By A. Cool Creighton

It has long been understood that the demographics of readership are changing. We still have loyal readers of the physical newspaper and we hope that continues for a long to come.
Locally owned and operated community newspapers are important to the health of a community and, as we all know, they have undergone a lot of turbulence and change over the years, yet the importance of such publications still remains.
Creating and delivering good journalism and community news is a constant challenge and doing it in a way that keeps it relevant is important. In looking at the success stories of community newspapers staying viable, we see that their management had to take steps.
One common thing publishers have done is to switch business models to respond to demographics and technology. Its not even enough to switch business models but, in the newspaper business, it becomes important to adopt new business models dynamically. That’s exactly what we are doing at The Alpine Mountaineer.
For a very long time, the staff at the Mountaineer has recognized the importance of delivering high-quality content via the newspaper. We have also understood that we need to deliver it digitally in a format that still sticks to the community news approach, but that makes use of digital media to engage readers and consumers of that content.
That’s why, after six months of development, we have gone live with our new online edition. This website, thealpinemountaineer.com is designed to incorporate the current content of our newspaper but also add to that features that are engaging and relevant to a wider audience.
What appears in print isn’t always translatable to digital delivery so we have rebranded the website to reflect a sleeker feel while retaining mountain aesthetics. The color pallet derives from the natural colors of the mountains we live in. The Alpine Mountaineer retains its feel, while being cleaner and stronger. We are making our website easier to navigate and have optimized it for handheld devices. We have made it more easily sharable to social media which helps to spread stories faster.
Readers can now subscribe online with a choice of subscription plans. We will be adding streaming content soon and will be able to deliver breaking news stories in real time.
Our advertisers will see benefit from advertising on our new site as a result of professional Search Engine Optimization and we will be able to offer active social media integration of advertising.
While our new site isn’t completely developed yet, it is in the process and we will be rolling out improvements and additions regularly over the next several months.
We invite readers to take a look at the new site for free for the next few weeks while we tighten up the design and add content. We hope this new online edition will bring value to advertisers and readers alike.
For questions, suggestions, criticisms or accolades, please contact us at [email protected].