Daily Circulation: 50,763
Sunday Circulation: 62,137>


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
News began promoting upcoming articles, including 1A promotion of articles in other sections.

Sunday "Coming this Week" content ads began in 2002, daily "Coming Tomorrow" content ads began in 2003.

We launched a monthly Health & Fitness tab in June 2002.

Increased presence of Autauga &Elmore counties news on the front page.

Zoned our Newcomer's Guide for two distinct areas in the NDM.

Focus groups were held with 25-34-year olds for our weekly GO! Entertainment Guide.

Zoned the covers of the weekly Game Day (college football tab published during season) in the areas surrounding the colleges (Auburn, Troy State, Alabama State and Tuskegee).

Retooled the look of the business page with quick bites, graphics and Q&A profiles.

Added more news of record to the Sunday business section.

Added a How-to and Casual Friday feature to the daily business pages.

Anchored the business page to the back of the local Metro section.

Added an automotive page to the Sunday business section as well as a locally written auto column in response to Hyundai's new plant scheduled in 2004.

Expanded our growth coverage to include the new Hyundai plant.

Sent a reporter to Korea to explore Hyundai's homeland and its culture and relate that to what will happen with the new Montgomery plant.

Retooled the weekly auto racing page.

Overhauled the Lifestyle pages to include more news of interest to readers.

Expanded the Home & Garden section in Lifestyle.

Increased presence of news of interest to 25-34-year olds.

Developed content of special interest to women and 25-34-year olds.

Provided stronger stories on the Tri-County front of interest to entire area.

More Autauga & Elmore counties news above the fold on 1A (four times a week).

Advisory panels established for credibility coalition, Autauga & Elmore counties and 25-34-year-olds.

Established community advisory panels in key topic areas including business, Autauga & Elmore counties, 18-34-year-olds.

Launched an online sports huddle that features high school athletes from every school in the Tri-County area.

Begin mid-day post ups of local stories on the newspaper's Web site.

Launched a new shareholders report on the editorial page that examines how local boards and/or commissions are operating.

Increased training on watchdog journalism and incorporated more aggressive news reporting into daily and enterprise work.

Increased private school presence in K-12.

Increased news of record related to growth and development.

Posted greater quantity of targeted, local news content on the Web site.

Expanded online archives to include specialized material, such as restaurant inspections, marriage licenses, etc.

Published quarterly enterprise projects.

Increased web refers from print to online and vice versa.

Met with focus groups to learn what they wanted in K-12 and growth coverage.

More Alabama key cities above the fold on 1A (four times a week).

Higher quality, wider-interest news on Tri-County.

More enterprise.

Higher quality reporting and writing throughout.

Hiring of an online department editor.

Daily news updates. Breaking news as need.

Live posting of sports scores.

More multiple covers of Game Day.

Content revamp on FYI.

Changes to Lifestyle theme pages.

Changes to Sports theme pages.

Expanded efforts to increased readership in Autauga and Elmore counties through refinements in suburban news. Developed more news of record. Increased presence of Autauga & Elmore counties stories on 1A. Also increased presence of Autauga &Elmore counties news in other sections such as sports, business and features.

Expanded efforts to increase readership in East Montgomery. Restructured the newsroom beats to focus on business, neighborhoods, traffic and growth. Planned an east Montgomery presence everyday on the FYI page. Included more 1A and enterprise presence from east Montgomery.

Developed a reporter into a key city reporter covering the newspaper's six key cities.

Increased the frequency of coverage of the six key cities.

Published enterprise on newspaper's key topics. Special emphasis on state government, race relations and K-12 education.

Improved the overall consistency and quality of the news report, especially writing and reporting.

Created market awareness of the newspaper's Web site.

Brand
Sunday "Coming this Week" content ads began in 2002, daily "Coming Tomorrow" content ads began in 2003.

We were proactive in increasing minority community event sponsorship from zero to three.

We created an Ambassador Program that encourages employees to get involved in the community.

We became the title sponsor for the chamber's small business week activities and awards.

A corporate standards manual was developed in 2002 to develop consistency in uses of our logos.

Written sponsorship guidelines were developed in 2002 to maximize the effectiveness of sponsorships.

A marketing committee consisting of employees from all departments was formed.

MIX IT UP! The Montgomery Advertiser partnered with the Southern Poverty Law Center to urge high school students to expand their social boundaries, learn about those different from themselves and make new friends through a tab. The Montgomery Advertiser spread the concept of Mix It Up to other Gannett newspapers and secured participation of 18 Gannett newspapers across the country.

We became the major sponsor of the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life for the three counties in our NDM.

We developed an alliance with the City of Montgomery to produce a Holiday Parade in December and a Fourth of July fireworks display.

We implemented a PSA policy that gives all 501 C3's the opportunity to run one 2x5 for their fundraising events.

Service
A customer service committee with representatives throughout the building was formed.

We implemented an annual Customer Appreciation Week with an open house and tours of the facilities for the community.

Annual awards program was implemented.

Equal Monthly Billing was launched.

A 5:30 a.m. delivery service time was established in the NDM.

Implemented a system for customers to subscribe online. Pop-ups offer subscription specials on the Web site.

ICON was implemented online. This software allows customers to review his/her account, place a temporary stop on a home delivery subscription, communicate with customer service, etc.

Culture
Employees at every level were included in the annual planning process.

A 2003 Operational Plan book was produced and distributed to all employees. So employees can monitor our progress on reaching defined goals in the plan, a monthly benchmark report is distributed to all employees.

Employee teams were set up to assist with developing Vision Statement, clarifying Mission and preparing for Values.

Vision and Mission were placed on business cards, laminated and distributed to all employees.

A monthly employee meeting - called First Wednesday - was established. Departments report on items of interest, committees report the status on projects, employees are recognized and the publisher updates employees on revenue and circulation - employees can ask questions on any subject. There are refreshments following the meeting. Each month a different department organizes the meeting - the overall theme, decorations and food.

Utilized monthly meetings to discuss brainstorming ideas for efficiencies, marketing ideas and expense reduction.

Quarterly planning meetings are held. A group of 50 employees meet, updates on the operational plan and stats are given and departments and committees report on the projects for the upcoming quarter.

An emphasis was placed on on-time annual appraisals. Quarterly coaching sessions were added to increase formal feedback each employee receives.

Succession planning was implemented. We identified skills and attributes employees need to be promoted to their next position. Internal and regional leadership training was implemented.

When we moved into our new building in 2002, we eliminated all reserved parking related to titles (directors, publisher). Reserved parking was created only for handicapped, temporary medical conditions and 2-hour parking for employees who are in-and-out of the building (sales, DSM, photo, reporters).

We developed an intranet to increase communications in the company.

In 2001, created an annual MBO bonus program for 31 managers and supervisors and has expanded the program to more than 51 in 2002. ($1,000 - $2,500)

Initiated bi-monthly manager & supervisor meetings for training, brainstorming, communicating.

Operating Committee minutes & Executive Summaries are posted daily.

Publisher holds monthly Fireside Chat meetings with associates selected at random.

Developed Team Advertiser program on the HR intranet site.

Developed Orbit, a job shadowing cross-departmental training program.



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?
While we have taken many steps, we have two to suggest. We emulated the Lee Enterprise tool kit with Coming Sunday and Coming Tomorrow referencing key topics important to our target audiences. Week of July 7 we received over a dozen calls related to a story teased in the prior day that was unable to run in all the editions of our newspaper. The other suggestion is moving the Culture toward the adaptive constructive culture. We've clarified our Mission, developed our first Vision statement, and our first steps have been geared to reducing turnover, which has reduced from levels above 40% from 1998-2000 to 22.6% in 2002 and YTD 19.2% in 2003. We've focused on training, development, succession planning, dozens of communication and collaborative techniques, empowerment and operational planning from the bottom up.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
We will have a market study in fall of 2003 that will give us our best indication. Unfortunately, circulation has decreased partly affected by home delivery price increases. Pass-along is high in this market. The study will reveal any progress with efforts to reach niche audiences with over-distribution of products targeted with Health and Fitness and our entertainment section GO!. The online audience has been steadily growing based upon our Site Catalyst figures.

Our last study in 2001 was prior to most of the changes. We did make change to our GO! section, and it indicated we made progress with our entertainment section, increasing readership from 57% to 77% of those 18-34 reading the Thursday newspaper.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
Act more swiftly. Readership needs to be a company-wide focus. We're attempting to develop a culture where all associates understand their role, their department's role, the newspaper's role and understanding our readers - who they are, what they need and what they want. Utilize focus groups to guide us.



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?
Our efforts to cover diversity in the market have caused some backlash in the "old Montgomery" community, which has had a negative impact on readership. With a difficult economy we've been unable to move as quickly with our efforts to enhance content geared to the 25-34 reader. Examples: A K-12 education reporter, which has recently been hired, was planned for late 2002. A sports reporter covering local recreational sports has been moved from February 2003 to Fall, 2004. We have however, had great success in launching Sports Huddle which featured 44 boys and girls high school baseball teams in the spring and will expand in the fall to cover 44 football teams and more than 50 high school basketball teams. The launch of our June 2002 Health and Fitness section required the reallocation of one FTE to fill a reporter slot in news.

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