Daily Circulation: 43,194
Sunday Circulation: 102,339


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
Focus on specific types of content (high-potential topics from RI findings):

News about community & ordinary people - Both dailies have increased coverage, especially the afternoon paper

The afternoon paper has arranged it so obituaries flow from page to page instead of jumping pages

Politics, government, world - the afternoon paper has added a full page of summaries of national and world news on A-2

Brand
Next Day's Editorial Ads - Introduced ads for each of the daily papers that focused on "next day" content.

Same Day Editorial Ads - Increased ads in the morning paper focusing on upcoming content in the same day's afternoon paper... and in the afternoon paper for the next morning's paper.

Parade Van - A special van showcasing all 3 papers and the online product was completed to participate in the numerous area parades.

Service
Introduced the carrier service program - held back 1¢ of a price increase to carriers... then, began tracking carriers monthly for "0" complaints - pay them the 1¢ per paper if they got "0" complaints - has increased the percentage of "0" complaints for carriers from 20% to 40% on average.

Moved the daily morning delivery time from 6:30 AM to 6:00 AM

Moved the Sunday morning delivery time from 8:00 AM to 7:00 AM

Culture
Knocking Down Department Walls - regular meetings are held bi-monthly or quarterly with the 3 different editorial staffs and the Circulation Director, Marketing Manager and other key Marketing Division Managers.

Interdepartmental Communication - LNP already does not have a strong silo environment in most cases - at the department manager level, there is good cooperation and communication.



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?
Use of story summaries on front section pages to lead readers into the paper.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Improving subscription sales (although a good part of that is due to stronger sales efforts, more aggressively marketing the Easy Pay and the introduction of monthly Easy Pay.)

Single copy sales are still lagging.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
That advertising for the afternoon paper in the morning paper, and vice versa is not creating mass migration to the competing product.



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?
Determine the types of stories that readers want and the types to avoid, the types of stories that work on the front page to drive single copy sales and the types that belong inside the newspaper. We have tried to do local quantitative and qualitative (focus groups) research on this subject, through Millersville University, in the last 12 months, but nailing down answers to these questions has proven to be very difficult.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper