Mary McCarty’s piece in the Dayton Daily News described a new interest in Tipp City’s new newspaper in town, the Tippecanoe Gazette.
After the Tipp City Herald and The Independent Voice demonstrated in 2009 that local papers were incredibly inconsistent with content and not financially viable businesses, the residents of Tipp City were faced with a near “black-out” of news and information. News carried simply by word-of-mouth quickly moved in to fill the gaping hole left by their departure.
In July of 2009 I decided to create an electronic “place” for news to be shared within our community called TippNews DAILY that can be found at the Internet Address of https://tippnews.com <https://tippnews.com> . The site is styled like a newspaper, however it’s reporters are all citizen journalists, not paid staff. This low-cost format of news reporting has allowed TippNews DAILY to grow its readership to over 1,750 unique visits each month without growing its expense.
The Tippecanoe Gazette is a valiant effort being made to serve those in our community that cannot or will not seek out their Local News on a Computer, News Reader, Mobile Device or Email (a la TippNews DAILY). As Editor of TippNews DAILY I have really enjoyed listening to not only the compliments being made about my web publication, but also to the Tipp City residents who still long to hold, crinkle and fold a local newspaper each week. For these residents, a newspaper is a habit long in practice that they had to surrender unwillingly.
We are in a very “awkward” time in the history of publication where digital news media such as online news web sites, podcasts and streaming video are available to the vast majority of news consumers but there is still a significant population of primarily seniors who cannot access or refuse to learn how to access the multitude of digital news resources. Over the next 20 years, 40-somethings will grow to be seniors who have been trained to seek out news through digital means and the last of the earth’s trees will be cut to support the distribution and syndication of news and advertising content.
I wish the Gazette all the best in their efforts to build and grow their subscribership and advertisers. I am doing everything in my power to help fuel their efforts by helping “spread the word” and demonstrate for local businesses how a combination of print and web advertising is a fantastic way to reach residents in our community. I think that local residents will embrace the new publication and that its future will be as bright as the Gazette’s editor, reporters, advertisers and subscribers wish it to be. We have several decades before all news will go digital, and there is no reason that the needs of our newspaper-starved residents should go unmet.
