By Julie D’Aloiso
People that know me are surprised that we are offering a printed edition of NordoniaHills.News. I am all about online news. That is why I started this online news outlet over 3 years ago. The local paper was not providing enough of the local news online. Over the years I would talk to people and they would indicate that they enjoy sitting down with the paper and their coffee. And some of these people are not older.
There are so many different places to read news online: Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, LinkedIn and yes even Instagram and so on and so on.
Why do we post our information on a lot of different places? Because not everyone is everywhere. We try to post in as many places as we can. So having said that, why should we ignore the people that are not online? Not everyone has a computer or wants to be tied to their device every minute. Some people have a flip-phone or no phone at all. Why do I mention cell phones? Around half of the visits to our website come from a mobile phone!
What has been holding us back from printing is the cost. Printing costs and postage are something that we have not had to worry about. We can no longer ignore the comments, phone calls and emails from people saying they are not getting their paper. We can’t ignore people that complain that the local paper has more articles from the 6 other papers (owned by Gatehouse) than before. Even the Plain Dealer has moved to a more centralized system. Here is a quote from the New 5 Cleveland (Channel 5) when talking about the recent layoffs at the Plain Dealer:
“Newspaper companies have found that it is far more efficient to share production of such pages across multiple papers, rather than asking each newsroom to produce all its pages alone.” Source: https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-metro/dwindling-advertising-revenue-causes-12-employees-to-lose-jobs-as-the-plain-dealer-downsizes
Certainly, our local paper is using some centralized system because the local news is also being distributed in the Columbus Dispatch (also owned by Gatehouse). https://www.dispatch.com/news/20180228/northfield-macedonia-cemeterys-old-fence-may-come-down-this-summer
Since we have originally posted it out that we will add a printed edition, we have had hundreds of people sign up to get a copy in the mail! So the people have spoken, and we will produce a WEEKLY PRINTED EDITION!
Please tell your local stores and hangouts to advertise with us! We can’t do this without the support of the business community. Early advertisers with us will gain VIP status and get special deals. Also, current online advertisers with us will also get a discount. Advertisers can email me at juliedaloiso@gmail.com.If we don’t get enough advertisers, we cannot continue to provide this printed edition.
We will be printing our first edition this week. If you saw a copy from last week, that was a test run to gain feedback and test out the layout. This week we will be distributing these copies at the Community Expo this Saturday https://nordoniahills.news/expo-2019/
Stores around town will also have copies. We will provide a list when they have been distributed. We will start mailing copies when we produce our second edition which should go out the first week of April.
You can sign up here to receive your copy high and dry in the mail (available in the United States only):
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