This is it — the Richmond News is going 100-per-cent digital.
It’s with a sense of pride for our past accomplishments but also a keen eye to the future that we have made the decision to stop our print edition, with next week’s Richmond News to be the last to roll off the presses.
We acknowledge the transition might not be easy for those who like to hold a paper copy of the Richmond News in their hands, something that’s been a fixture in the community for more than 45 years.
As we shift to the digital only era, we want to express our immense gratitude to our readers, carriers and advertisers who have been loyal to our print product for almost half a century.
But we’re not going away.
We believe the future holds great promise as we’ve been investing in our digital platform to bring local Richmond news to our readers faster and better.
Our newsroom team is still reporting daily on hyper-local stories in Richmond, and they’ve been getting training to make sure our stories are spread far and wide.
The news side won’t change, it’s just our delivery side that is seeing a transformation.
Instead of delivering a printed copy of the News to your doorstep once a week, we are delivering Richmond stories to Richmond readers — and readers around the world — every day, 24/7, on our website.
And we deliver news daily to your email inbox.
Not just once a week. Every day.
Page views multiply
Five years ago, when I took the helm of the Richmond News, our monthly page views were at 300,000.
Compare that to 1.7 million page views in July, our record month this year so far — the month we were blocked by Facebook from sharing our stories on its platforms.
That means our stories were viewed on average 55,000 times every day in July.
This digital journey began many years ago when we started with a website, moved to posting stories daily and then expanded to daily newsletters.
We want you to keep up with the news in Richmond in the post-print era.
The easiest way is to sign up for the daily newsletter — if you scan the QR code above in the photo gallery, you’ll be taken straight to the newsletter sign-up.
Or just go to Richmond-News.com and scroll to the bottom of the home page to find the newsletter sign-up button. The newsletter will be delivered to your email at 8 a.m. every day — for free!
Walk down memory lane
So, as we transition to this new era, it’s time for you to take a walk down memory lane with us.
The Richmond News’ last edition next week will be a commemorative one and we want you to send in your memories of your local newspaper.
Were you a carrier?
Were you an advertiser?
Were you featured in a story in our paper?
What news stories do you remember?
Which news stories made you happiest?
Which ones irked you the most?
Send your submissions to [email protected] — by Sunday latest — and we’ll print as many as we can — and of course they will all go online.
