Daily Circulation: 100,160
Sunday Circulation: 112,397


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
Everyday Heroes: A weekly feature on ordinary people doing extraordinary volunteer work.

Just Life: An occasional feature on everyday slices of life from around the region.

Featured obits: Stories about the lives of ordinary people who left a significant, if not traditionally newsworthy, imprint on the region.

"What's on Your Mind?" A cheeky, weekly Q&A answering sometimes quirky reader questions.

Health briefs: More of them, focused on the Tuesday newspaper.

Front page reefers: Frequent promotions of inside content.

Weather: Will expand with color for October redesign.

Same-day promos

Redesign: Will launch full-color redesign in October with goal of making newspaper cleaner, clearer, more attractive, more organized, easier to read and navigate, with multiple layers of information, an emphasis on enterprise, usefulness, local connections, and reader engagement.

Internal "People Connection" critiques: Once-a-week critiques used to drive home key readership initiatives.

Graphical story planner to enhance visual presentation for centerpieces and other stories.

Brand
Communication Standards: Standards that are designed to create an identity that consumers can relate to (position and image), develop the means to be true to that identity (communication standards) and consistently represent the identity (execution and delivery. The ultimate goal is increased consumer recognition, loyalty and retention.

Positioning statement or Consumer's View: The Roanoke Times helps me connect with my community and understand the world in which I live.

Integrated logo: Logo that emphasizes the link between The Roanoke Times print edition and roanoke.com, our Web site.

Phone system focus: Company-wide training effort to make our readers' calling experiences as user-friendly as possible, giving them answers to their questions as quickly as possible.

Easy to navigate index, section logos (Health, Music).

Service
New printing press: Major capital investment to install a new printing press; provides the ability to produce color on every page with much faster print times and allows us to provide earlier delivery times, if deemed necessary.

New mailroom equipment and processes.

Weekly tracking of Daily and Sunday complaints: Process that allows our Circulation department to take a proactive stand in improving customer satisfaction based on past performance.

EasyPay program: Major goal for our Sales & Service team to increase the number of EasyPay subscribers, as EasyPay subscribers tend to have better retention than other subscribers.

Culture
Develop people initiatives.

MIATE training: Managing in a Team Environment (implemented in the early-to-mid 90s).

Diversity training: Company-wide rollout for all employees to be completed by the end of 2004.

Periodic performance evaluations and manager surveys: Managers evaluations of employees, as well as employees, evaluations of immediate supervisors, the latter being a two-way learning process for both employees and managers.

CI training: Continuous Improvement (implemented in the early-to-mid 90s).

Separate Marketing department with a consumer focus: Consumer marketing is the major focus.



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?
We focused on finding ways to make ordinary people and their lives a larger part of the newspaper to build stronger local connections to The Roanoke Times.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Ranked #1 in the nation for adult readership of a daily newspaper (of the top 75 MSA markets) 2002 Scarborough Report, Release 1.

Ranked #2 in the nation for adult readership of a Sunday newspaper (of the top 75 MSA markets) 2002 Scarborough Report, Release 1.

Ranked within the top 10 newspapers, out of the 100 included in the study, in terms of readership satisfaction of articles pertaining to Home and Ordinary People, 2000 Impact study.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
All departments MUST be involved in all efforts (preferably in all stages, from planning to execution).



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?
Stage 2 of our internal Impact Communication Plan (hindrance: time constraints in relation to other major projects).

Expanded surveys, focus groups, etc. (hindrance: budget and time constraints).

A daily computerized reader feedback instrument.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper