It’s not our custom to write a lot about ourselves, but this being your community newspaper, I feel that we need to keep our readers up on what’s going on here. So we’ve spent more time on this subject than usual lately.
First of all, for the most part, our merger of The New Era and Lebanon Local seems to be going well. We’re still working on ironing out some of the wrinkles, particularly in our sports coverage, but I’m really happy to finally be able to give Lebanon/East Linn Christian kids some attention that they’ve deserved for a long time. We’ll keep getting better.
Meanwhile, though, we’ve been getting attention that we haven’t sought, but which has been encouraging.
Shortly after we announced that we were merging, I heard from Cody Mann of the Democrat-Herald, who came by for a nice conversation that lasted a long time and resulted in a story about what’s happening here in Sweet Home and Lebanon.
Then I got a call from Brier Dudley, who writes a regular column on the media for the Seattle Times. He’d somehow heard about the merger and wanted to talk about it as well. That, too, resulted in a retelling of the story of your paper, which you can read at www.seattletimes.com/opinion/newspaper-family-saves-oregon-paper. (Note: I actually think that headline should be “Community saves Oregon paper…)
What’s happened here in east Linn County is a happy story, how readers and community members have helped us get these papers – now just The New Era – off the brink of collapse and back into the black.
It’s a story that other journalists need to hear, because an already tough job gets harder when, as one journalist recently put it to me, “I wonder every morning whether I’ll still have a job at the end of the day.”
That’s on top of top of writing eight to 10 stories a week (which is pretty much the standard for most journalists I’ve worked with), all while dealing with the necessity of getting the facts right every time, spelling those names correctly (yes, it’s really embarrassing when we’re juggling a lot of balls and one falls), trying to connect with news sources who don’t want to talk to us, trying to talk to news sources whose bosses don’t want them talking to us, meeting strict deadlines, etc. etc.
When we came to Sweet Home, I left a fairly large urban news organization that was steadily reducing reporting positions to maximize profits. I left because I could hear the water circling the drain and I thought it had to be possible to make a living as a journalist and maybe there was something wrong with this process, not the goal. That’s how we ended up at The New Era, and you’ve supported us.
I’m thankful to be able to tell the story of a community that values local news enough to support us.
But let’s move on.
You have, no doubt, noticed that the entire newspaper looks a lot different this week than the previous edition did. We’d hoped to have these design tweaks ready to go on Jan. 1 when we started working on the new merged edition, but – as I said earlier, we’re juggling a lot of balls and some demand more attention than others.
One big challenge is that our printing options are extremely limited. We currently print in Klamath Falls each week (along with several other local newspapers). The fact that our page size is what it is stems from the fact that our printer needs it to be that size to be able to print the newspaper. It’s not ideal, but not much is these days in the newspaper business.
Our goal in the new design, produced by our staffer Casey Rossio, is to economize space while giving the newspaper a little more visual “pop.” We’ve opted to use a more “economic” font for the public safety log, the events listings and the Sports Roundup, and the real estate listings to get more in the paper that way. Those are also listed online at sweethomenews.com and lebanonlocalnews.com, where you can make the font any size you want on your computer screen. The goal is to get more into the paper that way.
In the near future we plan to launch a reader survey that will give you a chance to weigh in on what you like to read and what you maybe don’t read at all, as well as things you might like to see down the road. We’re always interested in what you think because you are the readers and this is your newspaper.