Changes to newspaper were necessary

I have a great job.

I was never more certain of that fact than when, earlier this month, my wife and I traveled back to Berkeley, Calif., for our 20-year law school reunion.

She works in Columbus as a lawyer. That made sense to everyone.

I work here as the editor of your local newspaper. That made sense to no one.

But here's what they don't get: editing a local newspaper -- even in a time of tough competition from the Internet and in the face of an unforgiving economic downturn -- is a public trust.

You get that. That's why more than 150 of you wrote to us, many expressing concern that your newspaper is shrinking, and therefore our community -- with its great civic pride and justifiably high aspirations -- has taken a step backward. I understand and respect that view.

I don't like reducing the size of the newspaper which has been entrusted to me after 180 years. The choices facing us were difficult, but our Monday/Tuesday cuts were one front-and-back page each day. The actual number of local stories on Page 1 and Local on Monday through Sunday is typically eight or nine. That's about the number we've published each day since September 2004 when I took over as editor.

Also, take a look at your papers from the prior several months for Monday and Tuesday. They average 28 pages. This week we printed 26, or 13 pages front-and-back, rather than 14.

We realize having all the news in two sections on Monday and Tuesday is troubling to many readers, and I have resisted the urge for years to go in this direction because (despite the compelling financial case for doing so) I understood many readers would not like it. But we've said openly that the Monday-Tuesday two-section approach was a necessary evil.

That said, we've heard you and are making adjustments where possible based on your feedback. Many of you told us you enjoyed the Today in History and celebrity birthdays. Starting today, we are reinstating the daily celebrity birthdays feature, and adding back a large portion of the Today in History items on A2.

Also, we are working hard to adjust the weather page to the liking of more of our readers. And while we will undoubtedly not be able to please everyone, we believe we can make some adjustments based on your preferences. If this issue is of great importance to you, contact Jerry Morehouse at 706-320-4422 or jmorehouse@ledger-

enquirer.com by Friday, May 2.

As to editorial pages, many of you have asked about the lineup of columnists for the week. The best news we have to report is that Sunday Voices remains intact, as you see in today's paper. You can continue to enjoy regular columnists George Will, Joe Galloway and Jim Evans in this section. They will be joined by Walter Williams and Froma Harrop. Other columnists have found new homes: Bill O'Reilly will run Monday, and Bill Shipp and Mark Shields will run Saturday.

Also, many of you asked about health inspections. We will be reinstating this feature, which disappeared largely because the state of Georgia changed its reporting system. We hope to have someone trained and a system up-and-running to once again bring you health inspection reports by early summer.

As seven-day-a-week readers of the newspaper have learned, we didn't just take things away. In addition to front-loading news and information into page 1, 2 and 3, we also added a standalone Business section on Friday featuring small business, along with a roundup of our best content offerings on Ledger-Enquirer.com.

We will continue to run a bold, larger-than-standard index on Page 1 to help you find your way around the new format.

Eight out of 10 folks in this community read our paper at least once weekly. We trust them to understand where our country and our local economy stands at present. We believe that when the economy turns, so will all businesses, local and national -- including this one.

Thank you for your continued loyalty to the newspaper, which at the end of the day is a private business managing perhaps the most difficult economy of my adult life. But it is a business with robust growth prospects. In fact, 12 percent more people read our Sunday paper now than in the fall of 2005, and 9 percent more read it daily. And of the 31 newspapers in our company, the Ledger-Enquirer is No. 1 in Sunday home delivery circulation growth.

My mother always told me that nothing worth doing came easy. So I thank you once again, for making this the toughest job I've ever loved.

– Ben Holden

Changes to printed newspaper

Your Ledger-Enquirer looks different today. We have made a number of changes to the paper that are both structural and cosmetic.

First, the newspaper will be organized differently. Local news and opinion will be incorporated into the first section, and sports and business will run in the second section Tuesday through Thursday.

Monday's Major Local Companies package will move to Saturday, and Small Business will move to Friday. Friday's Army Life will move to Tuesday.

The weather map has been moved to A2, and information about lake levels, moon phases and river stages will move to the sports section. Sound Off! has moved from the opinion page to A2.

We will run an expanded index box to help you navigate the paper.

While these changes were made to address rising fuel and newsprint costs, they weren't made lightly. We pulled together a team of editors from all departments to create a more compact paper, and we believe the end result is a paper that is streamlined, better organized, and front-loaded with some of the most popular features.

No changes are planned to our core mission -- to be the best local information resource in the region, both online and in print. We just won nine Georgia Associated Press Awards for excellence, including the prestigious Freedom of Information Award, and our Web site, ledger-enquirer.com, is among the fastest growing sites in our newspaper group.

We welcome your feedback on these changes. Please call me at 706-571-8560.

Ben Holden, executive editor

Death of newspapers greatly exaggerated

If you read the headlines in American newspapers (including this one) you might get the impression from a few marginally informed “experts” that newspapers are on their deathbed. I say hogwash.

Newspapers in general, and the Ledger-Enquirer in particular, remain the dominant sources of local news in their communities and deliver the only mass audience that in any way compares to the historical “Town Square” of yesteryear.

How do we know? Well, because you told us so.

You told us through our March 2008 Market Study, which indicates our daily paper is read by 111,350 folks in this community, a 12 percent increase over the prior two years. The study, based on information approved by the Audit Bureau of Circulation data, also revealed that our Sunday readership had improved even more – to 134,510, or a whopping nine percent jump. (The study period was Fall 2005 vs. Fall 2007).

If we’re dead, nobody told us. Our home delivery circulation continues to grow. Since January, we’re up 1.3% daily and 2.2% Sunday. This despite high gas prices, recession fears and general economic malaise. Things are tough in the news business, to be sure. And eventually I’ll probably write a thing or two about our challenges. But not today. We just got these numbers and it’s time to celebrate.

These figures are a tribute to you, the reader, our remarkably informed and engaged citizenry here in the valley. The numbers also say wonderful things about our staff here at the Ledger-Enquirer.

We are growing due to the efforts of reporters like Mick Walsh, a former U.S. airman who does a great job of covering Ft. Benning. And Dawn Minty, our features editor who oversees coverage areas ranging from religion, to nightlife, to motherhood. Or Mike Haskey, our photo chief, a player-coach who manages a staff, takes photos himself and keeps a great sense of humor all the while.

Speaking of humor, if he were alive, my fellow Missourian, Mark Twain, might have a thing or two to say about all this. If he were me he’d probably scratch his wild patch of hair and wrinkle his unwieldy white mustache and say something like: “News of our death has been greatly exaggerated.”

Ben Holden
Vice President & Executive Editor

Welcome

Welcome to Inside the Ledger-Enquirer, our newest blog. In this space we’ll try to answer questions, address concerns and share information from the back offices of the newspaper. We get hundreds of reader inquiries a year, so it makes sense to post our answers for everyone to see.

A few ground rules:

1. To ask a question or register a concern, send it to the e-mail address in the righthand column of this page, vcanepa@ledger-enquirer.com. We will review all questions and will address the ones we deem of interest to our general readership in this blog.
2. To comment, use the button at the bottom of each posting. But don’t expect a response from us, and please don’t be offended when we don’t respond. This is our opportunity to share information with you; it is not a bulletin board or forum.
3. This space should not be used as a circulation complaint department. While customer service is a top priority for us, there are other, more timely customer service tools for issues pertaining to newspaper delivery and billing. Try our circulation call center at 888-323-1222, or e-mail our circulation vice president at jkelly@ledger-enquirer.com.

Now let’s get started.

'Idol' fans want more in print

American Idol fans want more

Another letter from a reader:

Sir, I have been wondering why the L-E doesnt have coverage of American Idol the day after the competition. I have seen papers in other cities and they at least have wire service stories thatgive us updates. I know you cover Idol online but I like the print version of your newspaper. I believe that this morning we should have gotten the whole story on last night instead of having to go online. The show ended at 9 pm so there is no excuse. I expcet better things from a paper with such a long tradition.
Even Fox TV gives us Idol updates early in the morning. We ought to be able to get it from the newspaper. TV is fine but I love print newspapers and want to trust them for my updates.

And our answer:

Thank you for the note. We make news calls every day for our 100,000-plus readers, and that will by necessity leave out some news. We have a reporter, Sonya Sorich (click here) who has written several dozen Idol stories and does a great blog online, so we certainly consider the series a high-interest item. On this particular day, our news editor found other news to be more compelling and important (dare I say interesting) to our readers, so he made a call. I realize you disagree with the decision, but I trust there were other news or entertainment items in the paper that were of value to you. . . Thank you for reading the paper.
Ben Holden

Race IDs in the newspaper

Race identification in the newspaper

Every few months we get calls from readers who insist that we’re withholding essential information when we fail to specify the race of a crime suspect. Two stories currently in the news, involving the slayings of two college women, have brought the debate to the forefront again. This from editor Ben Holden:

Effective about six months ago, we do not run the race of criminal suspects at large unless we believe the value of the description to the community outweighs the likelihood of prejudicial behavior toward innocent citizens. In general, we have instructed reporters and editors to omit race unless the description provides at least: (1) Some unique, immutable identifying characteristic (i.e., scars, tattoos, unusual height or weight); or (2) A "complete" description (which we define as approximate height, weight and race). Generally, this allows us to print most descriptions. Only the overly vague description – “white man in a blue pickup truck” or "black man wearing dark clothing" – will be disallowed.

Why registration

Why have we become so strict about user registration?

We’ve received dozens of complaints about the new user registration policy on Ledger-Enquirer.com. The policy changed in January, and frequent visitors to the site were frustrated that they were suddenly asked to share personal information before viewing content on the site. While we’re still experimenting with how many pages we will allow readers to view before we make them sign on, we strongly believe that registration makes the site better. And here’s how we explain it in e-mails to our readers.

We are asking for information about our audience so we can better understand who comes to our site and where they come from. The few questions we ask are just to get a better idea of who is coming to our site.

In addition, we hope we will be able to help weed out racist, vulgar and otherwise inappropriate comments. We’ve found that if people are asked to register, they are less likely to post the ugly stuff that offends everybody else. And, as you may have noticed, we’re getting a lot of this. Most newspaper web sites require user registration, and many of them seek considerably more information than we do.

We are not trying to limit access nor will we sell this information. The information gathered is for our purposes only.