In selling advertising for the Community Newspaper, I see clearly how content is the key to developing readership.

The community newspaper has the advantage of publishing local news stories that are credible, unlike say  Nextdoor where neighborhood “news” comes with a heavy dose of unsubstantiated rants that devolve into a verbal brawl. 

Relevance is important for attracting readers, credibility for making them take the content seriously. 

The content must also be something readers return to regularly.

You can get anyone’s attention briefly if the headline is sensational: this explains the success of the Weekly World News. (“MERMAID FOUND IN SARDINE CAN” is one of my favorites)

Readership is about creating content people seek out and return to regularly.

When I thought about newspapers I grew up with and what made people read them, the news content was ostensibly why they read the paper, but what made people return was not the news itself but some small pleasure: comics or the crossword or the advice column or the horoscope.

The thing that attracts people to the paper is not necessarily the same as what keeps them coming back. 

The desire for information — to know what was going on is what used to drive people to seek out newspaper.

 But it was  the small pleasurable rewards in regular columns that turned daily newspaper reading into a habit and a daily ritual. 

Newspapers have lost readership , not only because they have lost their relevance, but also because readers now find their pleasures elsewhere.