The Schreiber Media Centre and Terrace Bay Schreiber newspaper are rethinking the way community newspapers interact with residents.

Community papers everywhere struggle with limited resources as do most nonprofit organizations. When the idea was first proposed that Schreiber Media Centre would enter into an arrangement with the local community newspaper it wasn’t really clear what benefits might arise from such an arrangement. The Schreiber Media Centre knows all too well  how limited resources impact functionality. They have one part time person that basically performs all the functions of a news team but at a fraction of the budget.

Thanks to the LJI grant that the SMC was once again lucky to receive, the idea of how to involve more people and operations and form partnerships where possible allowed became more important.

Sometimes pooling talent can result in new opportunities and some clever reworking of day to day operations had to be established. Certain ground rules had to be established and one of the main concerns of the publisher was would this video version of the paper cut into its customer base.

Careful of rocking the already tiny boat a very simple solution was found. As the newspaper had recently started a digital subscription service, it made sense to only allow subscribers to the service, access the video content. It has come to work as an added bonus and hopefully incentive for digital subscribers and might even aid in increasing readership. SMC and TBS news will continue to re-evaluate this relationship but it appears that this new way of working might be paving new ground in an untested territory. And that is what makes community news so exciting!