Lloyd Case letter: The other side of the story
It is time for newspapers and their staffs to tell the other side of the story regarding our industry. This past week, we read about the decline of newspaper circulation in most of the major markets across the country. But, what we didn't read about is the readership increase that has taken place in other parts of the country in our print products and the expansion of our Web sites.
In the Forum market area, 74% of adults read our printed product or our newspaper Websites. This is during a seven day week Sunday through Saturday. This percentage is typical of all newspaper markets our company serves. We as a communication company feel it is time to speak out and give positive information of our industry to our readers.
No one delivers local news better than your daily and weekly newspapers. We, as an industry, understand the need to deliver the news to different demographics by various delivery methods, and we do that well. We have developed Web sites for each of our markets to serve our online readers as well as our advertisers. Our Web sites, which include our online advertising products, delivered over 23 million page views in April 2008, with over 5.2 million visits.
Our industry is alive and well and still considered the No. 1 means of delivering information to the people in our communities. Today, we do a better job than ever of delivering the news and advertising, because we can bring it immediately to our Web sites.
This is what is happening in our market and I'm sure there are other positive stories to be told by other newspaper companies across the country.
We are not all in a large metro market and the fact is, that the community newspaper business is still strong and vibrant.
By Lloyd Case, President
Forum Communications Co.