Daily Circulation: 304,949 (Mon- Fri); 621,221 (Mon-Sat)
Sunday Circulation: 789,137


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
Redesigned the newspaper to give it greater range, consistency and impact.

Added a weekly baseball section on Mondays to bring readers back to the newspaper after the weekend. (We don't have a Sunday paper.)

Added weekly football sections Monday and Friday during the football season, for the same reason as baseball section.

Added an outdoors adventure section called Rocky Mountain Adventure on Saturdays to attract young readers and better reflect the Colorado lifestyle.

Added Weekend@Home to our Friday Weekend Spotlight section to reflect the many activities people do on the weekend that don't involve going out: TV, Books, Video, DVDs, CDs, video games, etc.

Added a weekly perspective page on Thursdays to add depth to the paper on a weekday, a surprise every Thursday.

Made page 2A a daily guide to the entire paper and to things to do in the community and online.

Added a "High Country" section on Wednesdays as a guide to winter recreation, with specific how-to-info on skiing, snowboarding and other winter sports.

Added a weekly Motorsports page.

Introduced what we call channels, a sleeve of interesting and pointed items on section fronts or covers, including commentary. These channels have more attitude than the rest of the paper, representing the personality of the paper.

Added a From the Publisher column every Saturday on page 2A that humanizes the paper and explains our decisions and introduces our people.

Added a video games column.

Added a local history column.

Added a business opinion page on Saturdays.

Launched two new annual sections, "Winter Escapes" and “Summer Escapes,” two magazine sections that are guides to enjoying Colorado in each season. These have a deep Internet component.

Launching a new publication, "Top of the Rocky" this month, which will be used to emphasize our authority on what's best about this area.

Big emphasis on the Internet, and its link to the newspaper.

Brand
Created a new branding campaign, post JOA, identifying the paper with the tagline "Closer to Home."

Used the branding in print and TV ads.

Service
Moved home delivery guarantee to 5:30 a.m.

Expanded delivery area for final edition to include more of the Front Range, from Ft. Collins to Colorado Springs.

Culture
Moved to a team culture in the newsroom with the introduction of a new publishing system. This gives copy editors and designers more responsibility and more ability to affect content.

Introduced an Intranet site to link staff electronically.

Placed emphasis on focusing our efforts on things that will impact readers. Tried to move work from things that readers don't see to things they do.



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?
I think our redesign places the emphasis on presenting content in the best way for readers.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Our research shows that readers can identify what we're doing in language that reflects what we're trying to do. We're in synch.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
Ask how you would want to get information and give it to people the way they want it, not the way we find easiest.



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?
I'd like to link the Internet and the paper even more closely in the minds of readers and the community. I don't think the community knows what we have online. It's expensive to promote the Internet and difficult during a down cycle.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper