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First newsprint, then radio and the Internet.
Now The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co. is moving into directory publishing. Star Directories, a division of the multimedia company, will publish a telephone directory in the spring of next year.
The book will be distributed to 125,000 homes and businesses in Fredericksburg, the counties of Spotsylvania, Stafford, King George and Caroline and Lake of the Woods in Orange County. Newcomers will receive them as they move to the area.
The Star Directory plans for its book to include 100 pages of local information on government, schools, entertainment, transportation and services, in addition to maps.
The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co. wanted local businesses to have a choice of telephone directories in which they advertise, according to John Hollenberger, directory manager of Star Directory and circulation director of the newspaper. Many local advertisers aren't satisfied with the service from Verizon, which publishes the phone directory for the area, he said.
Some complain about the difficulty of contacting Verizon sales representatives after their advertising campaign ends in the area. The telecommunications company--which used to publish two books to cover the area--also increased its advertising prices when it combined them into one, Hollenberger said.
"The people in the market are really receptive to an alternative to the [Verizon] book," he said. "The utilities have continued to have a monopoly in the phone directory business and the rates go up and the quality goes down."
Elizabeth Tusing, a spokeswoman for Verizon Information Services, said sales representatives are in the area from January through June, and advertisers should have no problem contacting them the rest of the year.
As for combining the two directories into one, Tusing said advertisers had been asking for a comprehensive book that covered the whole area. When GTE and Bell Atlantic merged in 2000, Verizon created one.
The change benefited both consumers and advertisers, who no longer have to buy ads in both books, Tusing said.
To address advertisers' concerns, Star Directory will have an office on William Street where sales reps can be contacted throughout the year. Prices will be less than its competitor's and the book's type face will be larger, Hollenberger said.
The directory will include yellow pages, residential and business white pages and local information. Star Directory will begin selling advertisements next month.
Since the breakup of the Bell monopoly in 1984, the number of independent publishers entering the directory publishing industry has grown significantly, according to Larry Angove, president and chief executive officer of the Association of Directory Publishers, an international trade association.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996, the establishment of a reasonable rate for selling carrier lists by the Federal Communications Commission and court rulings also have added to the increase.
Independent publishers account for about 13 percent of sales in the $13.6 billion industry, Angove said. The Kelsey Group, which provides communications research and advice, estimates they will hold 35 percent of the industry by 2006.
Angove said publishing telephone directories is a natural step for newspapers.
"This is a logical and valuable extension of the advertising services that the paper offers," he said, noting that some ads are better suited for directories than newspapers.
The Star Directory will have a cross listing of telephone numbers, which allows users who know a telephone number to look up to whom it belongs.
Verizon improved the community section of its book last year, Tusing said. Telephone listings are available on the Internet at SuperPages.com.
As independent publishers have begun to include more local features, telephone company books have followed suit, Angove said.
"Almost all those innovations can be attributed to the independent publishers," he said.
The telephone directory may be just the beginning of The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co.'s venture into directory publishing, The Free Lance-Star publisher Josiah P. Rowe III said.
"We're looking at the possibility of other directories, and they might not all be here," Rowe said.