@Iowamom23 posted:Cabbagedad, thanks for your thoughts. Not to detour the thread, but I get your points. I ran our corporately owned local print newspaper for 30 years (started while in kindergarten HAH). When my job was eliminated, it left one person in town (the office was closed) covering a county with six school districts. All the bad stuff you cite has happened.
I launched an online only site almost two years ago. We cover one school district in the county's largest city and are focused on that. We decided early on to run the way a traditional community newspaper should. We sell ads, charge for subscriptions and cover the heck out of the community. Only difference is people get us in their email or on their web browser instead of on their porches.
What I've learned is that people will pay for quality. They can access the web site 24/7 and they get a newsletter every morning at 5:30, with coverage of the latest local news (today, new pediatric dentist opened, plans for this weekend's in person graduation and a group celebrating ham radio weekend), plus obituaries, police and sheriffs reports for the week and a calendar of events for the day. And a localized weather report.
My husband and I do primary coverage, but I also have four freelancers who contribute a lot, including a former sports writer for the statewide daily paper who covers big events like state tournaments, sports seasons starting after a pandemic, etc., but he covers only our teams. It's amazing stuff that people haven't seen for years.
We just got a grant we are going to use to hire someone to start covering two rural school districts around us. They'll have their own web site and weekly newsletter (rather than daily) just because they're tiny.
I used a lot of words to say this — we're doing news the way I think it should be done. And we're making enough money to keep ourselves in wine and our kids in college, which is really all we can ask for.
Now I have to go and post the notice of a lost dog -- once people start sending us pictures of their oversize vegetables, I'll know we really have arrived as THE local news source!!
Again, sorry to derail a bit, but am just super proud of what we are doing and hopeful that we're finding a template that others can follow and that will serve readers well.
It won’t be long before major papers only arrive in email and browser rather than on the doorstep. I believe the New Orleans paper was the first. It won’t be long before the age group resistant to using the internet is gone.
I remember having it out with my mother that I wasn’t going to drive her all over the greater metro area looking for something. We’ll find it online, identity where we can see it with the intent of making the purchase when we arrive. Now many people are at the point, “ I don’t need to see it live. If it’s not what I want I’ll return it.”