Readership Institute: The State-Journal Register

Daily Circulation: 57,384

Sunday Circulation: 66,708

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.

Service
Our delivery service continues to receive great reviews from customers. We have a variety of reader and customer feedback forms that I analyze on an almost daily basis. -Without fail, the results show that reliable service is very important to the newspaper's subscribers and that The State Journal-Register does an above average job. I sometimes think newspapers don't work hard enough to provide great service. We guarantee porch delivery (not driveway delivery!) by 6:00 a.m.

Though so much of the customer service is in the delivery area, there is a substantial amount of work that we are doing every day in the editorial department. We work hard to promptly return phone calls, to be courteous as we handle reader complaints, and to take a genuine interest in whatever it is that is on a reader's mind. We ask editorial employees to keep common courtesy and respect in the forefront of their daily dealings with the public.

Content
We continue to emphasize the type of local news that won't be found anywhere else in our community, including various types of police and crime reporting, sports stories of all types, wedding anniversaries, births, deaths and other areas of community news. We continue to emphasize a wide-range of specialized features, such as health, food and outdoor interests. We also continue to emphasize what newspapers can do best -- in-depth reporting, analysis and editorial commentary on issues that people care about. Nothing fancy -- just solid, down-to-earth, pertinent information that people can count on to be accurate, fair and balanced.

We continue to focus on areas that our ongoing research indicates people are very much interested in, such as in letters to the editor and other forms of expanded commentary. We offer people an opportunity to write expanded commentary on a weekly opinion page that consists only of material authored by community members. We try to cater to the readers' needs "to be heard" and to offer parts of the newspaper as a forum for that effort. (Most local, radio talk shows use material generated from our commentary pages as the basis for their daily programming. Too bad we can't get them to pay for it!!)

Our corrections policy - in which we publish corrected information on the front of the section in which the error appeared, including the front page - is basically unparalleled in the newspaper industry. (We began that practice in 1997 before the Readership Institute was "born.")

We also have developed approximately 65 special feature sections to cater to the needs of various market segments. Most notable among these are recently instituted annuals like Healthcare, Finance and Nostalgia sections, which appeal to large segments of the local population.

In addition, classified liner ads are proven readership drivers. We designed our auto and real estate volume liner ad programs to build on this, improving and sustaining our readership base.

Culture
We have worked diligently to create a culture within the newspaper that treats both employees and customers with respect. We have created an atmosphere where department lines are "blurred" as we work together on projects of importance to the newspaper in general, such as the collaborative efforts between the advertising and editorial departments. It has not always been this way.

As a newspaper, we exhibit a less "defensive" culture than we did several years ago. Editorial department employees appear regularly on radio and television programs that discuss their areas of expertise.

We listen to readers who have comments, complaints or praise, and if necessary we make changes based on those comments. (The corrections policy was instituted based on a reader complaint that we "buried" corrections.)

The State Journal-Register is not alone in doing so, but we always include reporter contact information (phone number and e- mail address) at the end of each local story. It has proven to be a great way for us to get people to let us know if there is an error or if they have something to add to the story (and in fact, providing the contact information has generated a fair number of "follow-up" stories).

In addition, at the top of each section front page we run the name, phone number and e- mail of the senior editor for that section.

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?
Probably the single-most successful thing we have done to drive readership is to significantly increase the number of letters to the editor that we publish. I think many newspapers underestimate the power of that part of the newspaper to "drive" readership. People like to have their views represented as published work in a newspaper. I have encouraged other newspaper editors to dramatically increase the number of letters they publish. As a general rule, I think most papers could do a lot better in this area. This next aspect certainly is not unique to The State Journal-Register, but we also began using photos with some letters to the editor during the past four years. It was not something we had done before. (Bear in mind that as recently as 1996-97 our editorial page usually had only one or two letters at most.) We add the photos when appropriate – that is, when there is a letter submitted in reference to either the photo itself or to a story that the photograph illustrates. It offers the added benefit of visual appeal to this section.

Another feature not unique to us but that has nonetheless proven popular is our Saturday practice of running old, often personal, photos submitted by readers. The photographs generally depict some bygone aspect of community life. We let the readers decide what is "old".

What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Probably the most persuasive indication that our readers are responding to the various efforts are the many comments that are directed to me through e-mail, U.S. Mail, phone calls, reader surveys and in person. It is a critical component of the editor's role to pay close attention to what people say and how they say it in reference to the newspaper and its content. There is an immense volume of "response" that comes through this office.

Assurances that our efforts are paying off also are seen in the fact that we are enjoying extremely high reach in our market. The State Journal-Register reaches 94% of total adults in the Springfield IL MSA and performs very substantially in a broad range of important demographic categories - e.g., capturing penetration in 93% of households with income in excess of $50,000 per year and 89% of readers aged 18-to-24 years old. (According to A & A Research survey findings in the Springfield, IL MSA Market Survey, 2001.)

What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
For me, personally, the most important lesson I have learned is the importance of listening to what people say in reference to the newspaper's content or our service and to react quickly in an appropriate manner. If something needs to be changed, fixed or acted upon we do it.

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?
Room exists to bolster in-paper promotion of future news stories, upcoming news features and regular news sections.