It’s 4:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, just another enterprising day for Pete Waack. The Daily Orange’s general manager clicks away on his mouse while casting his bangs to the side.

In his almost 10-year tenure as the head of its business side, Waack — as well as his staff — is to thank for The D.O.’s fiscal survival in the ongoing national newspaper funeral.

‘If the ad reps or I came in with an idea for more revenue, he was always open to it, always looking to monetize The D.O., because you have to,’ said Lindsey Ott, an advertising manager at The D.O. from 2003 to 2006.

‘Because it is a business.’

Waack swivels away from his desk after another day of leading his five student advertising representatives. This is his latest team; during the past decade he has worked with an estimated 500 Syracuse University students.

The moment he speaks, the business mindset he uses while leading The D.O. through challenging times becomes clear. For Waack and his current and past staffs, it is all about striving for unconventional newspaper-advertising creativity while staying true to the print publication’s roots.

The maintained strength of The D.O.’s print presence in the last 10 years, Waack swears, is the reason why the paper’s readership base remains unchanged. In a time when newspaper circulation is faltering, a college campus provides somewhat of a safe haven for the print product.

And today, Waack celebrates the most basic of business grassroots for a traditional newspaper — the debut of a brand new newspaper stand, about a block down the street from 744 Ostrom Ave.

The stand is his newest — even if it might be basic — initiative to maintain a traditional newspaper presence on campus. Waack has monetarily steered the newspaper with a specific approach: injecting his ad reps’ creativity into local sales pitches.

In an age when the paper’s advertising needs are forced to compete with the Internet, The D.O. has to go local. And that’s where Waack has gone.

Yet it’s a creative local. After all, as Waack and Ott both say, this is a college campus, with college-tailored businesses serving college kids. And his greatest tool of all is the ‘college-try’ effort of The D.O.’s student-workers.

‘The local pizza shop owner in Syracuse is the most unwired person on the planet,’ Waack said. ‘He wants something physical.’

A physical product is what D.O. advertising was giving to students and advertisers 10 years ago, and it hasn’t stopped since. Waack once shared his office with four other ad managers. That number dropped to two when Ott became Waack’s ‘right hand woman’ from 2003 to 2006. Since then, Waack has been solo. The national newspaper depression hit.

When Waack began at The D.O. in October 2001, college newspapers were raking in money, riding on the coattails of the Internet boom. Credit card companies, wireless phone companies and car manufacturers were all huge advertisers. But since then, national advertising has fallen about 20 percent per year, Waack said.

So Waack began to engrain in his ad reps the mentality that controlling local sales is the best way to gain income.

‘A boutique in Armory Square or a bar on Marshall Street may not think they need to advertise to SU students,’ said former D.O. ad rep Alissa Sheeley. ‘But if you show them the hard stats of who reads The D.O. and how effective advertising in that space can be, it’s hard for them to resist.’

Some have resisted, some haven’t. From 2005 to 2010, Waack said The D.O. lost 6 percent of its income per year. In that time, The D.O. overhauled the brand through symbiosis with the editorial side. Ott and Waack developed a series called ‘Connect.’ They branched out into Armory Square, Westcott Street, Hanover Square and Little Italy to brand the areas with the niche that is Syracuse students. And they took the chance to trek to areas that weren’t an SU-student niche. Case in point: Sheeley walked away from Erie Boulevard with a Chinese buffet as her best advertiser, taking out full-page color ads.

Special sections and pages were also spawned, with the likes of Soundgarden advertising the entirety of the music review page. Then creative designs took over, and slowly but surely The D.O. monetarily surfed through the tough times. It worked enough for the newspaper to profit in 2010.

Waack realizes The D.O. will eventually have to evolve to much more online advertising. Online advertisements currently make up 4 percent of The D.O.’s revenue.

But because of the rooted creativity parented in the past 10 years, Waack maintains The D.O. will be ready. The message Waack has sent to advertisers that The D.O. is the way to reach SU students remains strong.

‘The Daily Orange is going to be in a good position when there is a shift in advertising dollars and readership,’ Waack said. ‘When it goes online, its tough to see anyone nudging us out as the news source for SU.’

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Published on February 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm