Right in the centre - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
- Details
- Published on Thursday, December 21, 2017
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner & Press
For many newspapers it has not been a good year financially. I guess that is obvious as recent news came out that over 30 daily papers, including one in Winnipeg, have been shut down. Now, in fairness, those papers were owned by two large companies who decided that having one paper in a town has better chance at success than two so they closed a bunch of papers to make way for what they hope will be a successful single paper.
Many will say the problem with newspapers today is that the internet is squeezing them out of the market. Like a lot of assumptions, that isn鈥檛 true. The internet with Facebook, Google, Twitter and Instagram and a long line of other internet based projects have expanded. No question about that. However, there are a number of problems with the internet as a source of news. One, is it relevant to you and your community? It may be, certainly it is nice to see a friend or a community member post a notice or a video or a photo of an item of interest. That鈥檚 great. But how much of what we are bombarded with on the internet is of no real importance to us. From 鈥渇ake news鈥� to irrelevant trivia to a flood of old-time music videos, how much irrelevant material do we need or better yet, how much can we absorb? The whole internet thing reminds me of cable TV and the 500 channel universe. How much channel flipping can the human mind take?
Speaking of TV, the channel flipping days may be coming to an end as cable companies move more and more into TV on demand and as they offer replays of shows. TV people have long ago come to the realization that a person only has so much time to watch stuff. Inundated with hundreds of TV show possibilities, viewers become more selective. Nobody watches 500 TV channels.
The same process is evolving with the internet. Click on a video you want to watch and it will now be regularly interrupted with a commercial. Check out a certain town to see if you want to visit it and you will be bombarded for weeks with ads for hotels in that town. The internet and all its various programs and companies are now competing for our attention. It is not relaxing by any means to sit and watch an hour on the net.
So plain old newspapers, those clunky newsprint carriers of local, relevant news sit there patiently by your chair or bed waiting for you to come home. The newspaper can be read in many ways, a quick glance to catch the headlines, with a coffee to peruse the locally important stuff or in a full blown sit down reading session. And those ads (called commercials on radio, TV and the internet), they just quietly sit there on the page beside the local news and pictures awaiting your quiet attention. No blaring music or noise, no flashing, bright lights, just information to fill your every need and desire for information.
Generally speaking, the big corporate papers have had a really tough year. So have the small papers which are corporately owned. The smaller locally owned papers are doing OK, not fantastic but OK. The Neepawa Banner and Press and the Rivers Banner haven鈥檛 had their best year but it is improving as we approach year end.
The big papers long ago lost their way. They still try to cover national and international news. By the time their papers hit the streets, those national and international news stories have already been on TV, radio and the Internet for 12-18 hours before you get your daily paper. What this paper tries to do is cover the local stuff, news that is important locally. That鈥檚 what every paper should do. Local, local, local should be the mantra of every editor and publisher.
So here鈥檚 the deal. The Neepawa Banner and Press and the Rivers Banner do not charge a subscription fee. I have been asked about that many times but if we are to be a good deal for our advertisers then we need to put a paper into as many homes in the respective trade areas as we can. In our core areas, every home and business gets a paper. With the Neepawa paper, some of the further out towns get a paper in all the farm and business mail boxes. Both papers are almost totally supported by advertising dollars. That said, if we charged a subscription fee, it would be around $50 per year. So as a reader of this paper, if you wish to make a readership subscription donation, it would be greatly appreciated. We will gladly give you a receipt and readership subscription donations can be made by cash cheque or credit card.
As a family and as a newspaper, we hope to be part of the community for many years to come and so we thank you for your support with news, ads and readership subscription donations.
May you and yours be blessed. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
