Effective immediately the Pincher Creek Voice is engaging in a trial partnership with the Gateway Gazette, an online publication boasting more than 10,000 readers. The Gateway Gazette has a very similar philosophy to that of the Pincher Creek Voice when it comes to community news, and represents a partnership between multiple Alberta news sources. We will be test driving this partnership over the next six months, and monitoring whether it helps or harms our enterprise.
To be clear, we have not sold any or part of the Pincher Creek Voice. The Pincher Creek Voice is locally owned and operated by Toni Lucas and myself. We receive no subsidies, and we have no financially based partnership with any other business or organization. If you're thinking about buying the Pincher Creek Voice, you'd better make an offer quick, because the price is going up.
What does this partnership mean? It means our advertisers can reach a broader audience, if they so choose. It means advertisers in other markets or who make group regional buys may wish to use our publication for exposure to our audience. Since we rely on advertising to exist and prosper, it means an improved bottom line for us. Hopefully. It will give us access to a larger readership and access to more regional stories. We already have a very large readership, particularly considering the population of our area, but a thousand or two more wouldn't hurt. We already publish a large amount of stories, but we have room for a few more every week.
It's an experiment that we hope succeeds, because there are a lot of potential positives to being a member of a larger group of like minded publishers. There are, of course, risks. We will be paying close attention to how our enterprise is affected over the next six months.
The Pincher Creek Voice itself will not change because of this. We will however continue to grow and innovate. Advertising rates for ads that appear on this website will not be affected. We will review our advertising rates annually, and we've already done that for 2013. We will soon be embedding ads when appropriate into our news articles, a common practice in the industry. That's something we have already experimented with, and was already in the works regardless of this deal.
This partnership gives us more access to regional news, but the focus of the Pincher Creek Voice will continue to be Pincher Creek and area.
Check out the Gateway Gazette by clicking here. Feedback is always appreciated.
Snapshot: Pincher Creek Voice pageviews, December 30, 2012 to January 28, 2013:
To be honest, I don't come to this page to read about the Mayor of New Jersey rescuing a freezing dog. Or about events in Okotoks. Or Three Hills. I don't look at the Echo online either, because it has to much stuff that isn't from Pincher, and I get that national and international news from other sources.I will keep checking the Voice out to see how this new partnership develops. Thanks for the opportunity to comment!
ReplyDeleteJust to be absolutely clear, this partnership will not result in less local stories here on the Pincher Creek Voice website. In fact, it is our intention to increase our coverage of local events. At the same time, to thrive we need access to a larger advertising market, and we will be choosing carefully what content we add from this partnership, picking those stories which we feel have a local relevance. Part of our self imposed mandate, which is proving to be quite successful, is to promote Pincher Creek to the rest of the world, and that starts with our neighbors.
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