By LES HIGH

The call was inevitable.

A friend phoned last week to ask if it were true that we’d sold The News Reporter.

I told him no, but it’s easy to see where my friend might have gotten that impression with the recent sale of the company’s office supplies and printing divisions. We’ve been through a lot of changes this year.

Back in the day, small-town newspapers like The News Reporter had a difficult time making ends meet with advertising and subscription revenues alone, so many newspapers had office supplies and commercial printing divisions.

Over time, big box retailers like Kmart and Wal-mart, then Staples and Office Depot, were able to provide office supply products at a lesser price because of their buying power. With the onset of digital and laser printing, commercial printing became very cost competitive.

We were able to keep the printing and office supplies divisions open for a number of years longer than we’d thought because our staff provided good service.

But costs continued to climb. For example, The News Reporter Company provides 100 percent health coverage for its employees. Not many small businesses in a competitive market – in this case our office supplies and printing divisions – can stand the annual rate increases we’ve seen on already expensive health insurance.

If you want to know why there’s a very real health care crisis in America, and why many small businesses can’t provide health insurance for its employees, then look no further than this example.

Luckily, the two companies that bought our office supplies and commercial printing divisions, Herald Office Supplies of Dillon, S.C., and Atlantic Publishing of Tabor City respectively, are both large, solid companies that specialize in what they do. Most of our employees were retained and kept their health insurance.

But in the final analysis, we sold the office supplies and commercial printing divisions because we want to focus on our core business, which is newspapering.

Fortunately, the newspaper continues to do well. Unlike many dailies, ad revenue for us is up and subscriptions are near or at an all-time high.

We have a dedicated staff, many of whom have been with us 20-plus years. It’s a good place to work.

News Editor Clara Cartrette has been with The News Reporter 45 years and is doing a superb job. There’s not much she hasn’t seen, and her experience covering Columbus County news speaks for itself.

We hope to make the newspaper better by focusing on it solely. The paper is now almost entirely paginated, which means that it is composed on computer screens rather than on paper. Fuller Royal headed a recent re-design effort of the front and inside pages that make them more organized and easier to read.

We also want to increase the use of our website, whiteville.com, as a tool where news can be updated more frequently between publication days, plus provide more content.

Mark Gilchrist has worked to put hundreds of additional unpublished photos on whiteville.com, and the first video footage, taken at the Riegelwood tornado, appeared on the site.

On the day the tornado story broke, whiteville.com had more than 217,000 hits. I’m continuously amazed at how much traffic the site receives. It’s a sign of the times, and something that we hope to improve on soon.

Of course, there’s more to be done. We still have too many typos. We try to get two sets of eyes on every page, but studies tell us it takes four sets to effectively catch typos.

The bigger papers have that luxury, but we’ve made some changes to improve proofing. Yet, typos – the bane of most small newspaper’s existences – will no doubt find ways to pop up in the most conspicuous places despite our best efforts.

On another front, my wife Becky and I bought The Pender Post in Burgaw on Oct. 19. It comes out once a week and has a distribution of about 5,000 papers with a full-time staff of five and a handful of part-timers and freelancers.
It’s been a real learning experience for us both, especially for me. I’ve spent the last few years writing editorials and working with the news staff.

The Pender Post is a small operation compared to The News Reporter. Having to insert, tote and put labels on The Post has given me a new appreciation for the unsung heroes of the newspaper business – the people who put it together, print it and get it into readers’ hands. I also have a new appreciation for my wife’s business abilities. It helps to marry up.

Our goal at The Pender Post is essentially what we’ve tried to develop at The News Reporter over the years, which is to be media of record for our respective counties, and to develop a trust and relationship with readers where they feel ownership in the paper.

It’s been hard work, but often fun and always challenging.

Pender County is one of the fastest growing counties on the East Coast, so we believe there’s opportunity there. Combined with our sister paper in Southport, The State Port Pilot, The News Reporter and our two free distribution papers – The Columbus Extra in eastern Columbus County and The News-Times, which serves the southern and western areas, things have been busy.

There are many mixed emotions with the sale of the office supplies and commercial print divisions, but as you can see with all that’s going on with our newspapers and what lies ahead with new media and the Internet, it was time to concentrate on what we do best, which is the business of bringing the news to our readers.