Prepared for the next evolution of our connection with the community

Jul. 27—Come next Wednesday, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle begins another evolution that continues to expand the newspaper's 155-year connection with the local community.

You've already heard from us about ongoing challenges with our delivery by carriers, the largest being recruitment. It's a shortfall many of our readers have keenly felt.

As we prepare to move to delivery through the U.S. mail, along with expanding our digital platforms, I want to do what a community newspaper does best — share some stories. Let's talk about the independent contractors who deliver our papers, as well as all the ways we can bring you the work of the talented, passionate journalists I work with every day.

Carrier connections

It really doesn't matter who you are or what work you do in this industry. You do the work because at some point you decided it's important. You have passion for it.

Local journalists choose the career because they believe in holding government accountable, and providing residents with accurate, relevant information. For those who deliver the newspaper, it may be something as personal as the peace some find working at night and driving local roads under the moonlight. Some people do the work because they enjoy seeing the first snow of autumn.

Regardless, it's a choice. And with so many options for workers today, who chooses to deliver newspapers?

Here are a few examples. If you know any of these people, you'll recognize them. I've changed names to respect privacy; however, one of the joys of the work I do is meeting and working with wonderful people.

We have a carrier I'll call Cassie, whose mother is afflicted with several conditions that challenge her. Cassie has had to hop off her route several times to help her mom, and has had to take several breaks in service, where she was gone for several days.

Carriers contract 365 days a year and are responsible for their own substitutes. All the carriers know this. Every time Cassie has needed help, her fellow carriers have swooped in to help. They do it for her, they do it for you, and they do it for each other.

These are people I respect. Cassie is dear to me because of the commitment she has made to her mother. None of us could wish for a better daughter. I respect the other carriers for their compassion, as well.

We have another carrier I'll call Luke. Luke is tremendously capable and possesses an exquisite Wyoming pedigree. His family has been active in politics, has judges in its line and reaches back to the foundation of the Cowboy State.

He has walked away from much greater income to do what he loves, working every day teaching children. He teaches them focus. He teaches them to plan. He teaches them the duties of citizenship.

Luke also delivers a paper route every night and brings his son and daughter with him so they can learn to work. This is a man I respect.

We have another carrier I will call Carole. She is an experienced WTE employee, having worked inside the building and out. She cares for foster children, is active in her community, is a fantastic mother and is always there for each contractor with good advice.

She freely shares her wisdom on all topics. She is the first to share information with us from the field, and is an example of how kindness and hard work breed trust. She shares of her experience freely and does not judge.

"Everyone has to figure it out for themselves," she has said to me. "I help if they ask."

This is a woman I respect.

I have had a 20-year employee on the phone, crying and upset that she couldn't get every customer served on time. She was carrying about twice as many newspapers as we could deliver by deadline. She was frustrated. I was frustrated. Many of you were frustrated.

Corners get cut, papers are not porched and we run late. It has happened on all our routes.

I could go on and on. We have experienced carriers who manage delivery contracts. We have numerous teachers and a college professor. We have small business owners, single moms, students, and at least one Force Recon Sniper has delivered papers for us here in Wyoming.

The carriers who work with us have done excellent work. We just do not have enough of them. Our carriers feel it. The community feels it, and it breaks the connections between us.

To those of you who have expressed concern and support for these dedicated carriers, we say, "Thank you." We have offered support to each of them in terms of helping them secure other employment, and we're transitioning some into other roles in our company. We — and they — appreciate your ongoing support.

Evolving connections

Those connections are important. I think the most common connection for most of you reading this is in print. It's a time-honored media platform that has been around for centuries.

Will print be around for several more centuries? Absolutely — in one form or another. Theatre is. You can still attend a live play, but most of us watch television. Film in movie houses is still an attraction. However, its audience is shrinking.

We all know how frantic and heated cable and TV journalism have become. Cable is losing subscribers at a rate that makes print news losses of the early 2000s look like a boom.

The world is transforming. It is moving forward. Now, let's talk about what the world looks like for us, and for journalism, in general.

Part of my job is audience development, and it has been my focus in places like Phoenix, Atlanta, Sacramento and many other cities in both red and blue states.

Audience is the connections we make with readers. It happens in print, on phones, on tablets and desktops, in searches and on social media. Audience measures all the ways we connect and tries to figure out the best way to do that.

Here are some metrics I am looking at. In Cheyenne, we have about 120,000 unique visitors come to our website in an average month through any number of methods. Some stay for one story, some for hours; some are subscribers, and some are coming for one of the three to five articles they can read free each month. We have about 7,000 subscribers to our print newspaper on any given day. Many of these folks also read us online or on mobile.

The point is, the audience for print journalism keeps shrinking, and it has every year since I started this work in the 1990s. Conversely, digital access to our journalism is in demand and rising.

Local journalism matters

Part of my job is protecting our newsrooms and the journalists who work in them. I say "protect" because I take it seriously. However, journalists like Hannah Black, Jasmine Hall and Robert Munoz do not need my protection.

What I do is find audiences for their work and the work of other journalists like Will Carpenter and Alyte Katilius. These young men and women have chosen to be here. They have committed to the pursuit of finding truth and sharing it with you. Their voices are important. It's my job to help amplify them.

As a result, we've made a decision to move delivery of the print newspaper to mail, and to focus on refining how we connect with everyone in Wyoming more effectively.

We will sustain print as long as we can. But to focus solely on it would be an injustice to our reporters, our audience who have no use for print, and those trying to navigate a world where anyone can set up a server in a basement and call themselves a news outlet.

You see it every day when you go online or on social media. Whether you are blue or red, you run across news that looks nothing like what our print consumers understand as journalism. We have to be present and aggressive in that space. We need to bring our work to all audiences.

To do this, we have to make connections in different ways. Yes, we will still have a printed newspaper four days a week. But we have other ways for you to get the same information, and more than what can be in print, which is a limited space. Here are some simple ways you can connect with us, 24 hours a day, seven days a week:

Make certain we have your email address.

Why? It helps us communicate with you. We also can use tools like our newsletters and e-Edition notifications to take you right to content. Click, sign in, read.

We also can send you links to instructions and help.

Try out our news app.

You can download the WyoNews app at the Apple App Store or on Google Play and install on your smartphone.

You can email us at customercare@wyomingnews.com for help with this issue and any other you have.

Try the e-Edition.

This looks like and is organized like a newspaper. It's excellent on a tablet, and also on your laptop or desktop.

Once you are active and signed up, we will email you an update every day when it's ready, usually by 5 a.m.

Sign up for our newsletters.

Our editors, Brian Martin, Jonathan Make and Jeremiah Johnke, work closely with the digital team to let you know what is most important and send you regular updates, often daily.

We are launching more newsletters that do the work for you and organize the journalism by topics you value most. We are curating new newsletters all the time. Please let us know what you're interested in.

Follow us on social media.

Connecting with our Facebook and/or Twitter accounts is a good way to access breaking news, but also to connect with others in the community about issues important to you.

There is an entire world of digital information flowing every second. We want to help you connect to it and organize it. We want to be the place where you can come to scrape away the offshore websites and other content polluting our daily discourse.

We want to help you connect with breaking news and the local journalism we have that no one else has.

Technology and the world are moving on. We can move there together.

We will keep changing. We at the WTE have to, and I would argue we all have to.

Finally, change is hard. I know it. The carriers who we work with know it. Nothing we have done here is merely a choice. It's a necessary part of our evolution.

Over the coming weeks and months, you will see constant and consistent communication from us. We'll show you how to get the news with your morning coffee. We'll provide connections on social media and digitally that we think will be useful to you and to others.

Let us know what you think. Join us in this transformation.

Tad Kilgore is the director of audience and distribution for APG of the Rockies, and is proud to call Cheyenne his home. He can be reached at tkilgore@wyomingnews.com.