Daily Circulation: 18,445


List the major steps you have taken in the last four years to increase readership. Please organize your response under four headings: content, brand, service, culture.

Content
We implemented Partnership in Readership recommendations for increased emphasis on local stories, people stories and lifestyle news, shorter stories and more enterprise stories.

We tripled the number of process color pages with new press units.

Brand
We changed our nameplate and promotions to decrease the emphasis on the name of our county (which is part of our daily's name).This corresponds to what our readers call us, and reflects the demise of the county as a significant factor in readers’ lives.

We held open houses featuring our new color capabilities, and covering our full range of services.

We built and maintained a “get it all” brand.

We paid more attention to best use of rack cards and front page promotion of editorial content.

We required more visibility of our name in publicity for our community service projects.

Service
We reorganized the paper, particularly the front page, to ease browsing and call more attention to inside content.

We changed platemaking system to produce better quality type, graphics and color photos.

We offer a unique partnership to our subscribers for a reduced-rate subscription to the Boston Sunday Globe to meet 7-day competition.

We ran a focus group with our own young employees to understand their use of newspapers, used information in approaching young potential readers.

We increased promotion of EZ Pay Plan to improve retention. (Nearly 2,000 or 14.5% of home delivery, now on the payment plan.

Culture
We sent Editor and Circulation Director to API Partnership in Readership session.

We formed a promotion committee of circulation, advertising, editorial and new media departments to focus on readership issues.

We formed a circulation task force which brainstormed over 100 ideas.

We strive for a “can do” attitude from all levels of all departments.



What is the most innovative, successful or noteworthy thing you have done on readership that you think other papers might learn from or want to emulate?
We created an 8-page “Day in the life of the Gazette” handout and accompanying ad campaign which explained what each department of the paper related to the reader. The full color pages used original cartoon-style art.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Circulation figures appear to be falling at a slightly reduced rate.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
That every person at the paper can make a direct contribution to readership.



What would you like to do on readership that you have not been able to do and why haven't you been able to do it?
Create a partnership with one of the regional TV stations that serves our market. (Lack of time to really sell the idea to one of the stations and really work through all the details involved.)

Conduct a new, more comprehensive survey of our readers

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper