The Banner launches new "Bridge" product
By Ken Waddell
The Banner The Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner newspapers have always tried to be progressive leaders in the community and in the publishing business. Another progressive step was taken last week as we launched a “bridge” product called mywestman.ca. I’m calling it a bridge product because it will form a bridge between newspapers and the Internet. Readers and advertisers will have the advantages of both the Internet and a print-on-paper product. We have contracted with a well known website production company, the Sunrize Group, to work with us and provide the most up to date technology available on the Internet. Sunrize Group will supplement our own high standards of in-house web design , development and maintenance. Once a month, a wide circulation section is being published by both Banners under the mywestman flag. Every day www.mywestman.ca is being updated with news content, a large business directory four great weather forecasts and regular updates from TSN, CTV and the entertainment world. As publisher of two community newspapers, I have long recognized the need to have a strong web presence. The Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner have long had good web sites. This new web presence is being linked to our current web sites. Businesses will be able to place their ads on mywestman.ca or link their web sites to mywestman.ca. Through mywestman.ca they can reach their hometown, their region or the world. The Banners currently cover every household, every week in their areas. In fact the Neepawa Banner is the largest rural paper in all of western Manitoba. Staying ahead of the pack has been a long tradition at the Neepawa and Rivers Banners. We were the first newspaper in rural Manitoba to switch to digital photography, among the first to have a web site, one of the first to send our pages electronically to our printer. Now we have local and regional web sites that serve the needs of not only our local and regional readers and advertisers but readers and advertisers from around the world. Newspapers around the world are feeling the effects of the Internet. Many large daily newspapers are experiencing big drops in advertising revenue and readership as readers turn more and more to the “Net”. Newspapers will always have a place. Even the most ardent web users say they like to sit back and read their newspaper. However, it’s no secret that the web is looming both large and useful in everybody’s life. A newspaper has its limits. To reach more and more people a newspaper has to print more and more copies. And it has to publish more and more pages. Both of those moves are very expensive. That’s why the big daily papers mentioned earlier are losing revenue and experiencing actual losses in many cases. They have priced themselves out of the market compared to local papers and the Internet. If a newspaper wanted to cover all of Westman with a print only product the cost of an ad would be prohibitive for most advertisers. The Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner weekly paper editions, along with the monthly print product mywestman will run in full partnership with our existing web sites to offer the ultimate in value and reach for local and Westman customers. In addition to the web presence and the traditional newspaper the Banner offers a full range of web site design, full colour and black and white printing of all kinds and office supplies at both locations.
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