Local paper will keep reporting the local news

I visited Libby on Friday and I was given a copy of a newspaper no publisher, or reader, wants to see.

It was the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News. It had turned off the presses on Feb. 27, just 55 days before its 150th anniversary.

Unless you are  living in a cave, you can’t miss the stories about how newspapers are in trouble. Denver and Seattle both had long-term newspapers close and there are rumors that one of the Minneapolis-St. Paul papers will soon close.

After I read the Rocky’s storied history, I said to myself, “I am glad I am not one of those papers.”

I am glad the Bee:

• Has nearly 6,000 families that pay for their Bee to be delivered to their home or business.

• Is local, local, local in its news coverage, opinions and advertising.

• Offers advertising that works.

• Has the area’s most active Web site.

Ask anyone who consistently advertises in the Bee why they do so. It isn’t because they want to donate to my retirement fund. Ask Holly at Holly’s Place or Michael at Zip’s if advertising in the Bee works. Ask long-time businesses like Sandpoint Furniture or Les Schwab or Yoke’s or Safeway or Sears where they spend most of their advertising dollars.

Last month nearly 300 local businesses advertised in the Bee.

Ask several businesses that didn’t advertise with us over the holidays and moved their ads to other mediums … two of them ran their going-out-of-business ads with us recently.

The problem with the larger newspapers is they filled their products with Associated Press wire stories from all over the world. Years ago that worked.

With the advent of CNN, the Internet and on-demand news, locally-oriented newspapers like the Bee gained a foothold, while regional newspapers that relied on AP news floundered.

The Spokane Spokesman-Review’s circulation has dropped like a rock because it relies on wire copy and doesn’t report on this area. Only recently did it start covering any Sandpoint-area news and if you will notice, that news is only on Sunday — the most-expensive paper of the week.

You already know you can find those Sandpoint-area stories online and could save the $2.

We have made a conscious effort to not put all of our content online. I figure I pay our reporters to write local stories. Their work should be worth something.

I am glad we aren’t the Spokesman-Review and that we are bucking what is a national trend. The Daily Bee is local and is written by locals.

Business could be better and we are continuously looking for ways to improve our paper.

So we are hunkering down and trying our best to whether this economic storm. We are also going out of our way to remind people of the value of shopping at home.

Here’s the deal: You keep reading and we’ll keep reporting news and selling advertisements you can’t find anywhere else.

David Keyes is publisher of the Daily Bee.