The only 30,000 student D1 school in the city with 170,000 alumni.
THAT is an audience YOU can tap if you target them and put the work in. Those stats are real…the audience is there. But you can’t make that audience all of a sudden appear in clicks.
But if you work at it…and target those 30,000 kids and 170,000 alumni…you can make that work.
Is there any other untapped demographic anywhere near that large that’s also realistically available to target??
That answer is No. Not even close.
Again…it’s not that hard to see the potential. And it’s not that hard to see that if those numbers mean anything to “the folks in California”…then it should be worthwhile to make a significant long term investment to cultivate a relationship from their end. Clicks will come gradually over time if you systematically target and serve the target audience.
FWIW, the Observer hasn’t been a locally owned newspaper since the mid-1950s.
In addition, we are no longer the only D1 school in the city, though still the only one with football and don’t see that changing.
Anyway, I did check out the social media of Fowler and Wertz, as well as others covering the game. Quite a bit of good commentary, pics, and vid on the Niners!
Consistent coverage can come, winsel1081. But we’ve got to crawl before we can walk.
Also we’ve never been locally owned paper. We’ve always been part of a chain. Our chain, Knight-Ridder was bought out by a smaller chain McClatchy, back in 2005. McClatchy owned Rock Hill and Raleigh. After the sale, my competition became my brother.
Yeah got my wires crossed on that as I knew the Observer was owned by Knight-Ridder prior to McClatchy. My line of thinking was that it seems newspapers have a lot less local control over certain content.
“Scott is a columnist. He gives his opinion. Hunter is not a full time employee but someone we hire by the story to write previews and profiles etc”
I had hoped for a report of the game, not an opinion piece. There was a lot in that article that didn’t need to be there. I too believe the O and Char need each other, but, I’m not sure it can happen. LW, maybe you can work behind the scenes and argue some of the points made in this thread. If the O wants to see change from the Niner faithful, they too need to evaluate if change is necessary on their end.
I have argued these points long before this thread. I went to management and told them how I felt and even went further than that. Ultimately we need to show audience growth. So we are trying right now with coverage push, like in the fall. Difference? I didn’t come here in fall, to ardent supporters, so here I am now, trying again.