Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
To our readers:
“Peanuts” is back. “Shoe,” too.
There’s more local news, and it has some bite.
And, yes, the newspaper even looks different today.
And we’re going to keep tweaking.
We can’t please everybody. We know that. But here’s what we can do, at readers’ request: We can offer more variety in our news reports. Mostly that means new features and more reader participation. Fair warning: If we try something and it doesn’t work, we’ll scrap it and try something else.
You’ve already seen a lot of change in our newspapers the past year.
• We have more local columns, from Roosevelt County rancher Audra Brown to publisher ponderings of Robert Arrowsmith to fashionista D’Nieka Hartsfield. Some of our staff members are starting columns this week.
• There’s more fun stuff to do. Every paper has two crosswords now. We’ve added a Sudoku, in addition to six new comics.
• Readers are becoming involved. Hundreds participated in writing student essays and creating newspaper ads in January and dozens entered a photo contest focused on faces in February. This month we’re asking our community photographers to capture the wind. (And a reader suggested we have a contest for painters; that sounds like a good idea, too.)
• We’re trying to be more inclusive and celebrate different and welcome all cultures. Later this month we’ll introduce some Spanish-language features.
• Pages Past was so popular in our Clovis paper, we’re introducing yesterday to our Portales readers this week.
• Speaking of Portales — we have five newsroom staffers working primarily for the News-Tribune for the first time in at least 15 years. That means more Roosevelt County news in the PNT, and more Clovis readers can learn about what’s going on with their neighbors to the south.
• Sports will receive more attention soon as well, starting with March Madness at the state basketball tournaments. We’re sending a reporter and a photographer. And if anybody knows a good writer who eats, breathes and sleeps softball, we know a newspaper that wants to hire somebody like that.
We don’t expect everybody to read every page in every edition of the Clovis News Journal and Portales News-Tribune. But it’s our intention to offer something every day that makes the paper worth your time.
Be sure to let us know how we’re doing as we keep making changes toward that goal:
Editor David Stevens: [email protected]
Clovis Managing Editor Robin Fornoff: [email protected]
Portales Managing Editor: Alisa Boswell: