Exciting changes are happening to help bring “Your Hometown Community Newspapers” further into the 21st Century.
Tolosa Press Publisher, Bret Colhouer, is excited, as he and his partners — Dave Diaz and wife, Lani — make a bold move to change up their business model.
Colhouer explained that what has for the past couple of years been three companies — Tolosa Press, Simply Clear Marketing, and 805 Loyal — under one roof, are being merged into one — Simply Clear Marketing & Media.
Tolosa Press, which publishes three, bi-weekly newspapers — The Coast News, The SLO City News and The Bay News — and four magazines — Reveal, 101 Ways to Play, Inspired Health, and Living Lavishly — will no longer exist as an independent entity.
The publications will continue on as before, he explained, they just won’t be under the “Tolosa Press” name.
Simply Clear Marketing, which was formed in 2005 by the Colhouers, with two other partners who left long ago, produces six, Home & Garden Expos — two each in San Luis Obispo, Monterey and Paso Robles — and one Health & Fitness Expo in SLO each year from February to October.
“We have one expo in the spring and one in the fall in each of those communities,” said Colhouer.
And 805 Loyal, which Diaz brought to the company more than 2-years ago, is a web development and social media creation and management company, also specializing in reputation management, video production and text message marketing.
Colhouer explained that reputation management involves answering critiques of a business that might appear on websites like Yelp and Trip Advisor, and live streaming the best reviews onto a company’s website. The service of answering online questions and criticisms also includes answering compliments that a business might receive.
“Research shows that answering the ‘good’ reviews is more important than answering the bad ones. We manage that and create a ‘loyalty’ with our clients’ customer base that they can leverage into even more business.”
The new company, which will be called Simply Clear Marketing & Media, (see: www.simplyclearmarketing.com) will also include taking some big steps into video production. They’ve hired a veteran journalist and online expert, Justin Stoner, specifically to increase the company’s web and social media presence and thus its offerings to advertisers.
“Video is really big in terms of search engines,” Colhouer said. “If you’re doing video, you’re going to get a lot more exposure. It’s more attractive and people are more willing to share it across social media platforms.”
The company will have a team of six working on the video production, and digital publishing end.
The changes are helping the company to get leaner and more efficient, while increasing its offerings.
“Now, we’re one company with an events division, a publishing division and a digital division. This will help us streamline our production process and improve customer service,” said Colhouer, who started with the company with the launching of The Coast News in the Five Cities area back in 2004. “We will be much more organized and streamlined.” The Bay News was started in 1989 as a small bi-weekly mainly covering Los Osos and is the backbone of the publications.
And the online presence of the newspapers is changing as well, he said. The Bay News and Coast News will each have its own new website, with SLO City News remaining at the Tolosa Press site but with a new name. And the social media presence will also change.
“We now have three websites and three social media platforms,” he said. “Each paper will have its own website with unique content. ‘Tolosa Press’ will cease to be.”
And, “Simply Clear Marketing & Media will have its own website as well.” As with any new website, there may be some growing pains that have yet to emerge, but Colhouer said the sites are up now and will be modified to include the other services.
The newspapers came together in 2007 under the Tolosa Press name when the SLO City News, owned by Chris and Mary Gardner, combined with The Bay News and The Coast News, which the Colhouers owned. The Gardners left the company about 3-years ago.
The papers will continue as bi-weeklies (publishing every other Thursday) but with some major content changes as well, Colhouer said, returning the papers to their beginnings.
“There’s something to be said about going back to our roots,” he said. “There’ll be more ‘micro-local’ coverage, more news and local features.”
That means the hefty center section — titled “Central Coast Life” and containing content shared among the three papers — will be cut back opening up more space for news, unique to the individual papers’ circulation areas.
“We want to move back to individual papers covering their individual markets,” he said. They also plan to expand the business news content, expanding the current four pages to eight-10 and shared by all three newspapers in a center section. The name “Central Coast Life” will also be changed.
That section will continue to carry columnists King Harris and Judy Salamacha, Teri Bayus’ “Dinner and a Movie,” and entertainment and community calendar pages, too. And the popular, combined, “Police Blotter” will continue as well in all three papers. And a front page redesign begins with this issue.
“It’ll still be a pretty hefty center section but with more flexibility and more space for more unique stories. There’ll be more of a news hole when we cut the middle section from 24 pages down to 16-18.”
All these changes “have been in the works for pretty much the past year,” he said. “We love publishing newspapers, but we want to compliment it with a more robust digital presence. This will give more options to our advertisers, with more digital advertising options on the individual websites and their social media platforms, too.
“We’ll be sending out more links to our stories. Whatever is in the newspapers will have links sent out on social media platforms and additional advertising opportunities embedded in the digital platforms.”
The changes will give more opportunities for stories to be read, as well as for ads to be seen, he added.
If readers are concerned their local papers have one foot out the door and the other on a banana peel, Colhouer said the opposite is true. “We’re not moving away from our print products,” he said. “We’re spending time, energy and resources to enhance what we’re doing with our newspapers.
“The digital presence is really to shine a brighter light on the print products.”
Despite a trend in recent years of newspapers ceasing publication in favor of online content, with some major news outlets — most notably some national newspapers and news magazines — switching entirely to online, Colhouer said things are turning around for print media.
“Our advertising revenue has grown year after year for the past 10 years,” he said. “People hear that newspapers are a ‘dying breed’ but that’s not true of community newspapers. Community papers have grown year after year in both revenue, readership and relevance.”
Tolosa Press tripled in size over the past 10 years, he added. “We’re not running away from newspapers we’re running towards the future of newspapers.”
He added that some large papers have been moving in the direction of having several smaller papers, focused on local news, instead of just one huge paper with a lot of content that people aren’t much interested in.
“It’s flattering that they’re moving towards our business model,” Colhouer said. “They’re moving towards less frequent publications with web enhancements.”
As a side note, the changes will also affect readers’ email contact with the various editors of The Bay News, Coast News and SLO City News. Instead of the suffix “@tolosapress.com,” the new email address will be “@simplyclearmarketing.com.”
These changes will be reflected in the newspapers’ staff boxes on Page 2.
“We’ll probably leave the Tolosa Press emails up for some time,” Colhouer said, “but all emails will be forwarded to the new addresses.” Return emails will come from the new addresses.
