We are a private, for-profit business and compete in the Brainerd Lakes marketplace with direct mail, directories and guides, craigslist, other newspapers (local, regional and national), outdoor advertising, magazines, radio and television and other websites for both audience and advertising.

We can only survive by providing both interesting and compelling content to our readers and supplying advertisers with an audience receptive to their products or services - all while balancing our budget and making a profit.

johngalt:

The truth is both customers are equally important to us - just as with any media company.

Reader/subscribers are important because their desire to know what's going on in their community and surrounding areas as well as their desire for finding out where the best prices are for food and consumer goods provides our writers and advertisers with an audience. The print subscriptions provide revenue to fund the circulation department and a delivery system and their reading habits provide an audience that businesses want to advertise to.

Local, regional and national advertisers (print and online) are important since the fees they pay to advertise to the audience cover the costs of the staffs required to operate the print and online news sources along with the advertising, billing, press and administrative departments. Their sales and services advertising pieces also serves to provide consumer content that an audience looks for.

We required our online readers to register 6-8 years ago and continued it for 3-4 years with negligible initial audience loss and a marked increase in advertising revenue because the registration numbers gave us another source to show how many online readers we had and in which zip code areas they are located. This month (January 2012) we have had to-date - 1,537,136 page views by 223,359 unique visitors to our websites. That's an increase over January 2011 of 233,000+ page views and and nearly 100,000 unique visitors - both very good increases.

If you research current subscription trends among media companies, you will find that some major players are experimenting with a la carte subscription offerings - print alone, online alone or print and online combined in varying degrees. Our company is also experimenting at a couple of their properties with online subscriptions and has several task forces looking into methods for us to succeed in the digital future.

Thank you both for your responses - the compliments and the criticisms. We can only learn how we are doing from the honest opinions of our customers.

johngalt:

Our classifieds have taken a hit from craigslist, facebook and in the case of autos - the shortage of good used vehicles for sale. Other classified categories are doing better. We have an automotive website where you might find a vehicle from the inventory of one of the local auto dealers though - http://upnorthautos.com .

lamigra:

I started the following statement placing our audience first - because that's where I rank them, "We can only survive by providing both interesting and compelling content to our readers ...".

And also, "... both customers are equally important to us ...".

I would agree that there have been spelling and grammatical errors in articles we have published. But for you to suggest - using that one item as the defining measurement - that we don't care about what our our readers want to read, is a stretch. One item it does show, is that we have been attempting to provide the same coverage with a much smaller staff and we need to take a look at what we can do to remedy that situation.

You'll be glad to hear that we have hired a new editor, who I believe is scheduled to start his work here tomorrow.

45, I think I may have removed it by error and I apologize.

I've returned it to published status.