Behind the Scenes: A Massive Thank You and Upcoming Changes at the Dispatch
This week, the New Mexico Local News Fund (NMLNF) provided the Mountainair Dispatch with a $4,000 grant payment, with funding assistance from the Santa Fe Community Foundation. I am grateful to the NMLNF for all of its help in supporting rural news, as their efforts go beyond funding. The NMLNF has also offered outstanding training to the Mountainair Dispatch and other local news providers, including the Edgewood Independent, the Cloudcroft Reader, and The Ratonian. The NMLNF's grant funding will assist in a development you may have already noticed here at the Mountainair Dispatch: an advertising management system. I hope the ad management system will allow the Mountainair Dispatch to be profitable enough to offer free access to all readers of local news without subscriptions.
The Dispatch will convert its subscription model to a membership model that will provide special benefits to members, including in-person and virtual networking for small businesses (this is hoped to replace the Greater East Mountain Chamber of Commerce's networking efforts) and access to events hosted by the Mountainair Dispatch.
To alleviate the crisis of the overwhelming number of adoptable animals in local animal shelters, the Dispatch has also reached out to local animal shelters and has begun to provide them with free advertising to encourage the public to adopt pets. Beginning today, you will start to see the profiles of adoptable animals at the Torrance County Animal Shelter. Other shelters will also be able to share their adoptable animals. This is possible due to the generous support of the NMLNF as well as the Mountainair Dispatch's current advertisers, so please be sure to support those advertisers and please consider advertising in the Dispatch so that we can continue to offer this service.
With the change in advertising, new prices will be coming that reflect more options for ad placement in multiple locations on every page of the Dispatch website. I hope that the advertising on the Dispatch website can be a resource especially for small businesses located throughout the East Mountains in particular and New Mexico generally (although I certainly welcome all advertisers). You can expect to see the new advertising rates shortly.
So local businesses can see how advertising in the Mountainair Dispatch can help them, I am offering a free week of advertising to all new advertisers interested in working with me. Just contact me at todd@mountainairdispatch.com to get started. I can work with you on developing a campaign to help your business, and you don't even need to hire a graphic designer or other marketing professional to get your brand out there.