my goals in 1999 are: