Daily Circulation: 21,771
Sunday Circulation: 24,956


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
Started a "What Would It Take" series that looks at the county's thorniest issues and what it would take to fix them. Redesigned Arts & Entertainment section to emphasize complete LOCAL options. Started a weekly Your Neighbors series that seeks out "real people" and what makes them unique (example: a woman who has a mural painted on the back of her pickup showing her son in heaven; he was shot by his brother.) Started our first weekly newspaper in a growing corner of our circulation area that was resisting daily inroads because of major metro nearby. Started weekly page in the daily paper focusing on our Primary Market Area.

Brand
Sponsor annually a performance at the local River Raisin Centre for the Arts. Bought a truck and painted redesigned logo on the side. Brought in Taste of Home cooking show - sold-out 1,200 tickets. Sponsored reporter to drive car in county fair's demolition derby. Hosted (with state press association) state attorney general for a public forum on the Open Meetings Act and FOIA.

Service
Circulation made 2003 commitment to superior service; numbers did nudge upward; this entailed reorganizing shifts so more district managers work on weekends and offering incentives to carriers and drivers who have zero service complaints for a month.

Culture
We use the Denison Culture Survey to measure strengths and weaknesses. We are employee-owned; our ESOP Advisory Committee has numerous activities to teach employees more about our business. We started using the Great Game of Business to educate employees about financials and to get a better handle on our budget. We assigned reporters to their geographic counterparts in circulation and they have begun quarterly meetings to look at issues of mutual concern (deadlines and breaking news, how the paper looks on a rack); this has greatly increased their understanding of each other and their roles.



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?
Starting the weekly in one of our communities. We had to acknowledge our weaknesses in the area and try to address them with something really different. It has given us a lock on that area that we didn't have before. After two years it is still almost universally popular.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
The overwhelmingly positive reaction to the weekly - word of mouth, surveys, focus groups



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
It'll break your heart. We have never tried so hard only to get minimal results and the feeling that it might be a losing battle.



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?
Get the paper into the hands of every local person. Might not be practical.

Make newspaper readers out of kids. Does anyone have the secret?

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper