From The Publisher’s Desk

It Has Been A Very Good Year!

By Frederick A. Hurst

Well congratulations, Folks! We made it through the first year. For that I would like to thank our staff, our contributors, our advertisers and our readers. Thanks to everybody it has been an exciting year in which we have met most, if not all, of the first-year goals and objectives that we set out in our business plan.

Just think about the role of the staff in our first year. We started out with mostly amateurs, who knew little about how to produce a newspaper. We did pay a web site consultant and an art director to give us our initial start. After the first two editions, the art director’s responsibilities passed on to our long-time legal administrative assistant, Marie Zanazanian, who had attended one class on how to use the software that is so necessary to our newspaper’s production. She was able to fulfill the art director’s responsibilities entirely in the production of our September and current editions. It was a great accomplishment for Point of View and a great personal accomplishment for Marie.

Our web site consultant, Andrea Skeene, remains with us and has brought our web site a long way from its early beginnings. She is to be commended for providing us with an interactive web site that is pleasant to view and that allows our readers and advertisers to communicate with us and, if they wish, to advertise on our site.

I can’t say too much about the many people who have contributed stories to the newspaper. We’ve had such great articles from colleges, from medical people, from ministers, from people who represent the elderly, from people who represent the Latino community, from people who represent educational organizations and from so many others who took the time to write articles and submit them for publication without charging us a cent. Of course, our staff have also voluntarily written many articles for the newspaper. The contributors have made it possible for the newspaper to be genuinely attractive and for it to develop a solid financial foundation.

Speaking of a financial foundation, our advertisers have been nothing short of partners in the establishment of a solid financial foundation for the newspaper in the first year. They helped in several ways. Initially we advertised a special package for advertisers who would be willing to agree to advertise in all four first-year issues of the newspaper. Many advertisers took us up on the offer. They committed to us before we had published the first edition because they had confidence in the people who are running the newspaper. They didn’t know if we could run a newspaper, but they bet that we could based upon their prior experiences with us in other areas. It was a risk well taken. We continued to offer a discount, though smaller, to those who began to advertise with us in the second edition and who committed for the remainder of the year, and more advertisers came on board. As our sales strategy becomes more sophisticated and more people begin to learn about our newspaper and its popularity, we are picking up new advertisers every day. As you can see, we also had a healthy advertiser response to our special holiday coupon advertising section. We are grateful for the response from all of our first year advertisers.

The most important contributors to the newspaper have been, of course, our readers. No advertisers would advertise and no contributing writers would have any value and no staff would have any work to do if we didn’t have readers. When we first distributed the newspaper to about 60 sites (which has now grown to closer to 100 sites), the newspapers stayed at their sites for a longer period of time. People were just learning about us. By the time the second edition hit the newsstands, the excitement and anticipation of readers were palpable and the newspapers flew off the stands. Because of the early positive reader responses to the first issue, we altered our plans and increased distribution for the second and third issues by 1,000. The greatest testimonial to our readers comes from the fact that most of our sites cannot keep newspapers. We have distributed 7,500 copies for the current issue and will increase to 10,000 for each issue of next year. Our readers have given us every reason to believe that we will not have a surplus of newspapers.

We are excited about the coming year. We will not only be increasing distribution, but we will also increase from four to six issues. We will be adding new newspaper sections and expanding the geographical distribution area to include some of Hampshire County and parts of Connecticut. We are upgrading and networking our computer system to make production more efficient and internal and external communications easier. We are serious about our newspaper and about our commitment to our advertisers and readers. We know by your response that you are serious about us. We thank you for what has turned out to be a very good year, wish you happy holidays, and welcome you to the new year.n