Soaring above the gloom

If you’ve read the headlines in business pages over the past year plus, newspapers seem to be in trouble. Newspaper stocks are down, revenues struggle, newsprint prices continue to rise, circulation diminishes, and so on.

The Internet is the wave of the future, they say. Of course, they also said the same thing when the radio was introduced in the early part of the last century. And then, of course, television came along and newspapers were doomed forever.

Yet, newspapers continued to thrive.

The management of Times Community News, of which the Daily Pilot is the lead newspaper, gathered this week in Glendale to discuss the successes of 2005 and to look at continuing and new opportunities for 2006.

Because the Daily Pilot is in many ways your community newspaper, I thought it important to share some of that success.

First and foremost, 2005 marked a record year in revenues and cash flow for the Daily Pilot, while at the same time we were able to reinvest to further strengthen our paper -- this, despite dramatic increases in newsprint and healthcare benefits for our employees. The success was a similar story at six of the other seven papers in the Times Community News group.

It’s worthy to note that much of what’s happening can be traced to a four-pronged formula that we have followed for a number of years.

The first part of that formula is that we want our paper to be a watchdog over the cities it serves. This means we keep a watchful eye on the way public funds are spent, for example. We keep our politicians responsible to the people in their decision-making and support them when they do so and criticize them when they don’t. We attempt to cover local issues that we believe our community is interested in. We want to be more than just a shopper that arrives on your driveway.

The second part of our formula is that we want to afford you, the reader, a community forum where ideas can be shared and opinions voiced. We attempt to make it easy by accepting letters through e-mail, fax or the good old-fashioned Post Office, which now, incidentally, charges you two more cents to have your voice heard. We also make available space for op-ed pieces for differing opinions.

The third prong is that we attempt to be a reservoir of community information. As I always say, if the cheerleaders are doing a car wash in town to raise funds, then we need to find a way to get that information in our newspaper.

Perhaps the most important aspect to our success is that we want to be the community cheerleader. Yes, in spite of writing stories that sometimes rankle, community cheerleading is an effort that allows us to get behind issues or movements in the community to improve the lives of our residents. Sometimes it’s through editorial coverage; sometimes it’s through advertising support.

We’re proud to get involved in supporting fundraising opportunities, events that enrich the community -- whether it be a marathon or a lecture series, a play or musical performance. Some of the examples of these efforts hopefully touch one or more of the areas you or your family is involved in.

As we look ahead to 2006, we strive to improve what we’re doing in all aspects. Our website (www.dailypilot.com) continues to be of major importance. We’ve recently added our classifieds to the website and made it possible for people to place classified ads 24/7 on it.

We’re also looking ahead to new sections. Entertainment and real estate top the list.

One of the far-fetched ideas we’ve been kicking around for a number of months is the possibility of making the Daily Pilot available to readers who don’t subscribe to the Los Angeles Times.

All in all, as the doom and gloom continues to cast a somewhat dark shadow over newspapers, our little paper continues to thrive.

And that’s where you come in.

If you have ideas about how we can improve our coverage, we’re all ears.

If there’s an event happening in town and you wonder why it’s not part of the Daily Pilot, let us know.

Our goal, and my goal in particular, is to make the Daily Pilot the best community newspaper around. We can do a better job with your help.

Please feel free to contact me or members of my staff with your feedback -- good or bad.

And after a record year like 2005, thank you for your continued support.

* TOM JOHNSON is the publisher. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com.

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