-DAN DEGENSTIEN, EDITOR
In 2018, after the closure of Waterfront Press in Lumsden, SK, LMT had to consider whether to take over that region to continue providing news and advertising coverage to its residents and businesses.
After doing the math, weighing the pros and cons, talking to the former salesperson and former journalist, and considering the impact on our current advertisers and readers, we decided it was worth the risk to expand to include Lumsden, Regina Beach, Bethune, Southey and all the RMs therein.
The risk came in the form of lost revenue. To ensure we could reach people in these new areas, we decided to give up about 1000 paying subscribers and instead start mailing nearly 5000 copies to all available mailboxes in the area. For free. With extra ad revenue picked up from the Lumsden and surrounding area, we hoped to cover our expenses, despite losing eligibility for a critical grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage. I’ll also note LMT didn’t raise advertising rates by 5x to reflect the new coverage, not even 2x. We kept the rates the same while providing 5x the coverage to our advertisers. In the meantime, we’ve only adjusted rates to reflect typical cost increases.
After we made this decision, the journalist attached to the Lumsden area informed us that other opportunities wouldn’t allow them time to write for us after all. OK, not a big deal. We can manage. We began sending the newspaper to 15 communities in our area, adding a few later by request. Met with generally positive responses; some people who had recently paid for subscriptions chose to leave it with us as a donation, while others requested refunds. We were just happy to provide a service to all the people in these communities.
We established a foothold throughout 2018, but bigger-budget advertisers began moving away from print advertising, focusing on digital. Revenue dropped, but we cut costs and persevered printing news weekly. Then in late 2019, the Editor, Dave, passed away suddenly. On a Thursday, no less. Which meant we would have to finish the paper Friday afternoon without him. And every Friday since then.
In 2020 we launched a full-fledged news publishing website, lmtimes.ca. It would increase overall weekly production time by 40% while providing no additional revenue. Again, serving news to our public was the priority.
2020 would prove to provide plenty of news. We were also lucky enough to be one of the few SK newspapers to receive a grant to hire a full-time Civic reporter. We covered as much as possible over Zoom and on location when reasonable. The monthly reports of Town and RM meetings were very well received, and the reader told us all the time. Any complaints came in the form of “...too much of THEIR community, not enough of OUR community...” We were happy that people were thirsty for more local news.
With such a big territory, we’ve always had trouble gathering news from all areas. Travelling is time and cost prohibitive, and finding more people interested in reporting locally seemed impossible. A few short years earlier, we would be inundated with news tips, stories and photos of anything and everything from communities. Sports teams would send results, schools would note student achievements and activities, outdoors people would show off wildlife sightings, and community organizations would put in ads or flyers about upcoming bake sales, pot-lock suppers, fundraisers, and golf tournaments. But lately, it is down to a trickle, and it’s clear that we have to go looking for news as it will no longer find us. Our newspaper has expanded to cover a community of almost 11,000 (estimated) people, and we need to start acting like it. To make a better product, we need more high-quality news. To do that, we need to pay more journalists and reporters. So five years after going to a free-distribution model, LMT has made the difficult decision to transition back to a paid subscription model.
Starting November 14th, LMT will only be mailing newspapers to paid subscribers. The revenue from this will go right back into the community in the form of news and events coverage. We will be focusing on hiring professional and reliable freelance writers and photographers in every community in our coverage area to make LMT an invaluable resource, as it has been for the last 114 years.
As a publisher of original local news, we know our product is the information and not the paper on which it’s printed. So we will continue daily updates on our website and newsletters, which will contain fewer non-local ads and require a paid subscription in the coming months.
We know funds are tight for people right now, but we think the price of a subscription to a local newspaper is worth it among all the other things people get by subscription these days. To ease the transition, subscription prices will roll out in stages.
Print Subscription (includes digital) - Regular price $60/year
- Early-bird (Oct. 3rd - Oct. 13th) - $40 - click here
- Not so early-bird (October 14th - February 28th, 2023) - $50
Digital only (Newsletter, Digital/PDF edition, website access) - Regular Price $50/year
- Digital Early-bird (October 3rd - October 13th) - $30 - click here
- Digital not so early-bird (October 14th - February 28th, 2023) - $40
All print subscriptions purchased before the end of October 2022 will last until November 30th, 2023 (1 Bonus month). Digital subscriptions will last for 12 months, beginning with the first week the website becomes restricted, TBD.
We hope our community will support us as much as we want to support them. More information and promotions will come in the following weeks. Please send questions and comments about this to subscribe@lmtimes.ca or leave a voicemail - dial 306-528-2020 and press 6.
