Good news? You want good news? Really?
I’m talking about an online newspaper survey being conducted this month by your friendly, knowledgeable and good-looking staff here at Southern Standard. In this survey, we’re asking readers to tell us what they want to see in the pages of their newspaper. And one of the main responses we're getting is readers crave more good news, more rainbows to brighten their day.
While I’m not one to ask for feedback and then argue with the results, allow me to do just that. Since the Southern Standard has been posting stories on the Internet, we can tell exactly how many hits each story receives. And it’s not the happy news that’s drawing attention.
Case in point, it was two weekends ago we had a deadly shooting at Arms Apartments. It was a very sad story where a young man in his 20s lost his life. That story was published on the front page of our newspaper and received over 5,000 online hits.
In that very same edition and also making the front page was a feel-good story about the local Central Baptist Association and its efforts to help motorists by giving them a 25-cent discount on gasoline during a four-hour period. That story, which was well-crafted and beautifully written, received about 300 online hits.
More than 16 times the number of people read the bad story versus the good news one.
To further illustrate this point, we can put a bad car wreck online in our breaking news alert and get 800 to 900 hits in two hours. In contrast, we published a glowing feature story this past week (and I won’t identify the person) which received 40 total online views. The story about a WCHS student accused of murder received more than 2,000 hits. The story about a Halloween bash at the Senior Center received 20.
Not to wipe my feet on our survey results, there was an overwhelming call for us to provide more information about local events before they happen so people have a better understanding of what’s going on in their community. We are going to make this a greater emphasis and work to publicize more events beforehand, not just cover them as they’re happening.
As for segments readers might miss if they were no longer included, 87 percent said they would miss Scopin’ the Soaps, 77 percent said they would miss horoscopes, and 57 percent said they would miss comics.  There are no plans to take any of these features away. A slender majority, 52 percent, said they do not want to get their news by email.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time perusing our survey, which can be taken at www.surveymonkey.com/r/southernstandard. We’ll weigh the responses as we move forward and shape the direction of the Standard.
Good news, as always, will continue to be a focus and a backbone of this newspaper. But it won't pay the bills. Folks may say they want good news, but their reading habits indicate otherwise. We have the online clicks to prove it.
Standard editor James Clark can be reached at 473-2191.