Change is a comin’. After years of publishing on Thursdays, we will be bringing the Signal Tribune to our readers on Friday mornings, beginning next week. This decision was not made in haste; rather we weighed the pros and cons and Friday’s publication seems to make good business sense. In fact, those we’ve told seem pleased— citing more leisure time to peruse the paper. Here’s some of our business reasoning for making the change:
Local council meetings take place on Tuesday evenings, making it a tight deadline for our writers who need to have the story written and turned in early Wednesday mornings— instead they’ll have an extra day to supply us with a more in-depth article.
Last-minute county or city legal notices create chaos in our production department— an extra day will allow for more legals to be included and less last-minute reformatting of the paper— after all “time is money.”
Many of our advertisers are closed on Mondays, creating a difficulty in reaching them regarding creation of or proofing their ads. A Wednesday deadline will make it easier on all of them!and us.
Monday holidays are tough for us because we lose a production day. On most of those holidays, part of our staff elects to work rather than take the day off because the holiday puts us so behind in our work. It will be so nice to take real three-day weekends!
Many nonprofit organizations are last minute in sending us press releases about their upcoming weekend events, therefore many miss out on publication. The extra day will allow us to provide more of an up-to-the-moment guide of what’s happening in town! although we don’t want to encourage late submissions.
We plan on keeping most of our deadlines intact but will have a little more time to slip in “stop the presses” kind of information. My only fear is that we will fall into the trap of “work expands to fill the time allotted,” and I’m determined to stop that from happening.
All newspapers are having a rough time these days, and we are doing all sorts of creative thinking to keep us printing and delivering. I know that some folks say the Internet is the way of the future, but darn it, I still like to hold the newspaper in my hot little hands!
Thank you in advance to Shel and Sheldon Grossman of the Bixby Knolls Car Wash for using their marquee to spread the word on our new delivery days. Look for our name in lights very soon at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Wardlow Road.
