Classroom

 The threat to legal requirements that public notices be published in newspapers has never been greater. Learn about the trends in public notice and the practices that every paper must embrace to help the industry successfully respond to the siege on this traditional pillar of government transparency. Click here to …

By Kevin Slimp “We need to find ways to give our staff the tools they need to get the job done. Training is necessary if we are going to have successful ad reps, editors and writers.” While attending the Tennessee Press Association Convention recently, Jack Fishman, Morristown, said those words …

By Al Cross Last month I shared the story of a community newspaper editor who showed an effective way to respond to concerns of readers, often not politely expressed, that his newspaper was liberally biased. Brian Hunt of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin is an experienced editor, but an intern at …

By Jim Pumarlo Public records are the foundation for reporting a range of stories important to your readers. Police reports reveal a string of continuing break-ins in a neighborhood. Minutes from a school board committee reveal discussions and eventual recommendation to close an elementary school. Letters sent from a state …

There’s more to holding the attention of your readers than writing a well-crafted, exceptional story. Today’s younger readers generally have a shorter attention span and are easily distracted. They often lose interest in even the best-written story after just one or two paragraphs. Even the finest reporting needs to be …

by Kevin Slimp While meeting with publishers one-on-one at conventions, the conversations run the gamut of running a newspaper or newspaper group. Over the weekend, while at a newspaper association convention in Oregon, publishers arrived at our scheduled meetings with questions about structuring groups, designing pages and increasing revenue, among …

by Jim Stasiowski A recent enjoyable email exchange with a reporter I once supervised included this from him: “OK, maybe we don’t miss the inevitable entreaties to ‘make just one more phone call,’ but we do miss most everything else you brought to the newsroom.” I do especially value the …

By Peter W. Wagner Whenever the conversation turns to printed newspaper vs. digital publication my comment is always the same: The delivery platform isn’t as important as the information being delivered. In an age when almost any obscure fact can be found on the Internet, it is locally written content …

By Kevin Slimp Convention season has been a lot of fun for me this year. I just returned from visits with associations across the Midwest U.S. and Western Canada and there is a definite intensity brewing among community newspaper publishers. There were more publishers wanting a private moment to discuss …

By Peter Wagner Newspapers can generate additional exceptional advertising revenue with a special section estate and funeral planning guide. When we first started considering such a section we wrongly gave it the working title “Death and Dying”. While that title clearly defined the purpose and direction of the project, we quickly realized the …