Why newspaper ad sales teams love Discover America’s Story.

Posted on November 23, 2015 by Discover America's Story

At its core, Discover America’s Story is about newspapers making more money.  The program provides a sales team with tools to sell additional advertising – often to businesses that generally do not purchase ads. Why would they suddenly be motivated?

Discover America’s Story has tapped into the desire that businesses have to be good neighbors.  They want to demonstrate how much they care for the communities in which they operate and sponsoring a newspaper’s effort to digitally preserve its historic archive is an opportunity that most businesses can’t and won’t pass up.  They are helping create a historic resource documenting the community’s past that will be accessible for generations to come.

“I have been a member of this community all my life and when I was given the opportunity to participate in Discover America’s Story and preserve Mooreland’s history through The Mooreland Leader archives, I jumped at the chance,” said Dustin Donley, owner, Dustin Donley Construction Services LLC in Mooreland, OK.

Discover America’s Story gives a newspaper’s ad sales team the tools and templates it needs to get started today selling ads against archive content.  There’s no obligation – nothing to lose.  All revenue generated belongs to the newspaper.

When the newspaper is ready to digitize its archives, Discover America’s Story can help not only digitize but host online if the publisher desires.  The best part and what sets this program apart from so many others is that the newspaper retains all ownership and control of the digital archive.

Contact us to learn how you can get started with Discover America’s Story today.

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Need to digitally preserve your archives? Give it a try.

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Discover America's Story

tryPublishers who are already using Discover America’s Story to generate fresh revenue, some of which they can use to digitize their loose and bound volume archives, say showing potential advertisers/sponsors the online archive has made it simple to secure sponsors.  Once they see the newspapers online, they almost always sign on.

Publisher of The Mooreland Leader in Oklahoma, Tim Schnoebelen, shared, “With Discover America’s Story ready-to-go ad program, we were able to easily sell community sponsorships and generate the revenue we needed to preserve and put our archive online.”  He was able to initiate archive scanning and continue at a much faster pace than he originally anticipated.

Publishers have an opportunity to try a shipment and see how it works.  Send some of your bound volumes, have them scanned and safely returned to you, then show you prospective advertisers the online archive and encourage them to become a sponsor of your archive preservation project.  Revenue generated from sponsorships can help you pay for future shipments and scanning should you decide to continue.

All newspapers are scanned intact and publishers own all digital scans and are in complete control of where they are hosted online.

Give it a try today. Contact Discover America’s Story to get started.

 

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What we learned at NNA.

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Discover America's Story

IMG_20151001_101254Our Discover America’s Story team is just back from the NNA Convention in St. Charles – it was a great opportunity for us to introduce our program to a large number of newspaper publishers. It was well received – after all, the program is designed specifically to help small town and community newspaper publishers generate new revenue they can use for archive digitization.  The response to the program was terrific and were excited to have already heard from attendees this week.

One question that came up over and over again is about how we scan bound volume archives.  Publishers told us repeatedly that they had previously looked into digitizing their books but were told the volumes would need to be cut apart.  A couple of publishers said they hired a scanning company that returned the bound volumes in pieces –  or as they told us, “in body bags.”  It was heartbreaking to hear especially knowing, as we do, that taking the books apart is, in most cases, entirely unnecessary.

Our program creates beautiful scans from bound volumes without ever taking the volumes apart.  Our scanners specialize in book scanning and are experts in handling delicate and fragile newspapers.  The entire process handles the historic papers with care – they are shipped in military grade, secure containers, get the white glove treatment when they get to the scanning center, are safely scanned and returned intact to the publisher.

Check out the program today – take a look at the papers we’ve scanned that now have their archives hosted on our site for people to search and explore for free.  Contact us if you have questions about our scanning program or just want to learn more about the process.  If you attended NNA, remember to ask about our special convention offer.

>>Click here to read more about archive scanning issues to avoid.

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If you attended the NNA convention, don’t miss this!

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Discover America's Story

PROBLEM: Your newspaper’s bound volume archive sometimes feels like a ball and chain — you must maintain it year after year in stewardship to your community — but you are running a business with assets that should make money.

SOLUTION: Discover America’s Story is a nationally branded program designed to engage the public and create excitement in your community about digitizing your historic archives. Your sponsors will pay you to digitize your town’s printed history.

IN A NUTSHELL: You sell advertising and promotion in your print edition to local institutional and community organizations that are eager to demonstrate their caring, committed support for their local community — by preserving your newspaper archive online.

You owe it to yourself to check out this simple, yet highly effective business model.

Our special offer extended to NNA attendees:  we’ll scan and host a trial shipment of your bound volume archives free. With your trial shipment scanned and accessible online, you can show your advertisers exactly what they will be investing in — the preservation of your town’s history!

This offer is available to NNA convention attendees for a limited time so contact us soon. There is no cost or obligation.

 

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Special Offer for NNA Attendees

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Discover America's Story

nnaDiscover America’s Story is a proven new ad sales program that is helping small town and community newspaper publishers from across the country generate a fresh stream of revenue that they can use to digitize their loose printed and bound volume archives – and profit along the way!

It’s easy to get started and this week, at NNA’s 129th Annual Convention and Trade Show in St. Charles, we’re extending a special offer to attending publishers. Stop by the Discover America’s Story exhibit any time during the convention and ask us about the exclusive opportunity for attendees.

The Mooreland Leader in northwest Oklahoma was the first newspaper in the country to use Discover America’s Story and its publisher Tim Schnoebelen tells us it took him only days to secure his first new advertisers. Tim tell us,

“With Discover America’s Story’s ready-to-go ad program, we were able to easily sell community sponsorships and generate revenue we needed to preserve and put our historic archive online.”

Nationally recognized Northwest newspaperman Tom Mullen had this to say:

“Having a ready-to-go program for generating a new source of revenue to help fund archive preservation is what we’ve been looking for. It will allow us to proceed more quickly with scanning and deliver to the community fresh new online archive content they can search, enjoy and share.”

Publishers can contact us today to find out how to get started.  If you’d like to see the archive of your hometown or local newspaper become online accessible, encourage the publisher to learn more about Discover America’s Story.

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Evidence of ‘parallel universe’ discovered in 1980s small-town Louisiana newspaper archive

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Discover America's Story

BearsAt SmallTownPapers, we regularly monitor activity on our archive pages – we analyze which archives receive the most traffic and we work to understand where the interest originates.  One of the most visited pages got our attention big time – it’s the TV listings for one particular week in 1985.  We wondered why this has garnered such intense interest in recent days.

The frequently visited archive listing shows page 6 of the September 12, 1985 edition of a small weekly newspaper from rural Louisiana, The Ponchatoula Times.  What’s so interesting is that the item drawing people to this page is the 7:00 AM Saturday listing of “The Berenstein Bears” – sandwiched in between a show called “Snorks” and the James Bond thriller, “Never Say Never Again.”  Why in the world are people looking back 30 years at a listing of “The Berenstein Bears”?

The visits are coming from sites which are trying to determine whether the children’s book and television series is, in fact, the Berenstein or Berenstain Bears. What was it originally and when did it change (if it did in fact change)?  A Facebook page is dedicated to the discussion (facebook.com/therealberensteinbears) and several websites explore how the spelling of the beloved series might have changed over time. According to published articles, the authors insist the title was and is “Berenstain.”  Theories of parallel universes and mass memory distortion are explored as possible explanations for the dual spellings.  The discussion hit a fever pitch last month and links to the archive page have been strong ever since.

Perhaps most compelling to us is that, in an attempt to answer the question, people turn to the most trusted source available – the community’s newspaper.  They will search the archives, knowing that newspapers would have made every effort to ensure the reference was accurate.

We often think of newspaper archive access as most critical for people conducting historical research or genealogists tracing their ancestry – but the truth is that there’s so much more that people want to find in their town’s newspaper archives.  People want to be able to easily search through archives in a quest to answer a variety of questions about their lives, their community, and the world in which they live. Having easy, online access to past issues of a community’s history has uses far beyond the obvious.

*SmallTownPapers, Inc. is the parent company of Discover America’s Story.

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Newspaper Generates Profits with Discover America’s Story

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Discover America's Story

MoorelandLeaderAd
Congratulations to The Mooreland (OK) Leader and its publisher Tim Schnoebelen for their ongoing success with Discover America’s Story!

The program has helped the newspaper generate revenue – some of which Tim is using to digitize his historic bound volume newspaper archive.  The Mooreland Leader is also a role model for other small town and community newspapers looking for a way to make a digital, online accessible and searchable archive a reality. Perhaps best of all, this ad sales program can last for a set amount of time or you can make it ongoing.

Contact Discover America’s Story today to learn how you can get started generating fresh new revenue for your newspaper!

See The Mooreland Leader archive by clicking here.

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The real story about digitizing newspaper archives.

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Discover America's Story

Newspaper publishers are finding Discover America’s Story a great way to generate new revenue – money they can use to finally digitize and put their historic archives online for everyone to search and explore.  We’re finding that many people have some misconceptions about digitizing their archives.  Below is a repost from our scanning division, ArchiveInABox, which is helpful for anyone moving forward with digitizing newspaper archives.  Publishers interested in working with Discover America’s Story and having their archive available on the program’s website, can get started by contacting us today.

(Originally posted by www.archiveinabox.com/news)

It’s amazing what you might hear from a scanning provider who wants to earn your business — here are the top “fascinating falsehoods” regularly pitched to publishers:

  1. Bound book archives must be cut apart to scan and digitize.  FALSE
    No, your books do not have to be cut.  We scan all material intact including delicate materials like aging newspapers, whether loose or in bound volumes.
  2. Printed archives have to be microfilmed before digitizing.  FALSE
    Scanning can be done directly from printed material such as bound volumes, and will yield a superior image quality over that of microfilm. This means photos and illustrations will be clear and sharp. Scanning from microfilm should be done only if you don’t have the original newspapers.
  3. If you scan from the original printed page, there will be bleedthrough from the other side.  FALSE
    Our scans do not pick up bleedthrough – the pages are clean and easy to read.
  4. You should always scan to PDF file format.  FALSE
    PDF file format is great for searching and accessing individual editions, but limits what can be done in the online environment. Always insist that your digital copies are produced in the high resolution TIFF file format — from here you can save to any format, including PDF. ArchiveInABox uses non-proprietary, open source file formats in its hosting program which are far superior to PDF for online searching.
  5. You have to pay a hosting fee to put the digital archive online.  FALSE
    ArchiveInABox provides online hosting for those wanting it — without an additional charge.
  6. You have to license software and pay every year.  FALSE
    With ArchiveInABox, there are no software licensing fees. Our program is all inclusive for a one-time price.
  7. You have to ship your entire archive to our scan center.  FALSE
    When you select ArchiveInABox to produce your digital copies, you receive the benefit of our proven and repeatable production and logistics process, including the use of our heavy duty shipping containers.  You ship small amounts of your archive at any given time.

ArchiveInABox specializes in scanning full size loose and bound printed newspaper archives. We work with hundreds of newspaper publishers and historical stakeholders, such as libraries and historical societies, nationwide.

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Who controls your newspaper’s digital archive?

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Discover America's Story

catchAs word has begun to spread about this month’s launch of Discover America’s Story, small town and community newspaper publishers have been quick to call and ask questions about just how the revenue generating program works. They’ve been looking for ways to generate new revenue and engage new advertisers so they’re delighted to find a proven ad sales program that produces profits and helps them digitally preserve and put their historic archives online.

But, this is the newspaper industry after all, so it’s no surprise that some will ask, “what’s the catch?” Good question.

Quite simply – there isn’t one.

Publishers contact us and learn about strategies they can use to sell advertising against the archive content they have.  As profits come in, the newspaper is able to work with our scanning division (ArchiveInABox) to digitize their print archives which can then be hosted on the Discover America’s Story website.  Each newspaper has a dedicated page where visitors can explore and search the archive pages.

Working with Discover America’s Story, publishers exclusively own and control all the digital copies, and no partnership is required. Publishers receive all of the master scans, which they are free to use in any way they choose, and there is no requirement to publish their digital copies on our websites. We work with publishers on a “pay as you go” basis so there is never a contract commitment to order additional work.

It couldn’t be easier.  Ask Tim Schnoebelen with The Mooreland (OK) Leader who has a new revenue source and online archive thanks to the program.  You can, too.  Contact us today to learn more about how to get started.

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What a digitized archive can do for your newspaper.

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Discover America's Story

SheltonMasonCountyJournal500

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Discover America’s Story’s parent company, SmallTownPapers, has been digitizing small market newspaper archives for years.  Of all of the archives digitized and hosted online, the Shelton-Mason County Journal in Washington state gets the most page views.  The community has demonstrated an intense interest in looking through the archive and sharing what they find with family and friends.

Publisher Tom Mullen spoke with us about his decision to digitize the archive dating back to 1886 and what his community has to say about finally being able to conveniently search and explore it.  Click below to read the Shelton-Mason County Journal Case Study.

SheltonCaseStudy_061015

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