VANA is making a mistake investing time and member funds in developing its new nesagency marketing and management group (the Futures Project). This project does not seek to serve all Victorian newsagents. Nor does it seek to address the operational issues of most concern to Victorian newsagents. If I were on the Board of VANA, I would push for the organisation to focus on:
- Pursuing, without fear or favour, a fairer and more equitable magazine supply model for all Victorian newsagents
- Private and public lobbying around achieving a fair return for home delivery of newspapers for all Victorian newsagents
- Lobbying the State and Federal Government for assistance to help all Victorian newsagents navigate the significant change ahead
- Establishing a register (benchmark) of supplier terms which VANA members could use to compare terms they have been offered
- Working with GNS, the industry owned stationery supplier to build a strong consistent statewide stationery business in all Victorian newsagencies
- Being more visible among all Victorian newsagents, listening to their concerns and discussing how VANA can better engage
- Getting out of all commercial activity
- Committing that the organsiation will not, in future, seek financial assistance from suppliers for conferences and the like because of the conflict such funding creates
Once sufficient progress has been made on these five key areas and if VANA had resources available, I would push for what I would call phase two of the reinvention of VANA. I’ll leave those thoughts for another time but they include practical help to fix troubled newsagencies. While some of us do this today, VANA could bring valuable statewide focus to such effort.
There is no sense in working on a futures project unless you have taken care of today.