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Our mission for 2009: Remain your top choice for local news
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Published: December 13, 2008
Donna Reed, our company's vice president for news, reigns as one of the country's foremost authorities on media trends.
The former Tampa Tribune managing editor, who now operates out of Media General's corporate headquarters in Richmond, Va., has forgotten more about journalism than most so-called experts will know in a lifetime. Reed is that good.
It was an honor to have her spend time with us Thursday and Friday, suggesting ideas to give readers a better experience with the newspaper. Her visit came less than a week after we received results from a scientific marketing survey about the newspaper's market and its impact.
The headline from the results: We are the major information provider in Cabarrus County with the newspaper, www.independenttribune.com, Harrisburg Horizons and other products.
The challenge from the results: Find ways to connect with newcomers in the community, with young families and with people who stay at home and work.
In the newspaper business, size matters to advertisers. We want to reach as many of you as possible with information, news and advertising.
Our mission is to cover local news better than any source. Donna and I talked at length about the newspaper's and the company's core values and about objectives for 2009.
An outline of our major goals:
• Advance Continuous News operations on the Web site: Our Continuous News feature debuted in September and has more than doubled the traffic coming to the site. Throughout the day, editors and reporters update the site with fresh information. There's no more waiting until morning to read about breaking news in Cabarrus County.
• Practice watchdog journalism that makes a difference: We're committed to digging deeper than television, radio and other regional newspapers in covering county, city and local governments. Reporter Ben McNeely spearheaded a project on the five-year anniversary of Pillowtex's closing last summer, for example, and he'll continue to monitor development of the North Carolina Research Campus in 2009.
• Be a leader in multimedia story telling: Kate Lord, our newsroom's Internet media coordinator, is one of the best multimedia journalists in the company. Look for her videos regularly on the site. Her eye adds to the talents of photographers James Nix and Bridgett Baker, whose work appears frequently in photo slideshows.
• Be the most-trusted source of news/information in our communities: The scientific research, conducted by Belden Associates, shows we are. But to do even better, we plan to write more local editorials in 2009, providing better analysis of local issues and trends. Our obligation always will be to the public's right to know.
• Grow the audience in print and online. We have three new journalists joining the staff in the next 30 days. One starts Monday, Robin Gardner, wife of News-Talk 1110 WBT-AM morning host Al Gardner. Another is former Charlotte Observer reporter Karen Cimino, who covered Cabarrus County earlier in her career. She will start in January. The third position remains open, but I have an offer into a strong candidate.
We're going to do better in Business, Sports and Lifestyle news, too. Night Editor David Deese, who writes an occasional Monday business feature, will focus on major local employers, with stories and pictures on Page A1.
Sports staffers will press harder to get all the local scores in print and online as soon as possible. Lifestyles will have resources to find and publish more extensive calendar information.
I'm trying to talk free-lance columnist Karen Rinehart, who is one of the most creative writers in the state, into writing her column twice a week again.
We're also looking at ways to improve Out & About, our weekly entertainment section. We want to provide content for families as they cope with the recession. We're going to work on story ideas to convince people who work from home to pick up the paper or click online.
The challenges facing the newspaper industry are daunting and exciting. When you combine newspaper and online reach, most newspaper companies have more readership than ever. It's our job to keep it fresh and inviting.
The section you did not see
We took a pregame picture from Saturday's state championship football game between A.L. Brown and Greensboro Dudley and designed a commemorative front page to pass out after the game in Winston-Salem if the Wonders had won. They lost 34-18.
The picture was sent from Winston-Salem by photographer Nix to our newsroom. The page (above) was designed by Assistant Editor Jonathan Coleman and sent to the production facility of the Winston-Salem Journal, our sister newspaper.
I was in the press room in Winston-Salem as the crew prepared to print the page. Dudley was leading 8-6 after the first quarter and 20-6 at halftime. But we went ahead with 2,500 pages, thinking the Wonders would come back. I drove the papers to the stadium and brought them back here after the loss.
The poster would have been a great keepstake. Alas, the pages will be added to the recycling pile, remembered as a good idea we'll use again in the future.
• Managing Editor James Bennett's column appears Sundays in the Independent Tribune. Contact him at 704-789-9150 or jbennett@independenttribune.com.
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