On The Examiner’s Fifth Birthday, We Renew Our Contract with Communities
On Sept. 11 2007, relying on a shoestring budget and an improbable dream, The Examiner was born, circulating 2,000 newspapers around a pair of local communities, Pleasantville and Mount Kisco.
Five years, more than two dozen communities and four million-plus copies later, The Examiner is now one of four local newspapers published by Examiner Media, reaching north of 50,000 readers a week in print and many thousands more on the Web. And as we mark our company’s five-year anniversary this week, we’re reminded that while much has changed in the world of print media, one undeniable fact endures: the public’s thirst for well-reported local news remains as quenchless as ever.
While five years is a nice milestone for most any small business, Examiner Media’s success speaks to a much larger issue. Publishing, as a business, has seen profound changes in recent years. But the fundamentals of journalism, as a trade, have remained largely unchanged.
Yes, technology has revolutionized the tools journalists can use to tell stories. And, of course, news delivery systems – websites, e-mail blasts, mobile devices, social media channels, video streaming – open up endless new and exciting ways to transmit information. However, the core principles that guide responsible news gathering don’t require reform. Chronicling your town’s happenings still demands the same commitment to careful reporting that animate any vibrant local publishing platform. Our toolkit has changed. Our technology has changed. Our ethos has not.
When we began our newspaper adventure five years ago, with eyes entirely focused on print, we would not have predicted we’d be sending out daily e-mail blasts to subscribers, updating our website daily and posting to social media each and every day come 2012. While we believe as much today as we did five years ago that a newspaper reading experience provides a pleasure that can’t be duplicated online, we also know we can’t treat our consumers as an abstract monolith, with one sensibility.
We’re unflinching in our faith in print, for our readers and advertisers, while also recognizing the fluidity of the ever-changing media landscape and its unpredictable new demands. So in forecasting the future, for us and local media outlets more broadly, we know two seemingly contradictory truths that are in fact compatible. Five years from now, the values dictating our editorial decision-making process will be the same as they are today even while our storytelling tools and publishing platforms undergo dramatic change. It would be a fool’s errand to try to illustrate what exact shape this change will produce. But we take comfort knowing that adapting to new technology won’t require the abandonment of our central mission to serve you your news; even if that news is served on multiple platters – print and otherwise. If anything, we should double down on our embrace of the basic beliefs that inspire quality community journalism.
Lastly, we would like to thank all of you – our fans, our critics, our advertisers, all of our readers. We believe reading a good local newspaper is good citizenship, and, to that end, we’re working hard to live up to our part of the bargain. Keep on reading. We’ll keep publishing.
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.
