Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
We’ve made a few modifications here at The Eastern New Mexico News. Some of the changes may have already been noticed; others will take effect next Sunday.
I’m here to pass along our rationale and — in some cases — hopefully soften the blow. We’d rather make changes and adjustments on our end rather than pass additional costs on to our readers by raising the cost of the paper or subscription rates.
All of the moves are responses to some of the realities in the newspaper industry. Newsprint — or paper as you know it — is expensive and in short supply. The interests and lifestyles of our readers are changing, and we’d be fools not to acknowledge and address that.
With that said, this will be the last Sunday that The News prints a weekly “Just TV” product. Nationwide, newspapers have struggled with this conundrum. TV books are expensive to print and fewer and fewer readers use them. They instead rely on the “guide” buttons on their cable or satellite systems as well as utilizing DVR or TiVo systems.
We’re not taking away your TV listings though, just including them on a daily basis going forward. We’ll run the grids each morning for that day. On Sunday, we’ll include them for that day as well as Monday.
We’ve repackaged the grids, too, so that they’re easier to read. Programming for kids, movies, news and sports will all be color coded. The “Best Bets” for the day will still be included and advertisers have signed up to support these daily pages.
If you’re an online reader at http://www.EasternNewMexicoNews.com, you won’t be affected by this change. Instead, you will now get the added benefit of the TV schedule each day. And remember, if you’re a home delivery or mail subscriber, you get free access to the e-edition online so you can see them first thing each morning if you choose. Contact our circulation department if you need to set up that free benefit.
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Beginning last week, we’ve removed the horoscopes from The News. Sure they can be entertaining at times, but the cost and respect of this item don’t merit their inclusion any longer.
To put it simply, there’s a creative person in an office in New York or Los Angeles who is sitting there writing two or three sentences advising you on how your day may or may not go. They don’t know you, there’s no science to it and they make them as vague as possible to suit the masses.
Some of you might even call it “fake news.”
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We’ve tabulated our “Readers’ Choice Awards” balloting, and the response was overwhelming this year. Thank you to all of the readers who took time to toss in their two cents.
As part of the voting, we select two random ballots — one each for Clovis and Portales voting — to win $100 apiece. Congratulations to Kourtney Boardley of Clovis and Lupe Rodriquez of Portales for taking home the free money.
The 23rd Annual Best of Clovis and 20th Annual Best of Portales results will be unveiled in a special section on July 27. We will be hosting our popular events to honor all of these winners the following week.
Rob Langrell is the publisher of The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at: [email protected]
