Unless you’re reading this column online, by now you should have realized that something big is different about this week’s paper.
Really big.
We are 6 inches longer, or 25 percent bigger, than we were last week. This makes us the same size as most daily newspapers, and gives you two sections of the paper instead of one.
We’ve been working on this transition since May, so today is a big day for my staff and me. We are thrilled with how our new paper looks and feels, and hope you are too.
Converting to a larger size has touched just about everything we do, from the size of our ads to the size of the plastic bags we use to deliver your paper. It’s been more work, and has affected more aspects of our business, than we ever imagined.
But we’ve never doubted our decision to go bigger. We truly believe this is the best way to meet the changing needs of our readers and advertisers.
There are many reasons behind the change that we’ve talked about in promotional ads and in our news columns for the past month. But the biggest one is a larger paper gives us more space to print local stories for you and your family.
Becoming the same size as a daily also communicates that we’re no long the “little community paper” that some people may perceive, but rather a “real newspaper” to be taken seriously.
We’ve stepped up our game to fill the void left by the two daily newspapers in our market — The Tampa Bay Times and The Tampa Tribune — which have steadily cut back their local news coverage and frequency of their regional sections in Pasco and north Hillsborough counties. These big dailies once had neighborhood news sections they published seven days a week. As they scaled back their news staffs, their regional editions dwindled from seven days a week, to five, to three and now just once or twice a week.
We have picked up their slack by expanding The Laker/Lutz News, both in size and content. We still give you the human interest stories you’ve always loved, but we’ve increased our coverage of growth and development, new and expanding businesses, public and private education, and city and county government.
There’s no doubt that size does matter and bigger is better — at least when it comes to newspapers in the communities we serve in Lutz, Odessa, Land O’ Lakes, Wesley Chapel, Zephyrhills and Dade City.
Going bigger has energized my employees and the business community that supports us like nothing before. And we’re confident our new size also will inspire our readers and make you more loyal than ever to The Laker/Lutz News.
Please let us know what you think of our new size. We’re betting the only complaint we’ll hear is the larger size is harder to hold when drinking a cup of coffee and reading your paper Wednesday morning.
Published August 6, 2014
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