Marketing and Audience Engagement

Increasing visibility in the halls: In my time with The Chronicle, we have sought to increase our presence within the school. This year, we dedicated one of the first pages of our first edition to introducing every staff member (shown above), including our contacts and a fun fact. We also show staff unity and spirit by wearing The Chronicle spirit wear, particularly on days we distribute to classrooms. This year, I have noticed significantly more students approaching me and asking or commenting on The Chronicle than in years prior. Many of my teammates on staff share that experience.  I believe that our outreach efforts have been a major reason why there has been an uptick in student interest.

Distribution around the community: After our newspaper staff delivers papers to our student body and school staff, we take our extra copies and distribute them around the community. This includes delivering paper to our district's central office building, teachers at the younger grade-level buildings, our advertising business partners, and local businesses in Mason. 

Building relationships with school staff: This year, the Chronicle staff has started an initiative where we hand-deliver an early copy of our paper with a personalized note to every staff member in the building. This effort shows our appreciation for the staff and its support of our program and has led to teachers promoting our paper more to their classes when we distribute it to students.

Encouraging student readership: One way we have found success in increasing our presence in the school ths is by promoting on our Instagram page. Our Instagram has surpassed 1000 followers and allows us to connect directly with student readers. We have incorporated data directly collected from our Instagram or fliers around the school building into engaging creative pages in the newspaper (attached are two examples from The Chronicle in 2023-24).

The Chronicle receives no funding from Mason City Schools, so our staff has the responsibility of finding ways to pay for the production cost of our paper, as well as any additional resources like our classroom camera and editor laptops. Our primary source of funding is through advertisements. Our staff has a Business Manager, whom I work with to ensure we are in good financial standing. She does a great job of finding business partners to advertise in our paper. We have a goal to generate enough revenue to pay for next year's papers and are currently on track to meet that goal. I have also contributed to the funding of our paper by working at a local event called Charm at the Farm for the past three summers. Charm is a weekend-long vintage market held at a farm in Lebanon, Ohio, and each year our staff works as event staff to raise money for the paper.

In the summer of 2022, The Chronicle's longtime printing partner shut down operations. I, as part of the 2022-23 leadership team, assisted our adviser Mr. Conner in finding a new printer. This included touring a printing facility in Dayton, Ohio, and sitting in on the negotiations. We worked with that printer for the first half of the 2022-23 school year, until they shut down in the winter. We had to once again scramble and were able to find a printer, AIM Media in Indiana. We have had a positive working relationship with them ever since. Due to national supply chain issues and rising costs, we had to make difficult decisions regarding the printing of our paper. I was part of that decision-making process, and due to our commitment to continuing to print our paper and deliver it school-wide, we decided to cut our production down from nine editions to eight. This allowed us to stay at 24 full-color pages and distribute to our entire school, while not incurring damaging price increases.

As Editor-in-Chief, my main financial obligation is communicating with our printing partner at AIM Media. I electronically correspond with a sales associate several times a month to confirm our printing dates and logistics, including shipping/transportation. I am also responsible for uploading our pages and sharing them with the printer on a deadline for every edition.