A former reader by the name of Ron let me know in an email that he wished to quit receiving the Tribune.I replied that I would forward his request to our circulation department for processing, but would he first mind telling me why. "There is nothing in it that is new, and the news that you do have in the paper is old. In the fast-moving world that we live in nowadays, you get it quicker on cable," he wrote back.I could have argued with him, but I didn’t. His interests seemed limited to the kind of news that the cable news networks specialize in–not in community news where we often break stories.But I won’t deny that the equation, when it comes to breaking news, has changed since the introduction of radio, then TV and now the Internet.Here’s what we are doing about it:When it comes to national and international news we edit our pages attempting to answer the questions: What next, why and what does it mean to you?We haven’t always done this. When the space shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas in 2003, our headlines some 24-hours later told you what you already knew: The shuttle and crew were gone. We didn’t work hard enough to tell you want you didn’t know: What happened.Admittedly, plumbing the depths of news is not for scanners like Ron; it is for serious news consumers.On local stories that we dig up or enterprise, we are the first source. For instance, Tribune reporter Sarah Lynch was the only reporter to interview the father of Robin Blasnek, the Mesa victim in the recent serial killings.Unfortunately for newspapers, radio and TV news anchors get up earlier than many subscribers and read our stories on air, sometimes without credit. On local breaking stories that the television and radio news teams are also covering, we’ll often "swarm" a story. We have more reporters than any local television station and our deadlines are later. Our goal is to give you more depth, detail and perspective than they can on selected stories.And broadcast news may only report on the top four or five stories. They won’t tell you what is happening in Gilbert–if news is also breaking in the bigger city of Phoenix.Still, a printed newspaper may seem hopelessly out of date for casual news consumers.No problem. We have a large, hard-working news team and we’ve got the Internet.Increasingly, we are turning more of our efforts to get the headlines and news highlights up on our Web site before our news competitors. The Internet had changed our news universe as it has changed yours.When we had the first big monsoon storm of the season, we had an advantage over regularly scheduled TV news because the storm didn’t really start hitting until roughly 10 p.m. We had until midnight to get our story together. Consequently, we had a pretty good report in the morning’s paper–certainly better than the previous night’s 10 p.m. TV news report. But the news didn’t stop at midnight. The next morning we mobilized reporters and editors to update the story. And it turned out to be a doozy, with electricity outages and uprooted trees and damaged homes–information we didn’t have when our print deadline rolled around.We also had people like you offering to help out. One reader sent us 78 pictures of damage in south Scottsdale. We put many of those photos up on our Web site.And when Phoenix and Mesa police captured two men accused of being Valley serial killers past all local news deadlines, we posted on our Web site the story of their capture at 2:30 a.m.One news junkie e-mailed his congratulations, saying we had beaten the Arizona Republic by hours on the story. In this young 21st century, news consumers have even more choices, ranging from the depth and local enterprise in the printed version of the Tribune to breaking news on our Web site. We don’t have a doubt that we can be just as competitive for news consumers who demand immediacy as local TV or radio.We’re also learning to embrace the multimedia nature of Internet news.For instance, one of our photographers followed with her camera and her tape recorder a refugee family who came to Valley after Hurricane Katrina. Her photos and accompanying stories went into the print edition of the East Valley Tribune, while a version with audio reporting went on eastvalleytribune.com Check out eastvalleytribune.com. Hey, make us your home page. Or at least give us a book mark. Now that you’ve bookmarked eastvalleytribune.com, do me one more favor and give me your thoughts on these questions on my blog at our Web site. If you are a newspaper reader, what can we do to improve your experience? If you prefer getting your news on ours or another local Web site, tell me why? What can we do to improve your experience? Next Tuesday: Newspapers as entertainment.
 Truth & Consequences (fifth in a series)August 22nd, 2006, 11:48 am · 4 Comments · posted by Jim Ripley4 CommentsLeave a Reply |
Why not extend delivery of your newspaper to seven days a week? Oh, it is already? Not at my house. I only receive your newspaper six days a week and not the same six days every week. It’s been this way for four months. I’ve been a subscriber since 1979 when I had the Tempe Daily News delivered to my home. Guess I’ll be an Arizona Republic reader very soon if service doesn’t improve.
Yesterday you asked for feedback to your “how we do it” series. Here goes:
I like the EVT and have subscribed for many years. Here are features that I like the most, not necessarily in this order:
In Brief sections
capsulizations of a long story
graphs and tables
local news bites
Michael Grady
Slim Smith
Lawn Griffiths and the religion section
The Vent
Life Magazine on Fridays
The puzzles
Most of the comics
color
Here are suggestions:
more In Briefs!!
Grady more often than once a week
For a while, long ago now, the first page contained only summarizations of the day’s top stories, with the page number for the whole treatment. I really liked that. I have a problem flipping to continuations (big paper, small space usually).
Because I’m a teacher whose specialty is English, I sometimes feel like editing the paper and sending it to you. Watch the use of who and whom.
Difficulties:
paper delivery (this morning’s is soaked; no replacement papers are being provided). I’ll be in withdrawal by this evening!
paper delivery (I request delivery to my patio; every time there’s a change of carrier, my paper lands on my front stoop instead — seems you could do a better job of communicating with your carriers) — but I have to tell you that, in a recent apparent change, I was pleased to see it corrected without my having to call. I’d almost decided to drop my subscription. I’d rather not, and now I don’t have to!
Promotion of the paper in Safeway: the rep offers a gift card and then takes it back when I tell them I’m already a subscriber. Darn!!
Thanks for asking.
Future former reader:
Please e-mail to me your name and telephone number and I’ll see if I can get our circulation department straightened out on delivery. My address is jripley@aztrib.com.
Karen:
Thanks for your extensive list. I’m going to share it with my key editors. I want to do more capsulizations and knowing that this matters to readers will help. Sorry about the soggy paper. We had lots of complaints. Some carriers bagged and some didn’t. We were caught off guard with morning monsoon as was the weather service.
Jim