You’d think people in the business of communications would be great communicators. We try hard, yet too often we fall short. Let me share a typical instance.
One of our biggest challenges is accurately describing the likelihood that a submitted news item will be published, and when that will be. A reader shares the information that her grandchild graduated at the top of the college class and wants it run in the local paper so friends and family will know of the success.
Sounds like a simple request, but usually our staff will thank the person and say something like, “We’ll try to publish it in the next week or so.” The customer is left wondering if it will ever run in the papers, and when.
Our vagueness relates to not knowing for sure ourselves.
First, the question of “if.” While our intent is to publish all the news we can, what is “news” to one reader may not fit our own assessment. Using the example from above, if the college grad didn’t have any local connection other than the grandparent, then we might decide other uses of our news space are more important.
Or, upon further review, key aspects are missing and we can’t successfully contact the submitting person. Or, we plan to run it, have to hold it for a while and then realize it is too out of date to publish.
How about the when, you wonder? One factor is the size of the upcoming newspaper. Careful readers know that sometimes our local paper is pretty well sized — say a total of 60 tabloid-size pages including the classified section. Other times, though, the paper might shrink to 36 pages or so.
Why? Like most businesses, we try to make a profit. And for newspapers, most of our money comes from paid ads. When we have lots of ads, the papers get bigger and we spend more money printing more pages. Yes, we have minimum standards for the amount of news space, but there are still noticeable ups and downs in the amount of ads requested for a particular week.
Aside from the amount of advertising, the allocation of news space influences when stories appear. For instance, if this is tournament time for prep sports, we’ll expand the amount of space devoted to sports for a week or so, thereby reducing the amount of space left for general news, arts and entertainment and the like.
Two other factors affecting when we publish something are timeliness and volume. If we have other similar items that will become less valuable if they don’t run this week and the college item can wait a week or so, that thought goes through our news person’s thinking. Also, if we have sufficient space for wedding announcements on a particular week and only one is submitted, then the chances of appearing are much greater than if we received a dozen at the same time.
As you can see, lots of variables go into our decisions. We’re still struggling with ways to be more clear, so if you have suggestions, please share them with me.
Finally, on behalf of our staff, thank you for reading our newspapers.
David Lewis is Publisher and President of the four Mile High Newspapers that serve Jefferson County. He writes about the Who, What, When, Why and Where and How of journalism, and their relevancy to your newspaper. Contact him at 303-279-5541, Ext. 243, or via e-mail atDavidL@MileHighNews.com.