I was asked at church last Sunday whether The Tribune was being sold.

“Well,” I said, “we’ve been sold a couple hundred times since I’ve been employed with the paper, but we never have been sold.”

No, we’re not being sold, and The Tribune hasn’t been sold since Freedom Communications of Santa Ana, Calif., bought it in 1973.

Does that mean we couldn’t be sold as I write this? Or Saturday? Or next week? Or next month?

No, it doesn’t.

But to be honest, I don’t think the market for newspapers is too hot right now.

Sadly, a number of newspapers have closed in this recession, a recession that our industry has been feeling for the past several years, partly as a result of the shift toward online sites as a source for information and advertising.

And several newspaper companies in recent months have filed for protection under U.S. bankruptcy laws.

Is our owner among them?

No.

And I hope it stays that way.

Yes, Freedom and The Tribune have been working through some tough times, just as other papers and other industries are struggling.

People are shouting that newspapers are losing their reach and their relevance. They shout that we should shut down newsrooms, stop killing trees and stop publishing our old rags.
Irrelevant? Hardly.

We may be selling fewer copies of The Tribune,  just as The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and the Palladium-Item in Richmond are selling fewer copies of their newspapers, but we remain the 800-pound gorilla in terms of readership in Jackson County.

Only more so.

That’s because in addition to the estimated 75 percent of 32,900 adults in Jackson County (24,675) reading hard copies of The Tribune on a daily basis, we’re also reaching thousands more through our Web site, TribTown.com.

In March, the news site saw 38,472 unique visitors, 126,604 visits and 710,428 page views.

Irrelevant? No, we don’t think so. Instead of weakening our relevance and importance, the Web has enhanced our reach and vitality. We can now report to readers almost instantaneously with words, photos and video.

People still trust newsrooms — or information centers, as the hip crowd prefers — to deliver them important, relevant local news. We continue to do that, and we expect to continue doing so for years to come.

Will we change? You bet. Will we stick around? Yep.

Thanks for reading my blog, and thanks for logging on to TribTown.com.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.