Is McHenry County paying for the full-page ads for the offices of elected officials in the Northwest Herald? Who is paying for them? Is the Northwest Herald "comping" the ads to the County, perhaps in exchange for the huge revenue stream from required publication of notices?
In today's paper is a full-page, four-color ad for the Recorder's office by McHenry County Recorder Phyllis Walters; that's Phyllis K. Walters.
If the County is paying for these ads, it is wasting its money. There is one way to find out - maybe two ways. The first would be a telephone call to 815.334.4110; the second is a FOIA Request for the bill from the Northwest Herald. I'll try the first way first.
As I write this, I can see right where this is going. This is an election year; right?
I wonder whether the Sheriff's Department is about to publish a full page notice of its "services". After all, it is an election year.
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2 comments:
The following comment to the above article was received from a reader:
"A friend that has an advertising background stopped the paper in July 09 and still gets it daily without a bill. I am told they are doing this because they charge for their ads based on circulation #'s. They can say they have a circulation of say, 10,000. They do not have to say anything about whether they are getting paid for the 10,000. I am also told by someone that bought ads from NWH for many years that the ads are larger and larger for the people that advertise regularly. They say that this indicates that they are selling less ads and giving away more space. Interesting, I think this paper is bleeding and going down. Does not break my heart except for the people that depend on the jobs. They need to be a "real" non biased paper. People see through this and are disgusted. The internet does cause sales to go down, but I do believe that the sales have gone down for a long time. I, along with several other friends, stopped it about 15 years ago when our kids graduated and did not need it to get it for school and sports articles. I remember years and years ago on Rt 14 they had billboards with people standing in suits and reading the paper (as if on their way to work) and the people were all standing in a slant. The ad read "Get the slant". That was a good indicator."
I agree with the above poster. As a former newspaper publisher, we did everything to get new readers and paid subscribers. We held two community coffees a year to get feedback from our current subscriber base - a continuous improvement exercise, if you will. We gained more new subscribers and kept existing ones by keeping our minds open for new ideas. And I loved one-upping my competition with reader's ideas. Of course, the "Big Boys" just laughed at our strategy, but began to cry when big advertisers began to spend money with us.
The NWH is not what I consider a real newspaper. Real newspapers cover news. Real newspapers don't fill their "A" section with world and national news, when there is so much local news to cover. Methinks the Illinois AP is on dope for giving this publication any type of award.
Oh, my slogan? "Local news the way you like it."
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