Strategically Communicating

Working for a local community paper for over five years, I have often wondered if the NewsRegister.com would eventually replace the local paper published in McMinnville since 1928. When the paper first offered subscribers the opportunity to read the paper online for free the local community seemed to embrace the idea. However, locals did not feel the same when a fee was required to read the online version of the newspaper, letters to editor multiplied.

“Community journalism is thus about connectedness and embeddedness. It articulates and emphasizes the “local” in both geographic and virtual forms of belonging, using its rootedness within a particular community to sustain and encourage forms of “human connectivity” within that environment.”  (Robinson 2014)

Community journalism is personal and the social interaction concept—reciprocity directs the readers to trust that the journalists can help us and in turn we can also help them. The focus on stories is local and what is happening in town rather than nationally. Advertisers also get into the local community paper via shop local campaigns, ads and community involvement.  Citizens often play a role in providing articles as guest writers for different perspectives building the community and the economic flow.

Will online papers and advertising replace the printed versions? The number of online versions of newspapers in America is abundant. Did you know you can buy the Wall Street Journal online for $1.00 for two months? You could check out www.newsregister.com for what’s happening in the beautiful Yamhill Valley.