Daily Circulation: 34,706
Sunday Circulation: 39,863


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:
Created an Outdoors section to cover fishing, skiing, hunting and other fun stuff.

Created a North State Jobs and Careers section in Sunday's paper.

Offer two columns written for and by young adults.

Expanded offerings for students in the paper - we run at least 2 in-paper features a week, sometimes three, directed at school-aged children.

Created a 50 plus Fine Living monthly section.

Established a "Yes" desk where readers can call to make sure their news item gets in the paper. We have a person who staffs the phone and disseminates the press releases.

Created a Personal Finance section on Sundays to talk about consumer subjects, investing and personal finance.

Created a Personal Technology page on Mondays. This page reviews games and discusses the newest gizmos, software and issues that will impact those of us who use computers, cell phones, fancy TVs, digital cameras and the like.

Brand:
We put Record Searchlight/redding.com on all our house ads, our section fronts, on our business cards, stationery, everything. We ran an internal contest and gave out movie passes to anyone who found anything we produce that says Record Searchlight and left off redding.com. It was a bounty hunt!

We have a nightly spot on TV that says, "In tomorrow's Record Searchlight, learn about... Read this story and more at redding.com and in the Record Searchlight."

We have a similar program with a radio group each morning.

Three of our local columnists appear weekly on our local ABC affiliate morning show "Good Morning North State."

We upgraded our single copy machines so they say, "Great place, great paper!" and include images of people waterskiing, golfing, hiking, and other outdoor activities (this is an outdoor mecca).

We sponsor events that will keep us in the public eye. Most of these events are related to nonprofit ventures, but we also tie ourselves to events that will help us build relationships with readers and advertisers.

Service:
We touch our subscribers 12 times through phone calls to make sure their subscription started on time, phone calls to alert them that the subscription is going to expire, letters welcoming subscribers to our family, postcard to remind them about payment, and so on.

We hold contests with our carriers to improve service.

We recognize our carriers who subscribers tell us offer great service.

Our publisher calls one subscriber every day and thanks them for being a Record Searchlight subscriber.

We had laid off our receptionist. After 6 months, we realized having an automated telephone line drove everyone NUTS. We hired a new receptionist and it has made a huge difference to our walk-in traffic and to our call ins.

We also have a retention coordinator who personally calls people whose subscriptions are getting ready to expire as well as those who recently stopped. She is a sweet woman who gets our readers and ex-readers to talk to her.

Culture:
We started "Meet the Newspaper" meetings about 4 times a year in various parts of our distribution area. These prove to be extremely successful. People make an effort to meet our editor and publisher at the meetings, expressing both delight and disdain, depending on what brought them out. But they are appreciative that we come to their neighborhood to listen to them.

Offer 2 major contests a year where we give away trips. The contests grow in the number of entries each time we run it, so we think readers love entering!

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?

This is not innovative, but it works for us. We offer serialized stories during the school year. Teachers love it, but so do the grandparents!

We hold "meet the newspaper" meetings in various communities throughout the year. When a community is mad at us, they show up in force and let us know and they are just as willing to share positive comments. These meetings are easy to do and bring good return.

We bring in a "guest editor" once a month to sit in during the daily story meetings.

We had all directors, supervisors, and managers go out to key locations in the community and interview people with readership questions to see if we are meeting their needs. This was part of our strategic plan initiative and was a great learning experience for all of us.

We also recognize a reader a day on our front page. Our publisher calls the reader to let them know that we're saying "Good Morning!" to them on the front page.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Well, we know we get thousands of entries from the trip giveaway contests!

We know that our best sales come from our consumer crews (door-to-door).

We know that the EZ pay program keeps people subscribing longer.

Circulation has been going up this year. We should show some growth or at least stay steady. We don't expect to lose circulation.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
That we always need to keep our readers in mind and constantly check our paper to see if we are carrying stories on the readership topics.

To always keep the word "Readership" in front of us. EVERYTHING we do affects readership. We are learning to make sure everyone in the building knows how important this is to our business, as well.



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?
We'd like to reach more 30-40 year old readers. The marketing manager believes that we need to make the paper more fun, some of the stories shorter, and some of the photos more wacky to attract that age group. Our design is very steady and we need to mix things up like the magazines do once in a while. Editorial is reorganizing somewhat and training a new design person, so we'll see what changes next year brings. We'd like more micro-news in the paper.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper