PUBLISHER: City Council Should Make MyRye.com “Official” Paper This Wednesday
A letter from MyRye.com Publisher Jay Sears
The Rye City Council should make MyRye.com its “official City newspaper”.
On Christmas day, I published my annual publisher letter – detailing the existential threat to local journalism. If you want it – support it, I said.
It appears City staff, Mayor and Council either disagree or missed reading my holiday call to arms.
On the agenda for the City Council’s first 2023 meeting is the designation of the “official City newspaper” and the recommendation to designate Gannett’s Journal News–based in White Plains–as the official newspaper of Rye. To the winner go the spoils–whatever modest amount the City spends on legal notices during the year.
Make It MyRye.com
Why not make the official newspaper MyRye.com?
We are (strangely enough! … ) entirely focused on Rye. MyRye.com:
- Publishes every day (and we have the ability to publish 24 hours a day as we don’t have a printer or a printing press and are 100% digital), and
- We routinely reach 15,000+ users each month.
Let’s Do the Math
The Journal News serves Westchester (population 1,004,456) and Rockland (population 338,329) and has a daily circulation of 42,612 and Sunday circulation of 71,123 (1). The Journal News no longer publishes on Saturday.
Rye has a population of 16,592–we represent just 1.24% of the combined population of Westchester and Rockland Counties–the service area of the Journal News. If we assume the readership of the Journal News is proportional to population, apply the 1.24% to the circulation numbers:
| Journal News | Rye population % of readership | Circulation reach of Journal News in Rye |
| 42,612 daily circulation | 1.24% | 527 total circulation |
| 71,123 Sunday circulation | 1.24% | 879 total circulation |
And if you want to keep going–apply assumptions of how many readers take a paper out of its plastic bag, read it and take time to find the legal notices buried in a second or third section.
MyRye.com wins the math contest.
Other Requirements
The Council agenda states “Rye City Charter requires that the Council designate a newspaper circulated regularly at least once a week in the city as the official newspaper of the city. A daily newspaper provides the City staff with the most flexibility in meeting notice deadlines.”
The Journal News only publishes six days a week. Gannett, the owner of the Journal News, ceased publishing Saturday papers this past March on 136 of its newspapers including the Journal News.
MyRye.com publishes all week–and because we are digital, we can update stories, advertising and legal notices–at any time.
MyRye.com wins the requirements contest.
Apply Our Rye Pride to Local Journalism
This year we will comfortably surpass our 8,000th story about Rye.
8,000 stories.
One thing has been constant since I began writing about Rye in 2006. The vast majority of us are fiercely proud of our town and go out of our way to support and defend it.
So this Wednesday evening, is the Rye City Council ready to write a new story–one that wins the math test, the requirements test and supports the hyperlocal future of the fourth estate?
The Rye City Council should make MyRye.com its “official City newspaper”.
# # #
(1) These circulation numbers are from 2009 and are likely lower today. More recent numbers were not readily available.
