News-Press publisher watches multi-media bloom

Carol Hudler, president and publisher of Fort Myers' daily newspaper, The News-Press, predicts upcoming generations of newspaper readers will be able to take in stories from a variety of print and digital media without breaking stride.

COURTESY PHOTO Carol Hudler "I think anyone who doesn't see the future of print is just seriously limited in their thinking. But that said, I don't think it's a print versus digital kind of thing. It's not an either/or; it's an and/ and…I read three newspapers a day, I read books, and I watch television and I'm a voracious consumer of information on the internet. And I watch movies, okay? So, does one take away from the other? Not particularly. I think that people are grazers.

Local news is most of The News- Press' franchise. "But we have found that the people who prefer their news in the newspaper wanted to get the complete, printed picture of it," Hudler said. "And even though they had heard it (or seen it), it really didn't mean anything to them; or they wanted to have it verified as it showed up in print."

That powerful urge to see events verified in print starts at a young age. That's why Southwest Florida's growing boomer population will keep well written news stories in demand, Hudler said. Like her, they became voracious consumers of words as children.

Hudler grew up in Onega, Kan., pop. 600.

"It was like Mayberry (Andy Griffith's hometown), but smaller," she said. "When I was a kid I liked to write, and I loved to read. My grandmother used to like the fact that I wrote her letters. And she encouraged me. She said 'You're such a good writer and you really ought to go into journalism.' And so, I visited the journalism school at University of Kansas and met a good advisor there, and I kind of liked what he showed me and told me.

"I worked on the school newspaper. I came in on the advertising side, but I got a journalism degree."

Hudler became, in effect, the student publisher of her college newspaper, instead of following a path that would have meant writing articles.

"I think it was really just which teachers were most dynamic," she said. "I had a Reporting 1 teacher that was kind of disappointing - at the time. And I had an advertising teacher who was really exciting. He'd come from Madison Avenue, and that was a big deal, in those days. He just painted this world of excitement for me and I thought, well, that sounds more interesting. And the woman - this is the absolute truth - the Reporting 1 teacher told us you have to learn how to do the traffic accident reports and obits and things like that; she said, 'Well, you need to know this because you'll be doing this the first 8 years of your career.' That sounds like a lifetime to a college student. And I don't think she quite meant it that way, but it scared me, so I went over to the advertising side. "

One of the things she's spending time on recently, Hudler said, is helping advertisers find their place among the throngs of printed pages and internet news blogs and databases.

"Probably the biggest challenge is making sure the advertisers - who fund what we do - are reaching our audiences, and that we know who is reading what, in what form and fashion and who is watching, so we can let the advertisers know how to buy advertising with us."

She stayed in newspaper advertising after college, and moved to Los Angeles with her first husband.

"We wanted to see the world," she said.

After working for Gannett and other newspapers around the country, Hudler became the director of advertising for the Gannett owned News-Press in 1988.

That's where she met her husband, Ad. He was a reporter there, and after they were married he became a stay-athome dad for their daughter, Haley, and also a novelist who wrote extensively about his house-dad status. Hudler said she's grateful for the arrangement. They were moved around by Gannett, as her career advanced, and the family ended up back in Fort Myers, when Hudler returned to take command of the News- Press in 2000.

"We're at a different stage of our life now," she said. "Our daughter is in high school, so she's just starting to drive. She doesn't have to be watched as often…

"I'm very blessed. I know a lot of women who work and go home and have to do all the domestic things. I help with certain homework and Ad helps with other homework and actually Haley's now figured out that the teachers can help her with homework better than either one of us, so it's a partnership. We modify as the needs go."

And that just may be the state of newspapers today, "modify as the needs go."