Your Santa Ynez Valley Journal is Going Weekly!

You asked; We Delivered

We are proud to announce that the Santa Ynez Valley Journal is now a weekly publication with a distribution of 22,000 per issue from Montecito to Los Alamos with residential deliveries throughout Santa Barbara County. The decision came after an overwhelming response from advertisers and readers thanking us for bringing a community newspaper back to the Valley. They had only one request, “When are you going weekly?” Well, Valley residents, we decided to honor your request immediately. After all, it is your newspaper.

Moving Forward With Appreciation

With the above announcement the Santa Ynez Valley Journal has made it official. “Originally the Valley Journal had not planned on taking the paper to a weekly publication for another six months, however, with overwhelming support from advertisers and readers they felt moving forward now would be more appropriate than later. "If it was not for them, we would not be advancing so quickly,” says Editor Michelle Minder-Massey, “We cannot begin to express how rewarding it is for us to receive the support and appreciation that we have.”

“Transition is never easy in the beginning stages,” says the Editor, “however, we are blessed to have a team of staff writers whose passion is the news, along with a wonderful support staff. With a solid team in place, we felt there was no reason to delay moving forward.”

The Future of the Santa Ynez Valley Journal

“This a very exciting time in our growth” says the Editor, “We are expanding our coverage to include local sports, business and school events in and around the Valley as well as Santa Barbara County.”

She says we can look forward to an upcoming National, State, and County section in addition to Valley coverage.

“We want our paper to be Valley oriented while still providing all the essential coverage you would expect from a newspaper.”

In addition to expanding news coverage, Valley Journal readers will enjoy the all new “Real Estate” section, a legal notice section, and the Editor’s Choice section for Valley youth.

The Editor’s choice section will include a two-page spread of articles, images, and artwork submitted by Valley youth through local schools. The section, which is sponsored by various advertisers, was brought about as an incentive to encourage creativity along with reading and writing skills amongst youth here in the Valley. These are only some of the exciting additions that the Journal will be proudly bringing us in the very near future.

Readership of the Journal quadruples in Less than 7 Months

“We are humbled by our leaps in readership and are committed to bringing the Santa Ynez Valley the newspaper they deserve”, says Ms. Massey. She goes on to say, “when we saw our circulation almost quadruple in a six month period we new we had struck a chord.”

As other newspapers across the county are seeing a decline in circulation, the Santa Ynez Valley Journal, which was purchased in October of 2006 by Publisher Nancy Crawford-Hall, has seen its distribution go from 6,000 copies per issue to 22,000 copies per issue. That’s almost twice the circulation of their closest competitor!

The reason for their success is due to a combination of factors says Publisher Nancy Crawford-Hall, “We are committed to reporting facts to the community on issues that are important to them. The ONLY reason we can go weekly is two-fold,” the Publisher says, “first, we have supportive advertisers and readers but second, and most important, we have managed to gather a very skilled and enthusiastic group of individuals who can, between them, search out and produce a paper which will bring our readers the information they seek. I am thrilled that we have been so fortunate to find these people who share our dedication to being an accurate source of relevant information for the Valley community.”

In addition the Publisher feels another contributing factor is the Journal’s commitment to give residents the facts they deserve on issues that are important to them saying “I believe we can attribute much of our phenomenal success to filling a huge void in the local media. Because of their (other media sources) advertising dollars, they have managed to eliminate covering many stories important to Valley residents. Because we are beholden to no one, we can cover anything.”

And from what this reporter has seen from the Journal so far, they will.