You may have noticed some advertisements in your Times-Union dealing with newspapers.
The thrust of the advertising campaign is kind of a takeoff on that sage old Mark Twain quote: "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
The campaign was developed by the Hoosier State Press Association to drive home the point that "Newspapers Still Deliver."
Newspapers make most of their money by selling advertising. Our advertising representatives are always telling their clients that advertising is key to success. Ironically, newspapers traditionally have done a poor job of advertising themselves. It's as if we are scared or embarrassed to blow our own horns.
Well, it might be time for a bit of a change in that regard and as self-serving as it sounds, "Newspapers Still Deliver" certainly rings true.
I think now, more than ever, is a good time to be informed. Lots of decisions you make will be influenced and affected by the stewards of your tax dollars. The decisions about whether to build more schools or hire more policemen or buy more fire trucks all have a direct and measurable effect on the amount of taxes you pay.
During these troubled economic times, knowledge is power.
And there simply is no better way to inform yourself of your local government's activities than through the eyes and ears of our reporters.
But let's get back to Mark Twain for a moment. Everyone has heard about all the newspapers that have been filing for bankruptcy or closing down or cutting their days of publication.
But if you look closely, it is mainly large newspapers in large markets that are having trouble. I believe that is mainly for two reasons - neither of which generally apply to small-market newspapers.
First, most of them are highly leveraged - meaning they have a mountain of debt to service. Servicing that debt with a 16 or 18 percent profit margin was no problem.
But when profit margins slipped to 8 or 9 percent, there were problems.
Second, large market dailies have to cater to readers in a completely different way than small dailies do. Large dailies have to provided comprehensive coverage of local, national and world events. Small dailies don't
Let's be honest.If you are reading the Times-Union for an in-depth analysis of national and international events, you're reading the wrong newspaper.
Small dailies have the luxury of using a small staff to hone in on local issues. After all, Kosciusko County residents want to read about Kosciusko County.
And our letters to the editor page gives readers a local forum to air their views that is second to none.
HSPA Executive Director David Stamps recently wrote an op-ed piece to go along with the advertising campaign.
Here's an excerpt:
"Most newspapers in Indiana, while suffering through the same economic doldrums that nearly all businesses are experiencing, are still hard at it. Covering city council and town board meetings, attending school board meetings, reporting from the police and sheriff's stations, covering high school sports, printing honor rolls, tromping around the county fair grounds to count blue ribbons, printing obituaries, birth and engagement announcements, and 50th anniversary wedding stories.
"And lots, lots, lots more.
"Think what your town would be like without a newspaper - we could all just blog ourselves to death - but about what? Newspapers, we like to say, write the first draft of history - bloggers, Googlers, and all the other news 'aggregators' feed off that.
"So, despite all the changes in how we can receive news and information these days - we still need newspapers.
'Newspapers Still Deliver.'"
I think that's absolutely true. Sure, we have a Web site, an online presences. But it's largely a mirror of the daily newspaper.
When we launched our first Web site way back in 1996, it was the most highly trafficked sited in the county. It remains that way today.
Last week - through our last six editions online - we had more than 400,000 page views on our Web site. That's a lot of eyeballs.
This tells me that whether readers are looking online or in print, they still want what newspapers have to offer - local news. And, of course, it goes hand-in-hand that they also want the advertising. In this economy, readers are hungry for bargains. They're looking to save money.
And advertisers can be sure readers are continuing to look at the newspaper for those bargains - either online or in print.
If you are an advertiser on our Web site, how many times was your ad seen during those 400,000 page views last week? If you are an advertiser in print, how many people do you suppose saw your ad in 11,000 homes throughout Kosciusko County? Quite a few.
Of course, we will continue to try to taylor coverage and technology to better serve both our readers and advertisers.
And while it may be easy to write this column off as the self-serving blatherings of an old newspaperman, I'm pretty confident when I say, "The death of newspapers was an exaggeration."
