Q: I would like to have Greene and Washington County news in my Greene paper. Why have two editions? - J.D.
A: The Observer-Reporter publishes two editions of the newspaper Tuesday through Sunday – one for Washington County and one for Greene County. The news and advertising on the local pages are different, and sometimes the front page is different, too. We are often asked why we don't simply publish one edition, with all the news and advertising of both counties in it. That's a good question, and the answer is complicated.
An awful lot of our Greene County readers get upset when they see any news from Washington County on their local pages. They tell us they are not the least bit interested in anything happening in Washington County. But that's not the reason we have two editions.
Before 1981, we had a morning and an evening edition of the newspaper. Greene County advertisers could get a lower rate by advertising in only the morning paper, because the evening edition was not circulated in Greene County. But in 1981, the evening edition was suspended. Many Greene County advertisers could not afford to purchase ads for the entire circulation of the paper, so a vehicle for their ads had to be devised; thus, the Greene County edition. Today, there are about 6,000 papers circulated in Greene and 27,000 in Washington County. Advertisers have the option of purchasing ads in papers that go only to those 6,000 subscribers, and, of course, they pay a lower rate than ads going to 33,000 homes.
Because a newspaper survives on advertising revenue, having this option is vital. We're stuck with it.
We do try to put news from Washington County that we think might be important to Greene County readers into the Greene edition, and vice versa. But doing so seems to only increase the number of complaints we receive. Since 1981, we've been searching for a better solution but have yet to come up with one. But we're still trying.
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6 comments:
If only there was a way that content and ads could be delivered in a more targeted way... But then you would have to print >2<33,000 newspapers and that would get expensive... What would be awesome is if there was an electronic delivery system available... sort of like an INTERconnected NETwork of computational devices that could be used to read news and see advertising... and you could segment your audience based on factors that are more specific than simply Greene County vs. Washington County... and then serve up content and ads relative to that vertical.
Naw! That's crazy spaceman talk :-)
It's hard to believe and somewhat tragic that, almost a decade into the 21st century, some people still have no interest in what's happening beyond the border of the county in which they live.
One of the problems you have in the Eastern end of Greene County is people there almost never go to Washington, Burgettstown, McMurray etc. They do their shopping in places like Uniontown and Morgantown because those are closer. The same thing goes for movies and dining. You really have to go out of your way to get from Carmichaels to McMurray. To people in Carmichaels, Burgettstown and Donora might as well be Bismark and Dubuque.
Wouldn't the OR's distribution reflect that? What's the paper over on the Greene/Fayette line? The Valley Independent? I vaguely remember seeing paper boxes for something other than the OR...
I am surprised that the Uniontown/Morgantown area doesn't do more advertising in the Northern Greene/Southern Washington area... if they had a compelling reason for people to go there, that's a good geography to target...
They do, the Greene County Messenger is owned by the Herald Standard in Uniontown. There is advertising targeted there.
Greene County isn't the only isolated spot in SWPA. I grew up in Beaver Valley and still have relatives living there. I recall that my mother would not buy the Beaver County Times, printed in Beaver, because it didn't have enough news about New Brighton. She read the News-Tribune, printed in Beaver Falls. To many of the folks in Beaver Valley, Pittsburgh is another universe. My sister, who has lived in Chippewa all her life, still will not drive to Pittsburgh but will go to Youngstown, Ohio. My best friend got married in New Brighton and took his honeymoon in Beaver Falls, five minutes away, because he and his wife were afraid to drive to Pittsburgh. And this was in the 1980s. Mayberry lives.
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