Confession, they say, is good for the soul. Since we’re likely to be
outed anyway by long-time readers, here’s the deal: This week’s
Flyer doesn’t exactly coincide with the newspaper’s
actual 20th anniversary. Nope, the first-ever issue of this newspaper
didn’t hit the streets in November 1989, but nine months earlier, on
February 15th.
Alas, February 2009 did not seem a particularly good time for a
20-year celebration. The economy was in the toilet, and our spirits
weren’t far behind. So we postponed our 20th anniversary issue until
this Thanksgiving season, when things might be better and when,
hopefully, we’d have a lot to be thankful for.
Happily, here we are today, ready for the turkey and dressing. We’re
especially thankful for the continued support the Flyer has
received, week in and week out, in the midst of this recession, from
the local business community. Our revenues may be down a bit, but the
number of advertisers we have each week in the Flyer has
remained constant.
That’s great news, of course, but nowhere near as exciting as the
fact that you — yes, you, dear reader — still find what we
do in these pages worth finding a rack and picking up a copy of the
paper. Every Wednesday, we distribute over 50,000 copies of the
Flyer to nearly 700 locations throughout the Memphis
metropolitan area. In theory, our drivers could return to those
drop-off points the following Wednesday and have to take away many of
those 50,000 papers, unread and untouched.
But they don’t. In fact, when our drivers do show up that next week,
they usually go home empty-handed. At a time when daily newspaper
circulation across the country is sinking like a stone, the
Flyer‘s weekly circulation remains relentlessly solid. We put
out exactly as many papers this week as we did 10 years ago. More
importantly, we have just as many (96 percent on average) picked up by
our readers now as we did then.
We like to think that these pick-up rates — and our strong
local advertising support — speak volumes about the continued
community relevance of this newspaper. As we said in our first press
release, way back in January 1989, the Memphis Flyer was created
“to enlighten, inform and entertain the people of Memphis.” I like to
think we’ve been true to that mission over the past two decades.
The years ahead, however, are going to be decidedly different for
everyone in our line of work. Most Memphians, of course, now go online
every day, catching up with breaking news and keeping up with their
favorite websites. As their reading habits change, we’ve needed to
change our approach.
At the Flyer, we have transformed our own news-delivery
systems as dramatically as anybody in town. Memphisflyer.com is now one of the
city’s premier websites. With a “Daily Buzz” homepage that includes
frequent postings, staff blogs that cover everything from Grizzlies
basketball to local theater to hard-core politics, and the best event
listings in town, the Flyer‘s community footprint has grown
significantly over the past five years, as our collective voice has
become considerably stronger.
As for the print edition of the Flyer, we understand the
differences between yesterday and today; people are reading newspapers
differently, more reflectively, than ever before. But as the Internet
Revolution proceeds, our weekly print frequency seems ever more ideal
for the delivery of a comprehensive local news and entertainment
package. Our readers count on the weekly Flyer to present a
snapshot of the local landscape, to bring information together in one
place, in a tabloid that can be read at one’s leisure.
Print still remains an exceptional way to expand one’s cultural
horizons, to discover the new, fresh, and different. That’s why saying
that the web will replace newspapers is like saying that television
will replace movies, that automobiles will replace bicycles, that iPods
will replace live concerts. Things will change, but what’s valuable
will remain.
Online and in print, the Flyer staff intends to keep its
finger on the pulse of this city. Free-distribution weekly newspapers
can peacefully co-exist with sophisticated news websites, and in our
case, the two can be one and the same, operating seamlessly alongside
each other. We think it’s a great fit.
Thanks for reading us, wherever you do so, and thanks again for your
support.
