John Howell Column
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, July 14, 2009
We’ve got a great story to tell.
It’s your story — stories about the people of Panola County, their kith and kin, their births, their deaths and the significant events of time, place, circumstance and opportunity that occur in between.
We tell it many ways — twice a week in our Tuesday and Friday print editions, around the clock and calendar online, each Wednesday in our extended market coverage publication, the Panolian AdVantage, and in our Batesville Magazine. We publish the great stories about the people of our unique county. The rapid changes affecting the publishing industry are presenting even more ways to tell our story with niche publications and special editions.
Ours is a good story, too! Our job is to provide on ongoing record of our constantly changing lives and the events that affect them. The newspaper has recently been recognized by its peers for excellence and diligence.
But more important is the recognition we receive from you each time you read us — in print or online. That’s the real reward. It’s also consistent with readership studies conducted by the National Newspaper Association (NNA). Those studies — amidst the newspaper gloom and doom stories gleefully perpetrated by the electronic media — reveal that more people than ever are reading their local newspaper and their reading them longer.
83 percent of adults over age 18 read their local newspaper every week, the NNA study found. 73 percent of those readers share their paper with friends.
That happens with The Panolian, also. When Jimmy Martin finishes reading his copy of The Panolian he gives it to his brother, Charles D. Martin. When Charles Martin finishes, he gives it to Phil Herron, his neighbor across the road.
The key ingredient — for both our readers and advertisers, customers all — is local content. Stories, photos and opinions about Panola people and their issues.
We’ve got a great story to tell. It’s your story!