(Mary Nesbitt)

The good work of many small to mid-size daily newspapers often goes uncelebrated. They're working diligently away at maintaining, even growing, print readership while also building their Web presence and putting out niche publications -- but no one apart from their satisfied readers knows.

Let's try to share more of these stories.

Consider the Post-Bulletin in Rochester, MN, home to the Mayo Clinic and IBM. It's a member of the Small Newspaper Group and has a circulation of about 45,000. Using many findings of Readership Institute research, it redeveloped its content and has good readership results (as measured by Reader Behavior Scores, or RBS) to show for it.

Bob Hill, publisher and editor, and Jay Furst, managing editor, sent me a week's worth of their papers to look over and included an outline of what they've done. They noted that they've been influenced by Institute research for six years, but late last year began a top-to-bottom re-thinking of content. "In late January we launched a dramatically reconceived newspaper... We avoided use of the term "redesign" because we didn't want to just re-arrange the furniture. The goal was to rethink everything we do and implement as much as possible the findings of Readership Institute research."

Some highlights:

• The nameplate now bears the words, "If it matters to you, it matters to us" and Hill and Furst said "That's a guiding principle in how we're making news decisions." (They also produced a very good video that captures the spirit of the tagline. Three-minute and 30-second versions have been shown at local movie theaters and on cable and network television. You can view it by clicking the video button here.)
  
  
• A1 is local only, with an emphasis on enterprise stories (or what I call off-agenda news). National or international stories run here only if they can be localized. Stories are short -- they have had a no-jump policy for years -- and they strive for a variety of story-telling formats. They run corrections, regardless of where the error occurred, on the front page.
  
  
• A small but popular item: the punch-line to a daily joke runs at the bottom of A1 with the set-up on A2... "to get readers to turn the page. Readers are now contributing most of the jokes."
  
  
• Section fronts contain only local content; wire or syndicated material runs only if it can be localized. Overall, the Post-Bulletin contains "significantly more local news and information and (we) have added year-round intern reporters and expanded our roster of freelance writers to assist."
  
  
• Sports, the daily Lifestyle and the weekend Life and Style sections are as strongly local as the rest of the paper.
  
  
• The newspaper puts readers at the center of news decisions and beats. "Key questions must be answered before assigning and editing: Who cares? How does it affect readers? (This remains one of the toughest goals to get at and it is clearly a training issue...)"
  
  
• The city was divided into four quadrants and a reporter assigned to each, with responsibility for news coverage across traditional beat lines. "We're getting more ground-level enterprise as a result. We cover a lot fewer government meetings but we're) not aware of any important news or trends we've missed."
  
  
• Two full inside pages are devoted to "Across the Nation" and "Around the World," synopses of news with art and a locator map. Reader opinion was mixed initially, but now the newspaper is seeing more consistently favorable reactions, Hill and Furst said.
  
  
  
  
• In the weekend edition, a full-page "Week in review" summarizes major local news of the week and police calls.

My impression of the Post-Bulletin is of a proudly local, friendly newspaper with which residents could easily identify -- made for "people like me." The paper absolutely brims with just plain interesting news. Despite its local emphasis it is not trivial, fluffy or parochial. There is no dearth of hard news (which sometimes happens when newspapers upend traditional beats.)

I see much attention to the kinds of things that are on people's minds and they're talking about -- I especially liked a package that answered common questions about gas prices -- why they seem to go up on Thursdays; why in lock-step; why did they break $3 earlier in the week, and so on.

I think the way the Post-Bulletin is practicing print journalism is fundamental to its digital future -- unique, local, relevant content that people care about. That's the local newspaper advantage -- not just local data that people find useful, but local news that connects with people at a deeper level and makes a difference in their lives and that of the community.

It seems to be working, too -- RBS scores are inching up, from 3.5 in 2004 and 2006 to 3.66 this year, a statistically significant increase.


By Mary Nesbitt (m-nesbitt@northwestern.edu)
Mary Nesbitt is managing director of the Readership Institute.