NewsBeat

6 NewsBeat March 2018 Some newspapers need a lot more "news." N ones, those making money, provide much needed services to the community: They inform but they also entertain. They write local history and provide keepsakes for the refrigerator door. Local newspapers are the community's cheerleader. They explain big ideas and help the reader understand the reason something should or should not change in their respective community. They share information that helps lead the way for ideas and projects. Most important of all, local community newspapers educate. They update the reader on the proposed cost of an upcoming street project, the winning play at last Friday's high school football game, the appointment of a new minister at the Methodist Church, what's playing at the hometown movie house and the price of fresh strawberries at the town's supermarket. "I keep telling my readers and customers," Matt Paxton, Publisher of the Lexington, VA News-Gazette, once told me, "that they should not include the News- Gazette a part of that failing group of a few metro newspapers they keep hearing about". SECRETS FOR REACHING MORE READERS The name of the game is "reaching readers". In today's fast paced culture that means providing subscribers tighter, shorter, better written stories presented on imagina- tively designed pages. It means stepping away from the inverted paragraph to make the stories more readable, enticing and fun to read. Today's population wants immediate gratification and aren1t willing to plow through 40 inches of body copy to capture the essence of the story. Ask former and current subscribers in your community what upsets them about your newspaper and news- papers in general and this is what you1ll hear: traditionally depended on their wire service and national news to fill their pages. That made sense when the afternoon daily was the only source of current war news, Washington happenings, National League updates and the stock market reports. Now most of that information is available 24/7 on the cable news channels, computer, social media and satellite radio. Local news and human feature stories, meanwhile, can be elusive in metro markets. Attempting to please a metro area that sometimes covers hundreds of square miles, it can be difficult to track down sufficient inches of local interest news and features to satisfy a subscriber base. IT1S ALL ABOUT CONTENT Community newspapers, however, filled with well crafted stories about local issues, school sports and activities, a strong editorial page, interesting personality features and local ads can still attract and keep a large audience. There's a huge difference between local news coverage in community papers and big city dailies. It's summed up in local names, stories and hard work. Local newspapers do more than just report on the latest city council meeting or who had tea with whom. The exceptional By PETER WAGNER ot all newspapers are dead and the printed newspaper business is not doomed. However, many editors and publishers, hearing the "sky is falling", have hurt the industry by cutting content, news hole and subscriber value. Instead, they should have increased interest with more local content. Newspapers remain the one necessary media in their community. Newspapers provide the important, uniquely exclusive role of serving as a community's fact checker, cheerleader and creator of consensus. Too many pundits put local and metro papers in the same category but the home-owned, hometown community paper has the advantage. Metro papers have

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