Smart journalism led us to hit our goal
We set an aggressive target for new subscriptions this month. As recently as Sunday, I thought we would fall short. I was wrong.
On Thursdays in March, The Ledger is marking its 4th birthday by taking readers behind the scenes of our operation. Today, we are recapping the month and explaining our subscriber goal.
Well, we’re approaching the end of Charlotte Ledger Month — our month-long series exploring how we operate and why.
As we said at the beginning, we aren’t doing this out of narcissism. But we think it’s a good idea to let our readers know what we’re up to, and what we’re hoping to accomplish. And we are celebrating our fourth birthday, so you have to cut us some slack, right?
On Thursdays this month, we explored the business side of The Ledger, the changing environment for local news and how we decide what to cover. And we sprinkled in other bits about our operation and a few reader comments throughout the month.
We also announced a goal of getting to 2,500 paying subscribers by the end of March, which is tomorrow. The goal required adding nearly 100 net new subscribers — that is, the number of new sign-ups, minus those who cancel or whose credit cards expire. We usually do closer to 40 a month. I’ll be honest: Last weekend, I didn’t think we were going to get there. As of Sunday, more than 4/5 of the way through the month, we were only about halfway to our goal. We added 56 net new subscribers between March 1 and March 26, but we were at 2,460 — still 40 subscriptions short.
But over the last few days, we quickly made up ground. We picked up 5 new subscribers on Monday, 15 on Tuesday and 30 on Wednesday. As of last night, we were at 2,510 — 10 above our goal for the month. We hit our goal, which means we will throw a birthday celebration and invite all of our paid members to join us for beer and wine, on us. We’ll get planning and let you know.
How did that happen? What’s responsible for that late surge? This is the best part — It was by doing what we do best: delivering smart, original information that Charlotteans can’t find anywhere else.
On Monday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools released new student assignment maps affecting 23 south Charlotte schools — that’s tens of thousands of students. Our managing editor, Cristina Bolling, has been covering that issue doggedly for months and has sat through countless parent meetings at different schools and talked to many CMS officials and elected leaders. With three kids, she and her husband have plenty to juggle, but Cristina spent her Monday night at Myers Park High School to get the details of the new boundaries, and we sent out an email alert about them at 8:03 p.m.
Cristina then went home and stayed up late writing a second story, filled with context and looking deeper into parents’ concerns and some of the top issues in the reassignment. We sent that out as a special edition at 7:42 a.m. Tuesday morning, with the full version to our paying members and a partial version to our free readers.
Providing information that people care about is proving to be a winning strategy for The Ledger. This was the scene at Myers Park High on Monday, as CMS released new student assignment maps affecting 23 schools. (Ledger photo by Cristina Bolling)
She then spent much of Tuesday, again into the night, trying to figure out how to describe the changes at each of the 23 schools in plain English, so that parents could understand. It wasn’t easy to decipher CMS’ presentation, but Cristina did it. We sent that one out in our regular edition of The Ledger on Wednesday morning at 8 a.m., with the complete version going only to paid members.
The response from our readers has been tremendous. Emails to us poured in, with no prompting from us:
“Today’s article is exactly why I read The Charlotte Ledger! Well-researched. Well-written. Timely. Very WELL DONE!”
“Excellent coverage of the CMS rezoning. You captured all the important points and the nuances/emotions of this topic. I eagerly await your updates.”
“Love the CMS coverage! It is why I subscribed.”
“I just want to say what a terrific job you are doing researching and reporting on the school reassignments. Your great job distilling all this complicated stuff will show that The Ledger is a great value on accurate and helpful local reporting.”
Small but mighty: The Ledger has a small staff of three full-timers. Other local media organizations have far more resources. But we are able to share information that nobody else is providing — and readers find value in that, and are willing to pay for it.
To me, this example perfectly illustrates what we are building with The Charlotte Ledger: We can provide useful, relevant, insightful information for our community, and we have developed a business model that encourages that approach.
We’re going to keep it up. That’s what we do.
Thanks for helping us get there.
A few other Ledger notes:
Referral winners
We ran a referral contest this month, tracking the number of new subscribers from reader referrals using the “share” button. The top people who referred, through Wednesday, with the number of Ledger subscribers they generated (free and paid):
Deborah G., 11 free, 1 paid
Jon G., 7 free
(tie) F.C. Rogers, 2 free
(tie) Eric F., 2 free
(tie) Steve S., 2 free
We’ll be in contact with the winners and send the Harris Teeter gift cards. We welcome you to share The Ledger with friends.
40 Over 40 event
Yesterday, we announced the winners of this year’s Charlotte Ledger 40 Over 40 Awards, presented by U.S. Bank. Get your tickets to the fun 1980s-themed celebration April 27! Early-bird pricing ends Friday. ($10 discount for Ledger members: code here)
About The Ledger’s pricing
In the last week, we started offering free readers a 30-day free trial to the paid version of The Ledger. It lets people sample the goods before purchasing. (If you’re on our free list and want in, feel free to sign up. The offer ends tomorrow.)
You might have noticed that we don’t do aggressive, rock-bottom introductory pricing, like you see elsewhere. We have what we consider a fair price — $99 a year, or $9 a month — and we stick with it. A 30-day free trial of our paid versions, though, is helpful, as it lets people see what they’ve been missing and encourages subscriptions at the usual price.
However, we happen to think that introductory offers can be unfair to loyal customers: They give a break to people with no history of supporting your business, while longtime customers continue to pay full price. To remedy that inequity, we’re going to expand the offer to our paid members, too: If you are reading this and are a paying member of The Charlotte Ledger, and you would like a free month, email support@cltledger.com by the end of this week with the subject line “free month,” and we will extend your subscription by a month. I think that’s the fair thing to do, and a small way to say thanks for supporting us.
Other ways to support
If you’re looking for other ways to support The Ledger’s brand of local journalism, you could upgrade to a Premium membership, consider sponsoring a newsletter (email support@cltledger.com) or post your event on our new events board. If you have a news tip or a story idea, feel free to drop us a line at editor@cltledger.com. We have compiled a more complete list of ways to help here.
Exclusive members-only series coming
The week of April 10, we are going to power down regular newsletters and give our paying members a special series called “Trials of the Century,” examining several Charlotte court trials from decades past. We think you’ll like it.
If you’re not a Ledger member, you’ll receive nothing from us that week, while members receive this interesting and original series. Yet another reason to join!
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That’s it! Thanks for reading.
—Tony Mecia, The Charlotte Ledger
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Related Ledger articles:
“A peek inside the Ledger’s command center(s)” (March 23)
“Local news: after turmoil, rays of hope” (March 16)
“Happy Charlotte Ledger Month” (March 2)
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🎧 Ledger origin story podcast: Listen to Tony and Cristina discuss building The Charlotte Ledger in a recent episode of The Charlotte Ledger Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other major podcast platforms.
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Contributing photographer/videographer: Kevin Young, The 5 and 2 Project