About The Monticello News
Last week I gave a little history of The News and my role in it. This week I’m planning to talk more about what I meant to talk about at coffee call and last week.
We are your community newspaper. We try to be the voice of the community. We attempt to inform our readers of how their taxes are being spent, what good, and bad, is happening in their community, and just overall be the voice of Monticello and Jasper County.
In doing so, we obviously run a business. We are not designed to be non-profit, but it sure seems to be some days. Anyway, as we try to cover the news, with the help of many contributors, we have to make some money…there is overhead. The newspaper’s money is made through advertising. That’s why we always encourage you to shop our advertisers, because without them there is no newspaper.
One revenue stream that we want to protect is the legal notices. There are those who are pushing to get the legal notices out of newspaper, saying the counties can publish them online. However, all the legal notices, pretty much statewide, are on the internet, compliments of the newspapers.
In our case, there have been several instances where a foreclosure was first seen by children or grandchildren in the local paper. They wouldn’t go to a website looking for it…they aren’t expecting it. But, they see it in their local paper, and bail out mom and dad. Or, mom and dad bail out child. And, since internet access is still limited in many rural areas, including much of Jasper County, they need to be printed.
Ooops, I got on my soapbox. Anyway, the legal notices do provide revenue for the paper, and without them, our ad rates would be much higher.
Speaking of ad rates, we try to keep ours as low as possible to encourage would-be advertisers to use this medium to get their message out. We feel like we have good penetration in the community, and we are the only medium dedicated to covering Monticello and Jasper County. Sure, the dailies pick up a story occasionally, but little Sally making honor roll won’t be in any other publication.
Which is what we try to do…encourage the good, face the bad, and sometimes we have to report on the ugly.
But we have a good bit of good news. The schools submit articles and photos to share with our readers. High school sports takes up a lot of space on these pages. One of the best read parts of the paper is likely the obituaries.
A favorite of mine is the engagements, weddings and anniversaries…particularly like this week when we have a 50th wedding anniversary. I love it when our readers share special times with us. It’s even better when they have old and new photos, but alas, this week that was not to be.
The news…good or bad…is what we’re here to cover. But, we have to make money.
I told you ads are the main revenue source, and I know you’re saying but I pay for the paper. Certainly subscriptions and over-the-counter sales are part of the revenue stream for the paper…it’s just not the main thing. And postal rates certainly are not going down. So, paper sales are very important, because advertisers want to know how many papers we sell before they agree to advertise. So, please, keep buying those newspapers.
Now I’ve offered an overview of the newspaper business. I hope that makes you all want to support your local paper by placing ads. It also supports your business, because advertising definitely pays!
Next week I’ll talk about how decisions are made about what goes where, and how laying out the newspaper is like working a puzzle each week.