Thank you to our readers and advertisers for helping us celebrate our 25th year publishing the good news in our great communities. It has been a challenging year trying to cover news events, cancelled sports events and the decrease in public meetings and gatherings. Our staff has gone above and beyond in adjusting to our health crisis and changes in our normal workday.
Even with those challenges the Johnson City News & Neighbor won four national first place awards and one second place honor. Competition included entries from California to New England and into Canada.
First place awards were for ‘Local Business News’ by Scott Robertson’s story on Food City’s re-stocking efforts during the COVID crisis and a second place honor for COVID news coverage. Editor, Dave Ongie won a first place photography award for his sports photo of young rugby players. Judd Shaw, Graphics Supervisor, won first place for desiging the News & Neighbor internet site and publisher, Bill Derby, won first place honors for his weekly personal column.
Publisher, Bill Derby says, “Starting our 25th publishing year is a milestone in our history and is significant for our great staff who helped us in our early years and current staff as well. We take great pride in creating something new and positive for our readers and advertisers each week. We look forward to 2021 as an opportunity to create fresh publishing and technology opportunities to serve our readers and advertisers even better.
“Our focus on covering local good news events have made our communities a great place to raise a family and shop our local businesses which help keep us all employed while supporting our school systems and community government,” Derby added.
The newspaper has the distinct recognition of having the fifth largest audited home delivery in Tennessee with only Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga having slightly more. The News & Neighbor also has the largest home delivery of any daily or weekly newspaper between Knoxville and Roanoke, VA. Those numbers give local and national advertisers the best possible market penetration.
The newspaper’s circulation and readership have continuously been audited since 2002 supporting its 30,300 home delivery in the market. That figure is nearly 72% more coverage than any other local print media.
Regular readership percentages each audit period show News & Neighbor in the top 25% of community newspapers in America. According to the Circulation Verification Council President Tim Bingaman, “The Johnson City News & Neighbor’s readership is astronomical.”
