That’s it, folks! That’s a wrap.
The survey I’ve prattling away about for the last five weeks has come to a close. We closed out with 44 respondents who gave very carefully thought-out and insightful feedback, and to each of you who participated, I want to say a very humble thank you.
Many of you sang our praises. Many of you gave some harsh criticism. We’re taking it all to heart. After all, the goal is to build a better newspaper, one that you can be proud of.
Among those harsh criticisms received is one that I want to address here, because it speaks specifically to the nature of this column.
The respondent wrote, “Honestly, one of my least favorite things is the editor seeming to 'try too hard' in her opinion pieces: Sounding too folksy or 'familiar.' Sounding harsh here, but Quill readers aren't your Facebook friends. Occasionally sounding almost like a victim with excuses for why things happened a certain way. Too often discussing the Quill, it seems. I realize the newspaper biz is tough, but hearing about that all the time is kind of exhausting.”
I hear you. The world is hard enough, and maybe not everyone wants to hear about the challenges someone else faces at work. It’s a fair question to ask. Why should you care about the inner workings of the local newspaper?
And here’s my answer: The purpose of this column is in its name, “Managing Expectations.” It’s not just a cute play on words from the business manager (it is a cute play on words, though, you can’t tell me it’s not). This column is my attempt to manage expectations between what a community needs from its newspaper, and what a small, dedicated newsroom like ours can realistically do.
The challenges we face, from tight budgets to navigating political divides to figuring out how to engage the next generation of readers, are the same things that determine the quality and focus of the news you read every week. My hope is that by being transparent about these challenges, we can work together as a community to build a newspaper that truly serves everyone. It's a conversation, and sometimes that means talking about the process itself. Even if it is exhausting.
And friend, I won’t lie to you. It exhausts me, too. But it’s worth it to me, and I hope you’ll stick with me.
And the first step in having an open and honest conversation is sharing what we’ve learned. So, how about those survey results?
One of the first things that jumped out at me while looking over the results was just who is reading the Quill.
Our largest, and possibly most loyal group of readers, the bedrock of our readership community, appear to be those over the age of 61. They are primarily retirees, they live in smaller households of one or two people and no children, and they have been with us through many changes, continuing their support all the while.
I expected this, based on who we hear from most in our day-to-day operations. The next largest group, however, pleasantly surprised me.
This group is my age group, readers between the ages of 36 and 45. Nearly all of them have children at home. This group of respondents also happens to be highly invested in the community, working as business owners, public servants and industry professionals. These are the active, engaged families raising the next generation of community members — and, we hope, Quill readers.
I mentioned in a previous column that we were sorely lacking in perspectives from the under-35 group. And a few folks responded to the call to action, but the younger demographic remains underrepresented in the final results, Of the three young adults who did answer the survey, all were between the ages of 26 and 35. They were frank, too. One thing that tells me is that we need to work on meeting the younger folks where they are.
I’ll have a news story in next week outlining the nitty-gritty of the responses, and in next week’s Managing Expectations column, we’ll dive into what exactly the survey respondents said they want to see from us. Should be fun and interesting. Stay tuned!
