Colleyville, Texas April 12, 2017
An Editorial Opinion by Nelson Thibodeaux, Editor LNO
Well the last local Colleyville Courier, that was previously started by Donna Arp, Richard Myers and a group of political allies; then merged into the Wednesday’s Star-Telegram, has just met it’s death, without warning and is now gone. Also the issues formally published representing Grapevine, Southlake, Hurst, Euless, and Bedford. Now those readers that looked for local news about their individual city are introduced to the new Volume 1 Issue 1 of the Star-Telegram Northeast.
It what is obviously a further shrinking of the Star-Telegram’s printed presence in the area, the introduction article (on page 2 of a 6 page issue) was proclaimed as “Back to the Future: Welcome to Star-Telegram Northeast.” However, the Keller Citizen remains in circulation and the article pleads for the readers help to find stories and send them to the individual that “oversees” the Keller Citizen.
In the listing of personnel, 3 staff writers for the newly pared down coverage of 6 cities are listed while 4 in SALES. Less news, less readers, but more emphasis on selling advertising space.
Speaking of “news coverage,” the only mention of Colleyville was a short story on a Colleyville Heritage baseball player with his father’s famous name! That’s it!
If this is any indication of “Back to the Future,” then a crude analysis of the 8 pages of “news” for these six cities, would break down, when comparing copy space to advertising space, to approximately .41% of a page of copy per city, (eliminating the 2 pages of sports, where advertising occupied 50% and copy 50%).
LocalNewsOnly.com has been covering Colleyville and surrounding areas of Grapevine, Southlake and Keller, to a lesser extent, for 17 years FREE of subscription and virtually free of Advertising.
LNO had made the decision to be able to provide even better coverage, we were going to a subscription base of $20 per year to help offset costs, without burdening down the site with lots of advertising. The latest Google Analytics show LNO with 20,000 unique IP address visits per month on LNO, 80,000 pages read per month and 2,000 views per week on Face Book posts.
Certainly our primary cities will have more than the total equivalent of 1.6 pages of news per month (based on the new ST offering), as well as Guest Columns, featured stories, sports analysis, etc.
We are advising our readers, BEFORE we make this change, (scheduled for June 2017),not the day of the event, that just happened today with our Ft. Worth competitor. This new structure will allow for more coverage, videos, news and interviews for our readers. Internet news sources represent the broadest growth in the media market, not to mention the on going liberal agenda that is touted by the McClatchy Company.owned Star-Telegram.
