Daily Circulation: 16,073
Sunday Circulation: 19,483


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 have implemented the following:

Created a community news team which is responsible for collecting, organizing and paginating all submitted news and public records.

Added a recreational round-up page to capture local sports enthusiasts' activities.

Introduced Spotlight section for younger audience.

Increased locally written editorials and columns.

Better and more use of color and graphics.

Better promotion of same-day and upcoming stories and features.

Improved classified section - photos, service directory, design.

Better job grouping advertisement by category.

Better quality writing making stories more relevant to average reader.

Continuing stories, pre- and post-event for advance and follow-up as well as writing as the stories break.

Brand
To strengthen our brand, we have:

ensured that our logo and slogan are consistent throughout all our products and services

established four major areas of focus: education support, community events, visibility in the market and promotional efforts

emphasize the importance of involving local residents in our promotional ad campaigns

do a better job with telling our stories about The News-Enterprise

established a marketing committee to ensure better-alignment of our marketing efforts to the strategic goals

Service
To improve our service, we have:

Improved single copy accessibility with in-store locations and refurbished racks.

Ensured tighter coordination between single copy sales team and the newsroom.

Increased retention efforts with EZpay program, retention telemarketing and grace-period extension.

Implemented monthly customer service follow-up survey.

Implemented start verification program.

Improved accuracy of our bills through the new DSI circulation system.

Culture
To foster a more constructive culture, we have:

Introduced the Operation Gold Vault which emphasized the importance of everyone's role in building readership.

Emphasized ethical conduct and integrity among our people built on the Landmark Core Characteristics and Behaviors.

Become better listeners; conducted two credibility roundtables to emphasize the need to be more open to our readers' wishes.

Publisher and editor more visible in the community.

Implemented internal customer survey to ensure that we respect internal customers' needs.

Introduced quarterly team leader meeting and annual team leader survey.

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?
Conducting the credibility round tables.

Creating the community news team.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Our recent readership survey returned an overall RBS score of 4.41 which is above the national 3.24 average of all circulation sizes and the 3.02 average for the 10,000 - 25,000 circulation group



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
That the effort must have a company-wide focus; it cannot be done by circulation or newsroom alone



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?
More in-depth readership survey or focus group study on content, perhaps section by section

More consistent content promotion without the lineage budget constraint

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper