Daily Circulation: 37,473
Sunday Circulation: 45,336


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
Redesigned the entire paper for more entry points and better navigational guides, such as a column left.

Revamped daily Features and Weekend entertainment for appeal to younger adults.

Organized in-house training on beat development.

Built a Know your Community campaign to educate newsroom staff.

Created a weekly State Workers page dedicated to our largest workforce.

Created a daily page dedicated to the Outdoors, a franchise topic.

Armed reporters with cameras to shoot mugs for more faces in the paper.

Recruited reader advisory panels on initiatives or content issues to better reflect the community.

Added more local columns.

Added depth to franchise topics (outdoors/environment, state government, health care, education, things to do).

Focused initiatives on reader targets (adults under age 45 and a couple of geographic segments).

Culture
Adopted principles of ethics with fairness and balance at the core.



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?
Adding a daily outdoors presentation. While we have no empirical research as yet, reader feedback has been significant.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
We have nothing but anecdotal evidence. We plan to conduct a major research effort this fall.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
We need research to provide an intelligent answer.



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 newshole and resources to cover local news in greater depth. Economic conditions have prevented us from moving ahead quickly.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper