Compare Using Gbas Model

BA 540 – Managerial and Organizational Behavior

Comparing the Pinckneyville Press and the Southern Illinoisan Newspapers Using The GBAS Model

August 29, 2010

I. Introduction

While many would argue that print media is a dying art (and much evidence supports said argument, with newspaper subscriptions diminishing and newspapers that have successfully competed for decades folding) the printed word is currently alive and prospering in the Southern Illinois region. There’s the Southern Illinoisan, (also referred to as The Southern) a regional paper that sets the standard for the local industry to emulate, as well as a number of smaller local or county specific newspapers. Besides the Southern Illinoisan, Perry County—one of the eight counties inside The Southern’s distribution—also supports three ‘local’ newspapers: one daily (The Du Quoin Call), and two weekly (The Pinckneyville Press and The County Journal), for example. With The Southern’s coverage encompassing eight plus counties (Jackson, Perry, Randolph, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Saline and Johnson County) it’s no wonder that smaller, more community orientated papers also hold separate niches within the same communities that the SI focuses upon. Some could argue that the Pinckneyville Press and others like it (to the best of my knowledge, every city in Southern Illinois has their own paper with larger towns having daily papers and smaller towns having weeklies) are simply smaller, more centrally focused versions of the Southern Illinoisan. Possibly such papers role is to pick up where the Southern leaves off? While these statements are essentially true, they are also oversimplifications. The argument can be made, using the GBAS (Goal, Boundary, Activity System) Method, that even if both papers have an overlapping client bases (in both subscribers and advertisers) they cater to different aspects of said clients. Also, based on these differences, there are a number of readers who prefer The...