Challenges, excitement ahead

By Bill Patterson, TPA President 2024-2025

I am excited about the opportunity to serve as president of the Texas Press Association for 2024-25. What a great organization with great energy, passion and enthusiasm for the work we all do every day!

While our business is filled with daily challenges, for me it’s also filled with excitement about what the future holds — especially the possibilities of a digital future. If you haven’t begun serious discussions about disrupting your traditional business model and building a digital future, I strongly suggest you do so.

For years, I stuck with the status quo and resisted efforts to shift our thinking from print to digital. We had strong enough print numbers and good revenue — and we managed to hold on to the preprint business that we were told was going away. I watched as many larger papers started dipping their toes into digital-first thinking, and I thought they were crazy to even think about giving up on print.

Frankly, I didn’t see how a digital-first approach would “work” in the Denton area. Then I realized that while Denton is a unique community — proudly so, I might add — the challenges and opportunities that growth brings are no different than anywhere else. As we attract new residents and new businesses, and as the demographic profile of our community changes, it’s clearer than ever that digital is not just the future for our business — it’s actually the present!

Some of our readers actually told us they were going to move away from print and stop subscribing entirely if we didn’t meet them where they were: on the phone and on the laptop, not waiting every day for the news on their doorstep. They started showing us we needed to get more serious about digital, and I started to take notice. Then we started seeing new subscribers opt for digital-only memberships — not print bundles.

My eyes were open.

Newspaper ink is in my blood, and I grew up in the traditional print model, so shifting my thinking was not easy at first. But once we moved forward with the full intention of delivering the best digital news experience we could, our conviction grew.

Yes, for many customers there was an early reaction of “What are you doing?” But when you consider the depth of the habit we cultivated for our audience over decades of print journalism, it’s no wonder such a radical change was met with questions.

We believe we’re answering those concerns by continuing to focus on what sets us apart: relevant, unique, trustworthy local news that serves our community better than anyone else. Our approach to covering our community has become sharper as a result; we now understand better than ever which coverage areas resonate with readers and what approaches to covering news make a bigger impact.

Making this move is not for the faint of heart. We’ve had to make tough choices and reassess every decision we make. But we know we are on the right track, and I believe the same probably is true for your community, too.

Change is inevitable. For us to survive and thrive, we must adapt and keep our constant focus on delivering relevance for our readers.

I look forward to working with each of you in the coming year. No matter where you stand on the print-digital spectrum, we must respect the markets we come from and the unique situations we face. But we also must keep an eye on the prize: long-term sustainability, community service and the growth of our reach.

Here’s to a great second half of 2024!