Publisher's Point

A question and an answer..

For some time now, I have been wrestling with the decision of eliminating two of the three pages of stock listings that currently run in our Sunday edition. We would continue to run our daily Market Watch report and the NASDAQ 1000 most active and local stocks on Sundays in the Business section. The plan would be to publish more local, state and national business news on these open pages. Yes, it would also give advertisers more opportunity to reach potential customers. This is a bit of my own personal poll before a final decision is reached. Would this be a good choice, bad choice or do you really not care one way or another?

As long as I am talking about pages in the newspaper, I want to take the opportunity to answer a comment left by a reader on the Cheers and Jeers page.

Comment: JEERS - to this newspaper... for every time they have a full-page advertisement, instead of making the paper bigger, we lose a page of news. Page 4 today, gone. I'm sure you've all noticed it on a Sunday. The Lifestyles section, for example, doesn't expand to compensate for full-page ads so instead of 6 pages to that section, we get 5 or even 4!!! I can see why the department heads in advertisement receive 'awards' every year for their good work. Other papers do not rob their readers like this.

Information: First of all we cannot just add a page to an edition. The configuration of our 6 unit Goss press will not allow that. Let’s take the Saturday edition that was referenced. To add one page we would actually have to add four pages. We would need to add two pages in the first section of the newspaper and two more in the second section. Now let’s take a look at the March 22 paper. We had 8 by-line stories (3 on the front page); 24 news briefs; 9 Senior Focus briefs; 9 local photos; local editorial, 3 letters to the editor; local worship directory and ads that are great information from Seussical The Musical to Spring fix up ideas. Readers had both State and National news and sports. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. And just think about it, after that day's paper was published the staff of The Leader-Herald took another 44 blank pages of newsprint and filled it for the next day's reader. It is amazing when you think about it. A brand new product every twenty-four hour period!

I love this business.