Daily Circulation: 29,216
Sunday Circulation: 31,334


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 significantly changed our focus to emphasize local news, discovered news and storytelling.

We added a full page of community news and listings each day of the week.

We increased the number of stories - local and wire - that focus on topics such as home, food, fashion and health.

We reshaped our sports coverage to emphasize local and youth sports rather than national and pros.

We increased 'go-and-do' information with stories.

We focused local coverage on a short list of key topics for a news agenda.

We appointed a regular local columnist to build personality for the paper.

We changed the makeup of the newspaper to make it less kinetic and, hopefully, easier to use.

We significantly increase our in-paper content promotions, both for same-day content and for upcoming content.

We established a three-day-a-week "Glad You Asked" Q&A with readers to promote reader interaction and build the newspaper's personality.

We developed prototypes - though didn't publish - brand-building content centered on The Readership Institute's recommendations for "Monitor" and "Debatable."

Brand
We launched a short-run branding campaign, both in the paper and using outside media (radio, TV, billboards), emphasizing the brand factors that showed the greatest potential for us in the original Impact Study, particularly "intelligence, success, experience."

We tailored more closely our community event sponsorships and participation to focus on the high-potential brand factor, "community involvement."

We developed prototypes - though didn't publish - brand-building content centered on The Readership Institute's recommendations for "Monitor" and "Debatable."

Service
We significantly improved service in circulation for more reliable delivery of The Journal Times.

Culture
We employed cross-functional teams to implement several Readership Institute initiatives, including making the paper less kinetic, developing in-paper promotions, developing marketing strategies for the newspaper and examining possible next-stage content changes based on the most recent R.I. experience study.

Particularly in the newsroom, we advanced an employee empowerment strategy and increased training opportunities for staff and supervisors.



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?
Perhaps the biggest change is in mindset, deciding to publish a newspaper that offers different or unique content rather than following the pack by merely taking the top of the wires, thereby offering most readers what they probably already know from other media.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
The Journal Times has registered above the averages in RBS measurements for the industry and for newspapers in our circulation range. During our period of significant brand-building activities and service improvements, the newspaper reversed nearly a decade's decline in circulation.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
Perhaps the journalist's truism applies here: The more you think you know, the more you need to know ... and to be more open to change.



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?
There are any number of likely useful brand-building approaches and content changes that haven't been implemented because of a lack of financial and personnel resources.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper