Revealing the results
As promised, the results of the Marion County Record reader survey have been processed. Talk around the office has centered around the comments and statistics about what people are reading.
As expected, the best read items each week are obituaries and "social" news — weddings, engagements, birth announcements, followed closely by the "docket" news — traffic, court, and jail.
Letters to the editor are widely read, as are city and county news, memories, editorials, and columns by Norma Hannaford and Donna Bernhardt.
Weakest areas were the JP Doodles cartoon, Plains Folk columns, country correspondents, and church schedules.
While correspondents didn't rank highly in the overall numbers, they each have a faithful audience. Several readers commented they take the paper especially to keep up on news in outlying areas like Tampa, Lost Springs, and Ramona.
Other categories such as features, sports, school board and hospital district coverage, classified advertising, and public notices ranked somewhere in the middle with most readers.
By the numbers
According to the survey, 93 percent of readers "always" or "sometimes" read letters to the editor. County news also showed 93 percent while city news had 90 percent.
About 91 percent of the readers surveyed read obituaries. Social news followed with 89 percent and court news and "Memories" with 88 percent.
Editorials are read by 86 percent and feature articles by 84 percent. Personal columns, "Random Thoughts" by Norma Hannaford and "Miscellany" by Donna Bernhardt are read by 75 percent.
Planning commissions, hospital districts, school boards, and other government coverage averaged 70 percent.
Classified advertising, public notices, and school news captured 66 percent of the readership.
Correspondents, including Burdick, Lost Springs, Ramona, Tampa, Marion Senior Center, Marion Manor, and St. Luke Living Center, averaged 53 percent.
Plains Folk columns and Pat Wick's column averaged 48 percent.
Comments
Comments generally were positive, with many remarking the newspaper is doing a good job and presenting a more positive attitude toward the community.
Some were specific in their comments:
"Recent changes have been positive."
"I've enjoyed the feature articles on older homes in Marion
"I enjoy the Marion County Record and appreciate Rowena Plett's good coverage of events."
"Rhino pictures are great. Makes me look for them and should make the businesses proud of participating. Lately the paper seems to be in a more positive manner. Positive beats negative every time. Keep up the good work."
"We think you are doing a very good job. You have brought 'new life' to the Marion County Record. You are on top of it all — and we appreciate your work."
A few people asked that we find country correspondents for Pilsen, Antelope, and Youngtown. That's something we'll be working on in the near future.
Some people miss Bill Meyer's editorials and would like to see more history-related and human interest stories.
A few readers plain just don't like parts of the paper and they were candid in their opinions:
"Poor reporting of accidents
"Spelling could be improved."
"More in-depth coverage of city and county commission meetings."
"We want accurate, objective reporting of the news. We really don't care what someone else thinks. We want to hear the news and make up our own minds about any subject."
"I do not like Donna's family columns. Very boring."
"More coverage of Centre schools."
"News in the paper has gone downhill in the past couple of years."
We've sifted through all the comments, crunched the numbers, and now are looking at ways to implement some of the suggestions.
Just because the survey is over doesn't mean we don't want to hear from readers. Our doors are open and we're willing to listen to comments and suggestions.
— DONNA BERNHARDT
