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Resolutions for an Electronic Progress
Well, it serves me right. I started off a couple of weeks ago with the New Year’s Resolution to have a better year than 2025 when it came to dental health. To be short, late 2024 and 2025 were nightmares when it came to my teeth. I hooked up with a Dollar General-diploma of a dentist who, together with a half-century of rather poor personal dental habits, managed to place my mouth in months’ long purgatory. I was seemingly visiting him every few weeks, and every time I visited, I did more damage. By the end of the year, I learned that my former dentist, who I thought had retired, was still practicing. I got together with him, and he seemed to fix some of the damage his expatriated colleague had created. Alas, just nine days into the new year, a crown came calling, and I was back in the chair. There’s always next year, I guess.
With that resolution out the window, I decided I needed to concentrate on something a little more within my control, as the dental damage seems to have already been done. So, I turned to this publication, the newly online Roxton Progress. The Progress is a labor of love for my wife and I, so why not wrap my resolutions around something I genuinely care about? And let me tell you, with a change like the Progress is undergoing as we speak, there is plenty to be resolved. But I’m keeping my resolutions conservative to start, so there are only three.
1 Build readership: The print version of the Roxton Progress reached its climax around 2010. At the time, readership was strong, but it was buoyed by the financial ability to maintain subscribers who had not paid for a subscription in years. As those subscribers were weaned out, readership fell dramatically, and it continued to slowly drop in the ensuing years. For every subscriber gained, at least two were lost (almost always the result of a death). That’s one thing the print version of the Progress had going for it—a very loyal group of subscribers. Unfortunately, the group was shrinking rather than expanding, and no matter what type of promotion we ran, subscribership did not grow.
So, we are now met with a new challenge but a less formidable one—to build readership in an online platform. Since we began our test run with the online edition in December, readership is already up, largely due to a direct correlation in activity with our Facebook page. We resolve to continue and expand upon this correlation in order to drive readership to our website where the Roxton Progress can be accessed.
2. Increase News Coverage: Last year, we brought you sporadic coverage of the Roxton City Council meetings. We plan to cover each meeting in the future and bring you timely news from the City Council rather than delaying it until we receive the monthly minutes (often two months after the meeting was held). We also plan to include coverage of Chisum ISD Board meetings in future issues, something we have not regularly done in the past.
In terms of news, another goal is to recruit more news from readers. While the old columns from the 1970s and 1980s that featured “who visited who” may no longer be something newspapers concentrate on, local news requires local input. In recent years, reader submissions of items like engagements, weddings, and birth announcements, as well as anniversaries, birthdays, retirements, and similar personal news have dwindled to virtually zero. We want to help you celebrate your good news with the community! Send your news items to us, and let us crown your or your family’s achievements. Unlike many publications, we consider such items news, and we won’t charge you a dime for putting them in print.
3. Maintain and Expand Advertising: We long had a dream of offering the Progress free of charge, at least within the Roxton community. Unfortunately, with the cost of printing and postage, the dream was not achievable. But the shift to an online publication not only allows us to offer the newspaper free to those in Roxton, it is now free to everyone, worldwide. The Progress is an advertiser and donor supported pub- lication, and advertisers in particular are vital to our future. That’s why you’ll see an increased emphasis on recognizing our advertisers both on the website and Facebook. Please don’t overlook them. Do business with them, and tell them where you saw their ads! Advertisers are the key to our future, and we need to maintain those we have and gain more. If you, a friend, or someone you do business with has an interest in supporting a small-town paper, please consider or ask them to consider advertising in the Progress. Their support will keep this publication afloat.
There you have it. I don’t consider these resolutions too optimistic, and they are good starting points for an up and coming online publication. Please help keep us on track, and if we are falling short, don’t hesitate to tell us. We need feedback, positive and negative, in order to keep your Roxton Progress just the way you like it!
With that resolution out the window, I decided I needed to concentrate on something a little more within my control, as the dental damage seems to have already been done. So, I turned to this publication, the newly online Roxton Progress. The Progress is a labor of love for my wife and I, so why not wrap my resolutions around something I genuinely care about? And let me tell you, with a change like the Progress is undergoing as we speak, there is plenty to be resolved. But I’m keeping my resolutions conservative to start, so there are only three.
1 Build readership: The print version of the Roxton Progress reached its climax around 2010. At the time, readership was strong, but it was buoyed by the financial ability to maintain subscribers who had not paid for a subscription in years. As those subscribers were weaned out, readership fell dramatically, and it continued to slowly drop in the ensuing years. For every subscriber gained, at least two were lost (almost always the result of a death). That’s one thing the print version of the Progress had going for it—a very loyal group of subscribers. Unfortunately, the group was shrinking rather than expanding, and no matter what type of promotion we ran, subscribership did not grow.
So, we are now met with a new challenge but a less formidable one—to build readership in an online platform. Since we began our test run with the online edition in December, readership is already up, largely due to a direct correlation in activity with our Facebook page. We resolve to continue and expand upon this correlation in order to drive readership to our website where the Roxton Progress can be accessed.
2. Increase News Coverage: Last year, we brought you sporadic coverage of the Roxton City Council meetings. We plan to cover each meeting in the future and bring you timely news from the City Council rather than delaying it until we receive the monthly minutes (often two months after the meeting was held). We also plan to include coverage of Chisum ISD Board meetings in future issues, something we have not regularly done in the past.
In terms of news, another goal is to recruit more news from readers. While the old columns from the 1970s and 1980s that featured “who visited who” may no longer be something newspapers concentrate on, local news requires local input. In recent years, reader submissions of items like engagements, weddings, and birth announcements, as well as anniversaries, birthdays, retirements, and similar personal news have dwindled to virtually zero. We want to help you celebrate your good news with the community! Send your news items to us, and let us crown your or your family’s achievements. Unlike many publications, we consider such items news, and we won’t charge you a dime for putting them in print.
3. Maintain and Expand Advertising: We long had a dream of offering the Progress free of charge, at least within the Roxton community. Unfortunately, with the cost of printing and postage, the dream was not achievable. But the shift to an online publication not only allows us to offer the newspaper free to those in Roxton, it is now free to everyone, worldwide. The Progress is an advertiser and donor supported pub- lication, and advertisers in particular are vital to our future. That’s why you’ll see an increased emphasis on recognizing our advertisers both on the website and Facebook. Please don’t overlook them. Do business with them, and tell them where you saw their ads! Advertisers are the key to our future, and we need to maintain those we have and gain more. If you, a friend, or someone you do business with has an interest in supporting a small-town paper, please consider or ask them to consider advertising in the Progress. Their support will keep this publication afloat.
There you have it. I don’t consider these resolutions too optimistic, and they are good starting points for an up and coming online publication. Please help keep us on track, and if we are falling short, don’t hesitate to tell us. We need feedback, positive and negative, in order to keep your Roxton Progress just the way you like it!