Daily Circulation: 10,415
Sunday Circulation: 10,415


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.
An e-mail database of volunteer readers has also proved to be popular, with the managing editor sending out questions twice weekly and printing the responses on the Viewpoints page. The volume of submitted Letters to the Editor has increased dramatically.

The weekly buzz magazine has been a hit with the community in its coverage of local arts and entertainment events. The section has already increased from 12 to 16 pages, and the ad count continues to grow.

Our bi-monthly Food page is becoming more popular as The Sun concentrates on showcasing local cooks in its coverage.

The focus of our health and science coverage is gradually switching to publishing more news you can use. In other words, we're trying to print stories that directly impact readers. We've been running a monthly Q&A series with the local hospital that features plenty of practical health information. We hope to include more weekly bits of state-of-the-art health and science briefs and focus less on physicians and more on readers.

We implemented a weekly crime-tracker for Sundays. This is a map with the police blotter to show where crime occurs in Edmond.

Increase go and do boxes: We are averaging the daily amount of breakout boxes over a previous week's time period. The goal is to increase the number of breakout boxes by 25 percent over five months, with a monthly goal of a 5 percent increase from each previous month starting with the baseline of the first week measurement. If the staff meets the overall goal of 25 percent by the close of November, we'll throw a Christmas party for the newsroom.

Terminology: We're requiring that reporters compile a standing text file of terminology information that could be used as breakout information to cut and paste with daily stories. Reporters brainstorm about their beats and think about terms that they take for granted that readers understand. Then the reporters write blurbs explaining these terms and save them in NewsEdit for editors to use with stories. We're measuring each reporter's progress on the second Tuesday of every month for six months starting in June. The managing editor takes each month's winner to a lunch of their choice.



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?
Readers Speak: We have a database of more than 160 local e-mail addresses. Questions of a local, state or national nature are sent out once or twice weekly, and we try to print everything we get within reason.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Our Letter to the Editor and Readers Speak submissions have increased dramatically.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
Don't assume you know what the readers want.



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?
I'd like to do a specific readership study for the demographic of our local market, which is highly competitive.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper