Local paper needs more local content

link Robert Arrowsmith

Publisher

It has been two weeks and David Stevens and I have been getting questions about the direction of the newspaper. Where did the state, national, and international coverage go? Where did the editorial go?

I have seen posts on Facebook where some of the ideas are lame. Why would they do that?

Where we are going as a newspaper is simple. We are going to be local.

Does that mean we are only going to cover what is happening here and nothing more? No it does not. Local for our newspaper means we will be covering the news that impacts us as a community.

The content can come from anywhere so long as it has an impact on us here.

We are going to work on taking the local angle on our content. For example: We might not cover the Boston Marathon. But if a local runner is running in it, we want to cover the local runner being in the Boston Marathon.

The other example I give the staff is there are a great many Dallas Cowboys fans here. We all know the rivalries the Cowboys have. Therefore we might cover something from the Giants, Eagles or Redskins because it affects the Cowboy fans.

Lifestyles will become a local only feature. We will be focusing on different people for their roles in the community.

You will see more local columnists and editorials. And we will have state, national, and international coverage — if it impacts us and our way of life.

If it hits us in heart strings, or is of concern to us, we will be covering it. Good or bad, we will be covering it.

But please bear with us. As Shemp Howard once said “Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was Syracuse.”

It is a little bit different mindset for us, and will take some tweaking until we feel we have it right. Pages may be in different spots for a while. The look to our pages might be adjusted. Different content may be on different days.

We are going to keep working at it until we are comfortable that we have reached our goal of being the local paper in a format we feel the community will enjoy.

We do want your involvement as well. We do not know everything going on everywhere all the time. If you know a good story or feature that you feel could be covered, please contact us and let us know.

We are committed to community coverage. We want to show the good , the successes, the progress, and the advancements that come in the area.

This is a unique region we live in, and our goal is to provide you the content you are not going to find anywhere else.

And I am happy to be a part of it.

Robert Arrowsmith is publisher of Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]