Brentwood Beat by Jeff Hall
As everyone knows, the newspaper industry is going through massive changes.
As eyeballs and advertising shift in the direction of digital, it makes it harder and harder to cover the cost of printing and distribution.
Giving into the inevitable, the printed Brentwood News will now no longer be delivered to homes. The paper will be delivered to racks only.
In recent years, we have been beefing up our digital offerings – clearly the way of the future.
In particular, I encourage all Brentwoodians to go to BrentwoodNewsLA.com and sign up for our e-newsletter, which comes out far more frequently than the monthly print version.
In that email newsletter – and on the website – you will find links to text, photos and videos with news about our community. The videos are short and snappy.
There is a very cool digital newspaper that appears on the site, as well. When you can click on the image, what you will see will look exactly like the printed version. You can read the paper from front to back, page by page.
The Brentwood News also has quite a following on Facebook. If you see something from Brentwood News on Facebook, be sure to “like” it so you will receive notices relevant to Brentwood from that platform.
When you think about it, delivering a printed newspaper is a pretty darned inefficient process:
1) First, we have to chop down a bunch of trees in order to print the paper;
2) Ink is a fairly nasty substance, not so good for the environment;
3) Then drivers, in their gasoline-fueled cars, drive up and down the streets delivering the paper, spewing out exhaust along the way; and
4) A day or two later, after you have read the paper, into the recycling bin it goes. And, as we all know, the city can’t keep up with all the recycling demands and so it’s possible your printed newspaper ends up in a landfill.
I personally will miss the home-delivered paper. I’ve been in the business of printing newspapers for a very long time.
I want to give credit where credit is due. I think the folks over at Mirror Media Group, publisher of the Brentwood News, are quite savvy when it comes to digital media.
I think the team has done a really good job preparing us for a more digital future. And now, here we are. Though we won’t deliver a printed newspaper to homes, there are plenty of ways to keep on top of the news.
If you aren’t receiving the e-newsletter, go to BrentwoodNewsLA.com right now and sign up for the newsletter (the signup is on the right side of the website, partway down the page).
Also, please be sure to send a link to this message to all your Brentwood friends. The more people who receive the newsletter, the better job we can all do communicating as a community.
Upward and onward! Here’s to more progress in 2020.
