The News Editorial: Ushering in a new era

Well this is it, the final daily publication for the Northern Wyoming Daily News. Next week we issue in a new era with the Northern Wyoming News, a weekly publication.

For 80 years the Northern Wyoming Daily News has been publishing five days a week. Prior to that the Worland Grit was published once a week; so in essence we have come full circle.

What does it mean to switch from a daily to a weekly?

Well let me start off by first answering what it does not mean.

It does not mean we are close to closing, far from it. The reason to switch from a daily to a weekly is to give us better opportunity for long-term sustainability and viability. You see the newspaper is much like any of our local retail stores we need community support for sustainability. How do we as a newspaper get support from the community? From loyal readers like yourself, and we thank you for that loyalty and from advertisers in Washakie County, the Big Horn Basin and Wyoming.

Over the years, unfortunately, we have lost both subscribers and advertisers. One common factor between the two is the digital age. When the Daily News began residents had the radio and the newspaper to get their news of the day. Today there are 24-hour news channels on TV and on satellite radio and there is news at the touch of the button on your computer, tablet and smartphone.

Many advertisers have turned to the internet, especially social media, to try and get their message out. The problem with social media is there are many people who do not have a social media account so it limits their target audience.

Another issue with advertising is just the sheer number of advertisers available. We depend on you supporting the local stores so they remain viable and can be a potential advertiser in the newspaper.

In addition, our classified page competes with many social media accounts; accounts that can be updated by the minute. In the digital age even a daily can be considered slow to deliver a message.

So what does it mean to switch frequencies of publications? It means instead of five newspapers a week you will get one.

It also means you will still get our city council news, county commissioner news, news from the hospital board, fair board, agriculture news including features and stories in the coming weeks from WESTI Ag Days. You will get a few comics that we hand selected. You will get a few puzzles for your weekly enjoyment. You will get the law enforcement call log and circuit court and municipal court disposition reports. You will get a weather forecast and a list of the highs and lows for the past week.

You will still get your news from area schools like the upcoming middle school play.

You will still get photos of school concerts and plays.

You will get coverage of the many community activities including WESTI Ag Days, Memorial Day services, Culture Fest, Fourth of July, Pepsi Wyoming State BBQ Championship and Bluegrass Festival, Nowoodstock, Washakie County Fair, Battle of the Bands, HunterFest, Christmas parades and lighting ceremonies in Worland and Ten Sleep and much more.

You will get plenty of coverage of the local sports teams, along with some coverage of the Wyoming Cowboys.

Our goal going forward is to have some daily news on our website, wyodaily.com. This will be Wyoming news and may be small briefs from meetings with the full stories in the print publication. We also plan to have small stories on sports scores and highlights on our website.

Our online subscription will still be a digital version of our weekly print publication.

We ask that you be patient with us. We have been planning for this transition since we were notified of the change in mid-December. We are working to provide you with a great, quality product each week.

We are willing to listen to what you the reader wishes to see in our publication and wherever possible we will try to accommodate those requests. But, know that there are some things we won’t be able to accommodate.

We will not be able to run a full weekly, 24-hour-a-day television guide like we have been able to in the past. We are working to be able to provide an evening weekly TV guide.

Often times working on a daily deadline stories have fallen by the wayside that we have run out of time to get to it because something more timely or urgent came up. With a weekly deadline we plan to get to those stories and offer you more features, more human-interest stories and more in-depth coverage of government issues in our county and the Big Horn Basin.

We know that change can be hard and some of our readers have been struggling with this change and some non-readers have made up their mind about the future of the newspaper.

But not all change is bad. Change can be good.

Before you say no to the change, remember the words of author Wendy Mass, “If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.”

Give the Northern Wyoming News a chance, we think you’ll like what you read.