We hear all the time, “Oh, we just LOVE the ‘Opelika Observer.’”
You love the great stories and photos that fill our pages. You love that we continue to publish birth, wedding and obituary announcements for free. You love the way we keep you informed about Opelika and Lee County government activities.
The journalism professionals tell us the “Observer” is what a community newspaper ought to look like.
While we’re proud of this great response, unfortunately, kind commendation and journalistic excellence won’t keep us in business.
We try our best to provide an excellent product at an affordable rate, but it takes – as it always has and always will – the financial support of local businesses and organizations to keep the press printing and the subscriptions mailing.
Our advertisers have to support what we’re trying to do here. And while we have a number of loyal advertisers, unfortunately we don’t have enough of them.
Subscription income provides a little more than a third of the cost of producing and delivering the Observer to you. The other two-thirds has to come from the sale of commercial and legal advertising.
And that income has lagged.
Although we are passionate about the “Observer,” just like you, we have bills to pay and mouths to feed.
So it’s time for you to step up and put your money where your mouth is. If you love the “Opelika Observer” and want to see it continued, encourage the local businesses you patronize to support your local paper with its advertising dollars.
Advertising with the “Observer” is a win-win situation: you get invaluable promotion for your business or service; you help keep a local, community-minded paper doing what it does; and you show your support for the events, people and places of Opelika and its surrounding communities.
A number of wonderful local businesses have already chosen to support the “Observer” and promote their products with beautifully designed and competitively priced ads. We don’t have the words to thank them for their sponsorship of these pages, and we urge you to give your business to the retailers, eateries and organizations that carry the “Observer” on their shoulders.
Five years is a great accomplishment, but we want to continue five more, and five more, and five more. Help us achieve that goal.
Keep telling us what you think of the Opelika Observer – but let your pocketbook do some of the talking as well.
