Change keeps local news relevant

The last several years have brought a lot of angst for us all as we try to determine how to attract more readers/subscribers and advertising customers.

By Bill Patterson, TPA President

Sometimes this heartburn is because we’re reluctant to change – or just scared to change. We’re afraid if we make a change or give something up that we’ve always done, we will lose more readers, subscribers and advertisers.

I think reality is just the opposite. If we don’t keep moving forward with bold changes, we will continue to become less relevant.

Not too many years ago we were afraid to drop publishing days. Now most of us have done it, some in a larger way than others, but we have found we can still survive.

The Thanksgiving Day edition used to be a whopper. Reams of pages, ads and preprint inserts filled the delivery bags to the point a carrier almost needed a special workout regime leading up to delivery that day.

The saying digital first is real. We may not want to say it or believe it, but the power of your phone, tablet or desktop says differently. We are media companies: we provide our content in print, online, on social media, podcasts, video, and the list can go on and on. We can reach consumers however they want to consume our information.

We reach more eyeballs than we ever did in our best days of print only. We are timelier with our content and can provide those updates throughout the day on major local news, weather, sports, etc. We sell digital marketing services that allow us to sell our customers not only within our “historical footprint” but outside of that footprint as well. We have no boundaries.

Our company has made a number of changes in the last four years. I’ve noted some below for your consideration as you consider where you’re going in 2025 and beyond.

• Weather map – For years we took a quarter page for a weather map. Think about all the weather apps available now. I’m sure you have at least one on your phone or tablet. So do our readers. We dropped our print weather map and had just a couple of calls. When we talked to these subscribers they understood it made sense.

• Pro and college sports – For those of you in smaller markets like we are, think about where consumers get their pro and college sports scores. I know they do not rely on the Denton Record-Chronicle for that information. Sure, we will cover what UNT and TWU do in our markets, but we now leave the Cowboys, Mavericks, Stars, FC Dallas and outside collegiate sports to our friends at The Dallas Morning News, ESPN, CBS, Rivals, etc. We also did away with our sports agate. At one time we were the local go-to for that information. Since we discontinued this content, we have had no complaints.

• AP/National/State – When we moved from printing the daily newspaper in 2020, we eliminated our wire content. If we are to survive, we must make sure that the locally generated, unique content we provide with our team of reporters is the most important thing we do. Once again, our customers have a lot of other places, apps, sites, etc. to get outside content.

• Editorial Page –  We have found a lot of our readers do not understand the term “editorial page.” They look at the content on that page as biased reporting instead of opinion. We eliminated the editorial page. Instead, we have kept our local letters to the editor and occasional guest columns. But a labeled page, syndicated columns, editorial cartoons and local opinions (which were not as frequent as we wanted) have gone away.

• E-edition design – We redesigned our e-edition to make it feel more like reading our website. This is an effort to continue to transition our print readers to all digital. We will still have a main story on Page 1 or sports cover every day, but the balance of our content consists of a photo, a headline and the ability of a reader to click on and read a pull-out version of the story. We found this saves production time and has helped move more readers to our website, app and newsletters.

Our recent focus on digital includes:

• Newsletters – We have a small staff, but we now publish 14 different newsletters with a volume of 18-20 per week. Our open rates continue to grow, and we’re training our consumers to hit these as their content source.

• Go and Do – We’ve made a big effort in expanding coverage of what to do to have fun in Denton. We run the gamut from weekend summaries of the big happenings to newsletters with that information. Those newsletters are tailored not only for our full-time residents, but a separate newsletter with go and do information for students attending UNT, TWU and NCTC.

• Open and Close – One of our most popular items: a wrapup of the new businesses opening and those that are closing.

• Best of Newsletter – We took our Best of Denton program and expanded it to a weekly newsletter featuring a different category of top three winners. This gives these businesses more exposure and continues to introduce Best of the year around.

• Puzzles and Games – We launched a puzzles and games newsletter that features our Puzzmo digital puzzles and games along with our longtime print/e-edition puzzles and games and top local headlines.

We have a long way to go to get where we want to be, but we’re excited about the direction we’re headed –  moving away from some of the traditional content categories but using digital analytics to really help us shape and drive our future content. We are not giving up being watchdogs, though. We feel strongly that this is what our readers want and expect from their hometown paper.

Hats off to all of you for the efforts you make in your own organizations to change. I encourage each of you to keep doing it!