Columbus Pioneer News

Dear Readers,

I regretfully announce here that our Columbus Pioneer operation will cease to print from here on out due in part for lack of advertising sales and subscription purchases. Over the course of six issues and the past two months we have sought out subscriptions and advertisements, and issue number 5, we mailed out directly to all boxholders with a Columbus or Fall River address in the hopes that this would drive extra advertisements and additional subscriptions. We had a goal to maintain at least a fair portion of the advertisers we gained for the one time run of the Feb. 12 mailed out issue. Unfortunately, a much smaller percentage of those advertisers remained than anticipated. Another goal we had from the mailing was to gain subscriptions. In order to do a bulk subscription mailing each week we would have to reach a total of 200. Prior to the mailing we were at approximately 45 subscribers. Most of those 45 subscribers were achieved following a door to door campaign of about 900 homes. We assumed a 4% return on the Door-to-Door campaign. We figured it was safe to assume we would achieve at least a 3% return when we did the boxholder mailing to 4700 homes. This 3% return would have got us very close to the 200 minimum. At this time we have 103 subscribers. We only received a 1% return or about 55 additional subscribers as a result of the bulk mailing. Of course, if given more time this number would probably continue to slowly rise as would the advertising income.

When our feasibility study was done before we began operations, we had assumed a much faster return on subscribers and advertisers. We had hired a professional salesperson at the beginning of our operation, but she was offered a much better job in Madison after our first printing on January 15. After we lost her, we went two weeks before we were able to find another salesperson to replace her. This lack of a sales campaign definitely hurt the progress and time frame that we were under to make this successful. We decided to do the boxholder mailing in an attempt to make up for that lost time and test whether this operation would actually be feasible.

Over the past two months we’ve received enormous support from the community in the form of numerous letters of encouragement on our web site and through the mail. Newsstand sales have been very positive. Although we really appreciate all of your support, we also needed support from the business community and in this tough economic time, we failed to get that.

We are looking at other options to continue the publication, such as, converting to an advertiser and mailing directly to all addresses. If we do this option, we will continue to print news stories and cover city council meetings. We had tremendous success with the first mailing so this option seems possible.

In the meantime, we will cease to print. All 103 subscribers will be refunded their money in the next couple of weeks. Once again, I apologize for any inconveniences and hopefully, we’ll find a viable option. If you have any ideas for us, please feel free to contact us through the web site or via the mail at PO Box 281, Columbus, WI 53925.

Joe Morey, Publisher and Editor