It seems like about every time I am out in the public, no matter what the occasion, once someone realizes I own the local paper they seem anxious to tell me something. And in more cases than not, it is how something someone has read impacts their lives.
For example, the man that caught me in the local grocery store and proceeded to tell me he knows exactly when we deliver our paper there. He picks it up each week as soon as he can to see the public notices. In many cases it is the first notice he gets of something new coming to town or the streets in his neighborhood are up for repair. He told me there’s more in those public notices than people realize.
Or the lady that told me once about a story we did on someone who donated an organ and that it hit her so hard she was compelled to do the same thing for someone else, when the time comes.
Or the father of a boy on our local football team, who I had never met but he seemed to know me, thanked me for the tremendous effort we put into covering local high school sports.
Prior to a recent election cycle a young man told me if we had not produced our local Election Guide, he would have no idea who to vote for. He said now he felt good about his vote and vowed to never make a decision in local races again without the information he got about candidates in his community paper.
And advertisers feel those life-impacting moments as well from what we do. Like the manager of a local senior living facility who told me she couldn’t’ believe the response she got from an ad campaign we did. Not only did it create new prospects, but the current residents were proud and happy they were advertising the way they were.
How many stories like these do we never hear or know about?
There is no question that a community newspaper impacts the lives of people in a community, and in ways we may never know. The stories that come from people because of their local paper are clear evidence that newspapers are more than alive and well. They are busy breathing new life every day in communities across our country.
As an industry, we won’t give up on creating the content that can shape the lives of people. Our stories will continue to serve longtime readers or create brand new readers. And in the end, it’s the stories our readers tell us, about what we are doing for them, that matter most.
By Jeff Cott, publisher of the Derby Weekly Informer in Derby, KS
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