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Developing a Website:
An Online version of Your Newspaper
There should be no question in your mind
that a website will be a great value to you as you get a newspaper
going. The website should be something of an online mirror or your
newspaper. Keep it simple, and make it easy to navigate. Use it to
improve your service to the readership of your newspaper.
You can publish some of the same information on your website that
you've already produced for your print version. But don’t stop
there. You can also publish many additional stories, feature
articles as well as local or regional information that will draw
people to your site. If people know they can get the names and
contact information they need for key city officials, business
owners, community information sources, etc. and find helpful maps to
recreation or shopping centers, or get listings of other important
information on your site, they will tend to return more often.
In everything you do as a newspaper publisher you want to serve the
community. Make your paper's website a
24-hour-7-days-a-week-365-days-a-year part of that service. Be sure
to give opportunity for feedback, so that people can reach you with
important information, comments, complaints, and suggestions.
Make
it easy for advertisers and local sources to reach you by email as
well as by phone or FAX. More and more people are using online
communication these days. They will appreciate your newspaper more
if you give them a way to stay in touch online.
The printed version of your newspaper should always contain
reminders, throughout, of the existence and the URL, or online
address, of your website. And the website version should always
point people back to your newspaper, so that even people in other
regions and other countries can subscribe to your printed newspaper.
Use each version of the paper to promote the overall business of
your newspaper. Use each to advertise the other. Use both to serve
and to communicate.
When selling ads, you can offer online ads as well. Many
publications offer to automatically place ads online when a print ad
is sold. You may want to charge a small fee for website publication,
just to cover the extra expense. This would be especially important
if you have to hire someone to do the website for you. Remember, you
will need to adjust the sizing of online ads, but keep it simple, so
as not to add too much work to your schedule. When building ads for
the print version of the newspaper, keep the web version in the back
of your mind, so that you can more easily transfer ads to the
website.
One great advantage of the website version of your newspaper is the
ability to archive everything you want to save. You can easily set
up online copies of important articles and features, and keep them
for decades. You can also include a daily blog on your website. This
is especially valuable if you only go to press with the print
version once a week or once a month. A daily blog will give people a
reason to check back each day, or at least a few times a week for
important bits of news and comments made by you or other
contributors to the paper.
A primary reason for starting any kind of business is to enjoy your
work.
No matter what we do in life, there will be plenty of work,
difficulty, set backs, and uphill climbs involved. So we may as well
choose to do something we really want to do, something we can enjoy.
Adding a website presence to your newspaper opens the door for the
paper to be more fun for you and for everyone contributing to the
publication. You can give advertisers a page to speak. You can give
contributors (writers, reporters, photographers, sales help, etc.) a
page to play with. Have some fun. Make the paper more fun for
readers and workers alike.
These are just a few of the ideas. You get the idea. Now take the
basics and run with them.
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