Last week, we included a reader survey in our print edition. As we prepare for the difficult move to a single weekly newspaper, we wanted to know where our subscribers found the most value. The results were exactly what you'd expect from a healthy community. They contradicted each other. Some wanted more sports. Others admitted they never read the sports pages. Some wanted more opinion. Others wanted less. Some said the comics were indispensable. Others skipped right past them. We conducted a similar survey a few years ago, and not much has changed. But it reminded me what a newspaper is supposed to be. For most of its history, a community newspaper has been a bundle of interests. You paid for the whole thing, even though you knew you weren't going to read every page. Maybe you started with sports. Maybe you flipped first to the obituaries. Someone else wanted city council coverage. Someone else read every letter to the editor. That wasn't a flaw. It was the philosophy. A newspaper wasn't designed to reflect one person's interests. It was designed to reflect the life of an entire community. Today, almost every other form of media works the opposite way. Social media and streaming platforms learn what you like and simply give you more of it. We've gone from one newspaper trying to serve thousands of readers to thousands of personalized newspapers serving one reader at a time. But the survey made one thing abundantly clear: our readers still care deeply about local journalism.…
*This content (including text, artwork, graphics, photography, and video) was provided by the third party(ies) as referenced above. Any rights or other content questions or inquiries should be directed to such third-party provider(s).
