POPE: The Gazette, a modern success that's more than just a paper
By Steven Pope
It’s a new day at The Gazette. Our parent company has emerged from bankruptcy as a new company, and we’re better poised than ever to provide you more of what you need to be an informed and engaged citizen of the Pikes Peak region. I’d like to take this opportunity to give you, our customers, a sense of the direction we are taking to serve you and what we’re doing to ensure a bright future for Colorado Springs and El Paso County.
The Gazette has been a leader in our community for nearly 140 years, helping local businesses thrive and connecting citizens with the stories that matter most. While the past couple of years have been challenging economic times for our business, as they have for almost everyone, The Gazette is a healthy and thriving company. Financially we have been exceeding goals in revenue and profit. As the economy has improved for our clients’ businesses, so has ours. We expect this trend to continue at a moderate pace through the summer and at an accelerated pace near the end of the year.
Contrary to rumors, assumptions and myths, our readership share is strong and getting stronger. The mix of readership is changing to digital delivery from print, but that should come as no surprise.
The shift to digital delivery is happening in nearly all media arenas including TV, radio, magazines and specialty publications. At The Gazette we are leading the change as some others in the business get run over by it. Our online readership and revenue is by far the fastest-growing portion of our company. It has grown so quickly, in fact, that we believe our online readership and revenue is approaching or outstrips the total readership and revenue of some of our print competitors in the market. We know digital will ultimately be our future, and we are actively embracing it. Here are some supporting facts about our digital and print readership:
• Gazette websites account for 58 percent of locally published website page views. (Source: Hitwise, March 2010.)
• The Sunday Gazette print audience grew by 16,500 readers, or 8 percent, from 2008 to 2009. (2010 numbers not yet released.)
• The Gazette 30-day Internet audience grew by 32,800 viewers, or 34 percent, from 2008 to 2009. (El Paso and Teller Counties. Source: Scarborough R209.) (2010 numbers not yet released.)
• We’re No. 1 in brand loyalty, with 66 percent of adults reading The Gazette or gazette.com in the last week. (Refers to five weekday print, one Sunday print, seven days gazette.com, seven days ColoradoSprings.com. El Paso and Teller counties. Source: Scarborough R209.)
• The Gazette’s award-winning newsroom is the largest in the region by far, with nearly 75 full-time employees. We believe The Gazette newsroom staffing is as large or larger than the combined total of all other media newsrooms in El Paso County.
The Gazette also understands that the media landscape is changing as many of you move to highly targeted sources of information for various parts of your lives. The Gazette is aggressively expanding its profile of products to best serve readers, advertisers and the whole community. In the last year or so we have relaunched Colorado Springs.com and PikesPeakParent .com, and launched a brand-new site, csfreshink.com, with more to come. These sites are very popular, and readership traffic to them has grown immensely. We truly deliver more than just a paper.
The Gazette’s print product has been reworked to place a greater emphasis on local news and fewer wire stories. We’re constantly working to provide in-depth coverage you can’t find anywhere else — such as our Pulitzer Prize-finalist series “Casualties of War,” by Dave Philipps, and regular coverage on local government and business.
We’re also developing new ways to reconnect with you, our readers, and the community as a whole by providing more opportunity to meet our executives and discuss your needs and the needs of the community. Members of The Gazette team are highly visible in community activities. And last year alone The Gazette’s Volunteers in Action program engaged more than 100 associates in monthly volunteer projects for organizations such as Marian House Soup Kitchen, Urban Peak, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and more.
Last year The Gazette contributed more than $2.5 million in cash and in-kind donations to nonprofit organizations in El Paso County. The Gazette-El Pomar Empty Stocking Fund (ESF) has raised more than $10.7 million for 14 local health and human-service agencies on the front lines of helping people in need. ESF is one of the most successful funds of this kind in the country, rivaling or exceeding similar efforts at the Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe and The Denver Post.
The Gazette is a great company, and we are proud to work here. In fact, 28 percent of our associates have worked here for 10 years or more, and 45 percent have been with us five years or more.
In a nutshell, The Gazette will continue to have a deep and meaningful connection to this community. We help our advertisers thrive even during tough times. We deliver invaluable information to our readers through our printed products, our expanding online portfolio and more. The Gazette has been an integral part of this community, and we continue to be a key leader in corporate philanthropy supporting the efforts of more than 200 local nonprofits.
We are having a great year as we continue to forge our way as a multimedia company of the future.
Delivering more than just a paper, we look forward to continuing to serve each and every one of you for a long time to come.
Steven Pope is the president and publisher of The Gazette.
