Changes coming to your local newspaper

I’ve heard it for years now. The Internet is killing newspapers. It’s only a matter of time before the Internet will replace the printed word.

Actually as it turns out, the Internet is the best thing that could have happened to local community papers like ours. Let’s look at some of the reasons why.
It gives community papers immediacy they could not afford before now

What do I mean by that? Well, in small communities that could not afford to print more than once a week, important local news wasn’t available until the next week’s edition hit the street. The ability to post news to a website means small local papers can post important news stories immediately.

Websites provide the local paper more ways to share the local news

It took newspapers the better part of the last century to add color photos to the newspaper. Our websites not only include one or two photos about local events, today we can post entire photo galleries and even videos. Want a sample? Go to the Activities Tab at LeavenworthEcho.com and click on the story – Playing Spiderman, or, just type “playing spiderman” in the search bar at the top of the page.

Time, staff and the cost of printing often limited the amount of content

News and information doesn’t happen in convenient packages that perfectly match advertiser support. It has always been true that advertising pays the bills. Subscription revenue has never covered the cost of producing the paper. At best it was hoped subscription revenue would cover the cost of paper and distribution. With our websites content is only limited by computer storage and server farms are growing. So currently, it is virtually unlimited.

Nearly all consumers are connected to the world through technology

Not everyone has a computer, but nearly everyone today has a cell phone and most have a “smart” phone. That means they have a hand held computer in their pocket or purse. This means they have instant access to the local newspapers website and they can even contribute local news and photos to share with the community.

All of our online content is tracked

Advertisers for years have asked newspapers how they could determine if their advertising was effective. Newspapers developed a number of strategies to help advertisers gage the impact of their ad campaigns. But when the Internet came along digital providers began providing advertisers with hard statistics on the number of people who actually “clicked” on their ad. Print advertising did not respond and the result has been a steady decline in advertising.

National click through rates aren’t especially impressive, generally run in the .01% to .02% range. But they have been responsive to advertiser’s concerns.

As it turns out, tracking content is not only important to our advertising customers. It is also important to helping us determine what our readers are most interested in. This helps us focus our resources on the issues and events of primary importance to you – our readers.

Each of our local newspapers has had active website for years. In the last year we have made significant changes to the functionality of those sites. One big change is to make sure the site automatically adjusts to fit the screen you are using to view it. Those websites now have more unique online subscribers than print edition subscribers, and those subscribers are willing to pay for their on-line subscriptions. In fact, many have expressed that they only want on-line access they don’t want the printed paper.

Our unique on-line user counts increased by 41% on average last year, while our print subscribers remained nearly the same.

The first rule of marketing is to give the customers what they want. It takes a while for an old dog to learn new tricks, but it is abundantly clear what our readers and advertisers want is accountability and more timely and relevant content.

So, we have begun to make some big changes in the way we publish.

Effective immediately, we are posting stories directly to the websites first. We will no longer hold them until they have appeared in the print edition. Our goal moving forward is to have new content posted every day. That doesn’t mean the entire site will change every day, but we will endeavor to post something new every day.

We hope to start posting a “Photo of the Day” every day. We need your help with that since we do not have a full-time photographer at any of our community papers. So, we encourage readers to send us their best photo of life in your local community. We will post an email address in the newspaper and on-line telling you where to send your photos – make sure to include your name and a brief description of what the photo represents. If you have people in the photos try to identify them by name.

The Internet gives us the opportunity to provide more timely and relevant content. Content that will make your life better and our community stronger. Instead of putting us out of business, the Internet is positioning us to be the best source of local news and information for the next 100 years.

Editors Note: For the QuadCity Herald send your ‘Photo of the Day” to Mike Maltais at  qchreporter@gmail.com