We are relevant, what we produce does matter

There are a couple of things I’d like to talk about in my editorial this week.

Firstly, as you can see on the front page, we have an incredible story about Chelsea Ogilvie. Last week I got a call from Wendy Macuick who told me she had a neat story for the paper. Little did I know what an impact Chelsea’s journey would have on me.

First, I have to say both Chelsea and Wendy are incredibly strong women. Wendy is my Facebook friend who always has a smile on her face and a travel plan in her pocket. She rides like a 20-year-old and adventures like a maverick. She is such a welcome and inspirational person to know.

Chelsea is also incredible. She is upbeat and open with her disability and her ability to find things that bring her joy.

I took the photos that you see in the paper and watched first-hand how she rode the adaptive bike like a ‘boss’.

There was a young family on the track and Chelsea took time to explain her bike and answer their questions. The kids were inquisitive, and she was an educator on how it worked.

It was refreshing to see someone with such an incredible outlook on life. It was truly inspiring. When I got sick, I gave myself a day for a pity party and then I figuratively pulled up my ‘big girl panties’ and dealt with the problem head on. It was refreshing to see someone else do the same thing.

I hope you enjoyed Chelsea’s story as much as I enjoyed spending time with two incredible, inspiring people!

Secondly, we sell our paper as an e-edition through a subscription service company called ISSUU.

I love the e-subscription because it comes to a subscriber’s email looking exactly like a newspaper.

What I like is that it comes out at the same time each week and it looks incredible. When you print your paper, no matter how hard you try, it will only look as good as the printing press and delivery time of the paper is all over the place. Sometimes roads and bad weather, sometimes the paper is printed late. I can get the paper anytime between 8 am and 1 pm.

The other day I was going through the analytics of our e-subscription sales. ISSUU tells me how many paid e-subscriptions I have and from what country the reader is reading them from.

Imagine my surprise to find out that I had 18,274 impressions and 1,738 reads of the paper and that 75 percent of the people read the paper on their desktop and 25 from their phone.

I presently have 497 subscriptions sold as a digital e-subscription. That’s a quarter of my readership in the paper. I was blown away!

What is interesting is where the readers are from. ISSUU breaks down the countries where the subscription was bought and read.

Top 10 countries: each number represents how many times the paper was opened from the app and read it that week. Remember one household can have multiple readers.

United States of America 1024 - Canada 677 - Argentina 7 - Australia 6 - United Kingdom 2 - Czech Republic 1 - Denmark 1 - Germany 1 - Italy 1 - Mexico 1.

Such interesting statistics. So, when people say that newspapers don’t matter anymore, or that they are archaic, my response is that numbers don’t lie.

We are relevant, what we produce does matter, and people from all over the world are reading about what is happening in the Crowsnest Pass. Perhaps they are reading about Grassy Mountain, perhaps it’s for housing speculation, perhaps it’s our mountain amenities. Either way they are reading about us, and they are reading it in the Pass Herald!