The Signpost expands to deliver free to Placitas, Bernalillo

• Advertisers can now reach 10,000 households monthly 
• Email newsletters provide original reporting 4 days a week

From the publisher

If you’re reading this issue in Placitas or Bernalillo there’s a good chance it came to you via mail, for free. 

Many Placitas readers will remember the monthly print issues mailed to every household until 2022. When we considered rising printing costs and declining post-Covid advertising revenue, along with pressure to cover big public decisions that happened faster than a monthly print schedule allowed, we decided to move to a weekly free pickup edition with daily online and newsletter coverage.

Thanks to a grant from Press Forward, we have been able to experiment with ways to deliver more news for readers across one of New Mexico’s largest counties with few other local news options. Feedback from our reader survey this past fall told us different readers want both print and digital news, but for different reasons. We’re listening. 

Partnerships with the Citizen Media Group, Local News Fund and the journalism programs at  UNM and NMSU helped us bring student journalists in our newsroom covering the Signpost and nearby Corrales Comment. Reader donations and advertisers helped us hire a part-time editor, then create our first full-time reporter position. That investment in people and newsgathering is slowly paying off.

Over the past two years, our digital editions have seen huge growth. Our 4-day-a-week email editions now get more than 10,000 reads weekly, almost 5 times the reach of our print editions. Lower digital ad rates also mean local businesses can reach more readers online with us at prices cheaper than buying Facebook or Google ads – a bargain for readers and advertisers alike.

A new Signpost

We are proud to serve communities that still want a local paper, but we are not immune to the economic realities that continue to force publishers nationwide to adapt or close. Just since January, the costs to print and deliver this paper have gone up about 15%. Now, just as we go to print, new tariffs on Canadian newsprint – the source for 80% of US newspapers – threaten to add another 20%. (President Trump’s 2018 tariffs on newsprint were eventually dropped, but costs never went back down).

Add that to lower ad revenue from local advertisers and government agencies who are cutting spending too and, well, you get the picture.

That’s why, starting this month, The Signpost  is evolving to meet readers where they are: online for daily news and in print for features, investigative reporting and community updates that remind us why we love it here.

This and future issues of The Signpost will now be mailed for free to almost 10,000 households in Placitas and the Bernalillo during the last week of the month. Additional copies are available for free pickup in newspaper boxes and libraries across the entire county including Rio Rancho, Jemez, Cuba and Cochiti Lake. Legals and public notices are still available from our partners at nm.news.

Our website and 4-day-a-week email editions are getting an upgrade, too. 

Email subscribers have already noticed new websites tailored for each community at placitas.nm.news and bernalillo.nm.news. Digital subscriptions are still free, of course.

For advertisers, the change provides a great opportunity to reach every household in two of the largest communities in our area for about ½ the cost of mailing every household themselves. 

Longtime residents have seen The Signpost change with our communities and through each change The Signpost has stayed committed to the idea that what happens here matters here. 

We hope you value having a local paper as much as we value making it. 

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Keep up with The Signpost

Readers
Bookmark your local news online: nm.news
Advertisers
Call (505-300-4087), email (sales@newmexico.news) or visit us online (nm.news) to see our new ad rates for reaching 10,000 digital reads each week and 10,000 households every month.