Holton Recorder to enhance its services

Readers have spoken and we’re listening. As a result, some enhanced news and advertising services will be offered by The Holton Recorder in the near future.

The Recorder plans to launch a Facebook social media site that will further document the daily news gathering and news photography work of The Recorder staff. The Recorder’s Instagram - The.Holton.Recorder - was launched last weekend.

The Recorder also plans to launch a weekly “Around The Community” e-newsletter for subscribers on Mondays to further document the staff’s award-winning news and photography work. There will be advertising opportunities offered as part of the subscriber e-mail services.

Additional advertising opportunities for local businesses will be offered at The Recorder’s updated and more user-friendly website that is planned - holtonrecorder.net - and at The Recorder’s Instagram account, including short, inexpensive video-ads.

The Recorder also plans to bring back a regular food/recipe feature and consider redesigning the print edition flag, front page and other sections.

“As longtime newspaper owners, we want to continue giving readers what they want,” said David Powls, editor and publisher. “We also know that we must increase subscription rates to keep up with the costs of producing the paper. The cost to gather, write, publish and mail the paper have all increased dramatically since COVID-19. The cost to produce each copy of the paper now exceeds $3 per copy easily. While we do not plan to raise the price of the paper that much, the single copy price for The Recorder will soon be $2 per issue and subscriptions to The Recorder will be a little less than that. The new prices will help ensure that The Recorder remains a vital part of the community.”

“Some additional things we’d like to do to improve the newspaper include the following,” said Powls. “We’d like to start a campaign to encourage local businesses/local people to sponsor newspaper subscriptions for graduating seniors. We’d also like to put more focus on what junior journalists are writing about at their schools and what’s going on visually at the schools - more kids-page type content.”

The Recorder staff would like to thank everyone who took time to complete our recent newspaper survey. We’d also like to thank those who participated in our recent newspaper focus group discussions at Beck Bookman Library.

“Information from the newspaper survey and focus groups has been very helpful for us,” said Powls. “We are already developing new work routines that will help us better showcase our newspaper work.”

Teri Finneman, journalism professor at The University of Kansas, led the readers’ surveys and focus groups to help The Recorder staff determine changes that might improve the paper. Professor Finneman has worked with many community newspapers across the United States. 

“I was very pleased with the input from the Holton/Jackson County community,” Finneman said. “There were a lot of thoughtful ideas that I very much agreed would be positive steps for The Recorder to take.”

Here are some of the findings from the readership survey, Finneman said:

*73 percent of survey respondents said they’d pay at least $2 an issue (29 cents a day for local news instead of 16 cents a day now).

*58 percent of survey respondents were interested in an e-newsletter from The Recorder. There were many comments about wanting to get The Recorder’s local news twice a week again/in a timelier manner.

*65 percent or the survey respondents want the paper to be more active on social media - Instagram, X and Facebook.

*72 percent hadn’t gone to The Recorder’s website (holtonrecorder.net) in the last week. There were many comments about needing to improve the newspaper’s website.

Finneman said there were discussions during the focus group meetings about modernizing the look of the physical newspaper by improving its layout/design, and about asking The Recorder to offer more digital advertising options.

Community members said they were also interested in engaging more with the newspaper staff and having socials a few times a year in the newspaper office to be able to share ideas.

Content that readers want to see the most in the paper are feature/human interest stories, school/education stories, obituaries/announcements, local government coverage and things to do. A strong contingent also wanted to see more coverage of food/recipes. There were also requests to have high school students write for the paper and more content geared for kids. The least popular content is religion, opinion and weather.

“These insights from readers are very helpful to not only understand how to better serve current readers but also how to attract younger readers to want to get the paper,” Finneman said. “The Recorder is going to need to make some changes by removing some content that most people aren’t reading and perhaps putting it online-only in order to have room for coverage that is of higher interest in the newspaper.”

Finneman said she hopes readers will support the newspaper and its need to increase its prices to ensure it remains financially stable.

“It cost me nearly $3 recently for one bottle of pop at the gas station,” she said. “In the near future, it will be about $2 a week for a single copy of the paper, which cost well over $3 a copy to produce, along with dozens of hours of manual labor to put together. It remains a massive bargain.”

KU Ph.D. journalism student Ethan Andaloro, who assisted Finneman with the focus group discussions, said it was clear that the community wants to see the paper succeed.

“The Recorder has an opportunity to represent the future of local journalism,” Andaloro said.

“It will take some time to make all the changes we’re talking about,” Powls said. “But we’re excited about the process. The one thing we will not change is our commitment to reporting on the local news.”