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Only 101 years to go.. . .

Posted on March 18, 2010March 18, 2010 by Staff

ROBERT DICKSON

I have under my care two community newspapers. The Citizen is one of them, and the other is The News-Journal, which tells the story of Raeford and Hoke County in southeastern North Carolina, where my sister Anne and I were raised to become the third generation of our family to run the local paper.

By coincidence, The Citizen and The News-Journal have the same birthday, in the second week of March. The News-Journal just happens to have been at it for a few more years. A hundred and one more, to be exact.

Down in Raeford, we might not make a big deal of our birthday after all these years. Here at The Citizen, though, we’ve got a real feeling of accomplishment, having finished our third year amid uncertain economic times and almost-daily pronouncements of the death of newspapers.

Community newspapers are doing pretty well, thank you. No, I mean that. Thank you, to our readers and advertisers, who have proven they understand the value of a locally owned and operated newspaper.

And a really big thank-you to all our contributors who help bring this weekly ode to our community, and who do it for little or nothing. These include Val, Ken, Phil, Jock, Margot, Ava, Michelle, Don, Rich, Steve, Kate, Charlie, Mike, Lucy, Martin, Mark and someone I’ve forgotten who I really wish I hadn’t. Thanks, y’all. You’re the best.

We’ve recently made a few changes that Kirk will tell you about elsewhere on this page. It’s all about continuing to look for ways to bring you a better newspaper with the resources available to us.

One change we made over the past year was to increase our distribution by 20 percent. We now distribute 6,000 newspapers to more than 150 locations without throwing unwanted copies in anyone’s driveway. Readership has grown along with circulation: This past February, not the most pleasant of months weather-wise, readers picked up more than 86 percent of the Citizens that were distributed. As the year goes on, expect all these numbers to rise.

Another change we’ve made is posting the electronic version of The Citizen, the complete paper in PDF format, to our website every Thursday morning. You can read a fair number of back issues in this format, as well as Mill and the Carrboro Resource Guide. More than 500 of you read our newspaper this way every week, and that number is growing too.

One of our goals when we started The Citizen was to ensure that anyone could afford to read our newspaper. That’s why we don’t charge for the papers or the content on our websites, and why we’ll continue to make them available at no cost.

Readers of The News-Journal, though, purchase copies either at the newsstand or by subscription. It’s been that way for 104 years, and newspaper sales have enabled the paper to weather tough economic times, when advertising hasn’t been plentiful enough to cover all the costs of producing the quality news coverage our readers expect.

The newspaper you’re reading now, print or web, also has a cost. And even with our success at convincing advertisers that The Citizen is a great way to convey their message, ad sales have not been sufficient to sustain the quality journalism you tell us you want. And since our goal is to expand our coverage and our distribution, to make even more of a difference in our community, we do need to find another source of revenue.

Over the last three years, many of you have asked us what you can do to help. Soon we’ll offer you a way to do just that, to pay for something you’ve told us repeatedly you really like and appreciate. We’re going to ask you to subscribe to the newspaper and website. Not in the traditional sense, like The News-Journal, but with a virtual subscription, which will be completely voluntary. We’ll continue to distribute the paper at no charge, but with the hope that those of you who value The Citizen and want to keep it around for 104 years will buy a subscription to help sustain it. So watch this space.

Bringing you this newspaper the last three years has been an amazing journey. I’ve been involved in startup publications before, but your reaction to The Citizen has been nothing short of extraordinary, and nothing my experience could have prepared me for.

So thanks for reading The Citizen and for making us feel welcome in your lives. The pleasure is all ours.

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