After two decades of surviving local newspaper industry evisceration, The Amsterdam News leadership determined it was time to thrive again. In addition to deep operational investments and improvements, our “I Believe in Black Journalism” was created to better reach, inform and inspire our remarkable loyal current print and digital readers while also capturing the engagement and interest of new potential readers, especially those younger than our traditional subscribers. This multiple platform campaign includes 1) the creation of “Editorially Black” a free email newsletter released every weekday, sent to not only our traditional print subscribers, but to new audiences with a highly assertive email build strategy 2) the reimagining of a new mobile enabled web newspaper slated to launch the end of September 2021 that seeks to offer high levels of reader interactivity such as a Community Calendar where our over 125,000 weekly digital readers can directly input community events and non profit happenings in the black community 3) launching an Amsterdam News E-Edition and promoting it heavily with our print subscription options to grow our verified subscription numbers – essential to advertising revenue stabilization and growth 4) finally, encouraging readers across all platforms to donate to our work to keep black journalism alive – and become a “Black Journalism Believer”
This “I Believe in Black Journalism” campaign reflects our ongoing digital transformation from a legacy print institution. For example, “Editorially Black” is an important tool we can use to expand our readership in a way that resonates with digital natives. We expanded our email list from less than a 1,000 to more than 3,000 in just a few short weeks and on pace to shortly exceed 10,000 to reach our goal of 50,000 and then 100,000 as quickly as possible. Additionally, “Editorially Black” has increased both clickthrough and engagement to our website, critical to our ongoing efforts to reach, inform and inspire more readers online.