{"id":244388,"date":"2011-06-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/oh-my-thats-a-big-cabbage\/"},"modified":"2011-06-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T07:00:00","slug":"oh-my-thats-a-big-cabbage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/oh-my-thats-a-big-cabbage\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Oh my! That\u2019s a big cabbage!\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u2018Oh<\/a>San Diego Uptown News celebrates second anniversary, attributes success to \u2018hyperlocal\u2019 journalism<\/p>\n

By Celene Adams |<\/strong> Editor SDUN<\/p>\n

When publisher David Mannis launched San Diego Uptown News two years ago, during the height of the \u201cGreat Recession,\u201d he knew that the months ahead would bring some long hours at the office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first six months were the most challenging,\u201d Mannis said. \u201cI had 30 years of experience creating and building community newspapers, but not in this economic climate. I knew what a special community Uptown is, but would it welcome and support a community newspaper?\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mannis didn\u2019t have as much to worry about as he\u2019d thought. Although by 2009 (the year Mannis debuted SDUN), the newspaper industry had lost thousands of jobs and up to half of its advertising revenue, the losses (also due to the insurgence of the Internet) were mostly among big city dailies. Local newspapers, by contrast, had suffered far fewer staff layoffs and minimal advertising revenue losses. Some had even raised advertising revenues and, according to data from Suburban Newspapers of America, 26 percent of them had started new growth products.<\/p>\n

The resilience of local newspapers is attributed to their \u201chyperlocal\u201d approach to journalism\u2014what might be termed the \u201cprize cabbage\u201d method of covering news because it focuses on everything from local gardeners\u2019 vegetables to city council meetings.<\/p>\n

Local newspapers have a \u201crosier future and more optimistic prospects,\u201d a 2011 online survey of 527 journalists conducted by the Communication Research Center at Cleveland State University found, citing community papers\u2019 ability to cover neighborhoods at the micro level as the niche\u2019s strength.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo small is too small,\u201d Mannis concurs. \u201cSDUN is nearly 100 percent local news covering the Uptown communities. We like to boast: \u2018More news about Uptown than any other newspaper in the world!\u2019 Male or female, young or old, gay or straight\u2014there is something for everyone who lives or works in Uptown in our paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with the focus on local news, another reason local newspapers fare well despite the distress in the overall industry and economy is that most are free, which means more people receive them. The Association of Free Community Papers, a national association of more than 300 free community newspapers from across the United States and Canada (AFCP), reports that \u201cfree papers reach over 97 percent of the homes in their defined marketing areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Free local papers also have high readership rates. More than 76 percent of people who receive them, either by picking them up or by having them delivered, read them, the AFCP said. Further, 74 percent of those readers say they make buying decisions based on the information they publish\u2014statistics confirmed through independent audits by Circulation Verification Council. \u201cIn many cases, the local free paper is directly influencing more readers to purchase advertisers\u2019 products than the entire circulation of the local paid paper,\u201d the AFCP finds, noting also that 61 percent of consumers who read free local papers don\u2019t subscribe to their paid city daily.<\/p>\n

But statistics aside, local newspapers win readers because they\u2019re relevant to the communities they live in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to run stories about what individuals in the Uptown community are doing in their personal and professional lives and how their lives intersect with and are affected by the area\u2019s civic and cultural developments,\u201d said SDUN\u2019s editor, Celene Adams. \u201cFor example, we run stories about local artists\u2019 debuts, how City Council decisions affect local community gardens\u2019 ability to produce, and how development of a mini park will further pedestrian connection between residential and commercial areas. Our stories reflect how residents\u2019 values manifest in Uptown in terms of their quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the two years since its inception, SDUN has covered a variety of such news and human interest stories, winning Independent Free Papers of America\u2019s (IFPA) top award, first place for General Excellence, at last year\u2019s IFPA national conference in Nashville, Tenn. The awards are selected by the association\u2019s member publishers. SDUN also received 13 awards at the San Diego Press Club\u2019s 37th annual Excellence in Journalism Awards dinner last October, including six first-place finishes in the non-daily newspaper category.<\/p>\n

Mannis said it was gratifying to win the awards in SDUN\u2019s mere second year of publishing and that he\u2019s putting in fewer hours at the office now that the paper\u2019s out of the starting gate.Yet the challenge isn\u2019t over.\u00a0 Because while community newspapers are indeed thriving, they also face unique challenges.<\/p>\n

The Cleveland Communication Center\u2019s online survey, for example, found that common problems among community newspapers include: \u00a0lack of staff to cover routine public business; staff attrition due to low pay scales; making sufficient profits for owners; and economic decline of communities in general.<\/p>\n

However, Mannis is less concerned about such challenges than he is optimistic about the strengths of local newspapers. \u201cIf any community can sustain a local newspaper, it\u2019s Uptown,\u201d he said. \u201cSince launching SDUN two years ago, we\u2019ve had nothing but positive feedback from readers, advertisers and our peers in the industry. We were even able, a year ago, to start a second publication, Gay San Diego. I\u2019m grateful to all our supporters and to our wonderful staff, and I look forward to being here for a long time to come.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

San Diego Uptown News celebrates second anniversary, attributes success to \u2018hyperlocal\u2019 journalism By Celene Adams | SDUN Editor When publisher David Mannis launched San Diego Uptown News two years ago, during the height of the \u201cGreat Recession,\u201d he knew that the months ahead would bring some long hours at the office. \u201cThe first six months […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":244389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"\u2018Oh my! That\u2019s a big cabbage!\u2019","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}