Numbers promising for Sun

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This article was published 19/11/2016 (3340 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Affirming The Brandon Sun’s place in its community, a recent study has determined that its content reaches 89 per cent of the city’s adult population per week.

This means that about 39,000 adults in Brandon read the Sun’s print or digital editions per week.

While last year’s data counted 37,000 readers per week, Vividata vice-president of research Donald Williams guarded against asserting that readership has increased.

Vividata has changed their methodology, he explained, clarifying that even so, the numbers recorded in Brandon are promising.

Where publications in larger centres are seeing readership dip down to a percentile less than 50, smaller communities such as Brandon tend to draw in larger shares of readership within their less competitive markets.

There aren’t many alternatives for those who want to read about their home community — those stories that directly impact the reader, he explained.

“At times you’ll see headlines that speak to the death of newspapers, and while it might be closer to some markets, there are some markets like Brandon where print, or the newspaper as a medium, still remains strong.

“It’s important to tell your own story, and if it’s different than the rest of the country, then highlight that story.”

That’s what the Brandon Sun newsroom is all about, editor Matt Goerzen said, pointing to the publication’s deep roots in the community which date back almost 135 years.

“Almost every single day it’s a local story that dominates the front page,” he said, adding that the Sun newsroom’s devotion to telling local area residents’ stories is apparent in every edition.

Also of benefit to the Brandon Sun is its wealth of long-term residents interested in the goings on of their home community, Williams said.

As a comparative, Williams pointed to Barrie, Ont., which finds many of its residents seek employment in Toronto. As such, they’re less likely to be as vested in their home community as those who live and work in the same area.

While the Brandon Sun numbers seemed promising, Williams wasn’t without a caution.

Millennials — the next generation of readers — “prefer digital,” he said.

Of The Brandon Sun’s digital readers, 46 per cent are what the Vividata report labels the “hard-to-reach millennials.”

“There’s an overall trend that we’ve seen across Canada where more and more people are accessing content with their mobile devises, so that reflects the overall trend to mobile,” he explained, adding that it’s important news organizations have websites that are responsive to mobile devices.

This, Goerzen said, is an area in which the Sun is working to improve.

“People are reading a lot more news on their phones, and as a news outlet we need to follow suit,” he said, adding that The Brandon Sun offers an E-edition and online content.

This Vividata report was culled from 180 surveys conducted from July 2015 and June 2016. Data continues to be collected, with the expectation that 250 surveys will be represented in the next such report.

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkePA