As Mark Twain said, “Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving it up.”
In what we call the world of newspapering, it has been some 600 years since the invention of movable type, and 200 since the invention of the linotype machine.
Going from cold type to offset printing impacted our newspaper world in the 1960s which also facilitated design changes and color pages.
But nothing has rocked our world as much as our industry has only seen massive changes in the last 40 or so years. And big time changes the past few years with the development of the web with Google and social media.
I was brought in about three months ago in part, to help direct some of the necessary changes needed with our newspapers here. Many of the changes were already addressed by previous publishers, but things are speeding up in our industry where we needed to act more quickly to change and the demands of our readers and advertisers.
Advertising revenues make up about 90 percent of our total revenues and big changes have been enacted in that department to meeting the changing demands of our advertisers.
We still have a strong demand for our printed products and the audience they involve, but we are also becoming more adept to address web and social media requests. We have some of the largest on-line lists of followers in the area as we continue to offer well written stories and high quality pictures.
New weekly publication
This week, area residents will notice a new publication of the Sun Advocate and Emery County Progress – Castle Country Living. This publication will be mailed to all Carbon County residents and will replace what has been the Thursday edition of the Sun Advocate.
For the residents of Emery County, this will be the Thursday edition of the Emery County Progress.
Castle Country Living will include it’s portion of breaking news, but we will also feature, what we want to be, this area’s most complete community calendar listing the events, dates and times and details of everything that is happening in Castle Country each weekend. If you want items included in this director of events please email them to events@sunad.com and we will get them included.
Castle Country Living is mailed or delivered to everyone living in Carbon and Emery Counties and this will be a very effective way of getting your message out to the masses. We also will include this list of events on our web sites and social media outlets.
To go along with these changes, we invite you to friend us on your social media platforms. We are making sure that all of our news, plus stories and pictures that we don’t have room to publish in our printed products, are uploaded on a daily basis.
We are also offering an email service where breaking news articles are emailed to those requesting this service at least weekly but no more than once a day. Please signup at www.sunad.com/newsletters and request which newsletter you would like to receive.
It’s that simple.
Please let us know what you think of our changes. We appreciate your comments on our web pages and the letters to the editor that still come our direction.
We appreciate the opportunity to serve you in your information needs – especially when that information deals directly with Carbon and Emery Counties.
Although we know change is difficult, we hope you will enjoy these changes – not only in print form, but in electronic improvements as well.
A new publication for Castle Country
Publications