• by bob c. hall

    • Lots Of Ways To Skin The Website Cat, But.....

    One way small-staff weekly newspapers can quickly provide a web product for their loyalists is used by several Idaho publishers. Like the Latah Eagle and the Kuna-Melba News, they sign up with a "digital newsstand" service like www.smalltownpapers.com. Computer users in or out of town can click up that web address within 3-5 days after the local hard copy edition has been published and view their entire weekly paper online.

  • The Bonners Ferry Herald website, www.bonnersferryherald.com, is a more ambitious staff effort exercise. Their satisfaction is that the site has been touted as "one of the top websites for weekly newspapers in the country for logging users on a monthly basis" by a firm that tracks such things -- Townnews.Com. They rank the Herald's website as "one of the nation's best" in registering the amount of repeat visitors, page views, monthly visits, hits and time spent per visit.
  • Because staff time expense is a shared investment in both the hard copy and web issues of The Idaho Statesman, all hands enjoyed an award announced by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. They listed the Statesman's Business section as one of five rated for "overall excellence" among newspapers with circulation up to 125,000. Business editor Mike Maharry supervises a staff of three Statesman business reporters: Julie Howard covers technology; Ken Dey covers Idaho's traditional industries; Joe Estrella covers growth and development issues.
  • But here's a caution to publishers who rush out to pour lots of a staff's energy into their newspaper web site (or good news to those who don't even bother). An article in a recent issue of the Newspaper Association of America magazine reported that an accredited national computer users survey found that more than 70 percent of survey respondents never visited their home newspaper's Web site. Fewer than 10 percent visited within the past week. But, demographics of that 10 percent are pretty interesting; 20 percent are more likely to have college degrees, 21 percent more likely to be employed, have a mean income of $70,000 and spend double the amount of time online as compared to general Internet users, according to the NAA article.
  • No editor doubts that websites are fun, but in Grangeville, Coeur d'Alene, Priest River and Boise, they are busy pepping up their hard copy issues, to keep their basic product abreast of "90's-era" readership changes. Readers of the Idaho County Free Press, Priest River Times and the Coeur d'Alene Press now get 'American Profile', a syndicated news supplement with regionalized editorial content "celebrating the interests and events" in Northwest hometowns. The Idaho Statesman is going after young new-generation readers with its own weekly new publication "Thrive". Managing Editor Carolyn Washburn was invited to share her theories about the new venture as a panel member on the "changing readership" issue, during the March national meeting of the Newspaper Association of America.