WEDNESDAY, September 28, 2005 — Though many local business owners fear customers are leaving the area to shop, the percentage of retail sales made outside the county is relatively small, according to Bill Horner III, publisher of The Sanford Herald, who discussed results of a recent market survey when the Committee of 100 met last week.

Flipping through a dozens of slides, Horner hit the high points of two recent studies — a major market analysis prepared for The Herald by Inland Research and a readership survey conducted by the newspaper staff.

With local buying income estimated at just over $1 billion and total retail sales of roughly $739 million, there may not be the drain of money headed outside the market that some people believe.

"We've got a lot of people coming to Lee County, coming into our [retail trading zone], to buy," Horner told more than 100 community leaders last week. "We do obviously have people going out of our market, but we have more people probably than we realize coming into our market to spend money."

The market study also suggested the area's middle class may be shrinking. More than 17 percent of all households have an income of more than $75,000 or more. But, on the other end of the distribution, about 32 percent have an income of $25,000 or less.

It may be a broader trend. "Our numbers are not so unusual compared with North Carolina and compared with the nation," Horner said.

The veteran newspaper publisher, who offered to provide more information from the market study upon request, hit several other highlights:

* Depending on the business category, between 60 and 95 percent of people using the Yellow Pages are looking only for a phone number, rather than to search for retail options or view advertisements.

* The market's highest-ranked cable network, The Discovery Channel, has about 348 people per day viewing commercials. Other top networks in the market: CNN, The Weather Channel, ESPN and TBS.

*Lee County has a higher than average number of radio listeners — about 16 percent of adults 18 years of age and over. Top stations locally are WQDR-FM, WPTF-AM and WWGP-AM/WFJA-FM.


'You can't make everybody happy'

Turning to the readership survey, Horner briefly described the challenge media leaders face when trying to decide how to cover local events — particularly what to write about and how to cover the broad range of community interests.

"You can't make everybody happy," he admitted. "Even if you're a small newspaper in a small market, it's hard to keep everybody happy."

To make the point, Horner alternated between scathing criticisms and profuse praise, often for the very same feature. One of the few points of agreement among readers was the prime importance of focusing on local news.

The Herald has been listening to readers carefully, Horner said, and conducted the readership survey to learn more. About 400 people responded to the nonscientific survey of readers' habits, interest in editorial content, ratings of the newspaper and demographics.

The paper has been working to eliminate errors, Horner said, and to maintain that local focus.

He clicked to one graph showing that the number of stories written by staff reporters have shot up dramatically this year, and also talked briefly about new initiatives to assess the accuracy of stories and performance of reporters.

Among the findings:

* 68 percent rated The Herald's coverage of local news as good or excellent, 23 percent as average and 9 percent as not very good or poor.

* The top editorial features, in order of popularity, were "Ramblin'," a short daily column about local people and activities; "Ear to the Ground," a business news roundup; extension and farm news; "Editor's Notebook," a column by editor Dan Fields; "Paper Pulpit" by Del Parkerson; movie reviews by Neil Morris; Friday's front-page religion feature; and "Ask Amy" by Amy Zane.

* The top syndicated features, also in order, were: Billy Graham, "Dear Abby," "From the Capitol" by Scott Mooneyham, and columns by Ann Coulter, Steve and Cokie Roberts (tie) and Walter Williams (tie).

* Readers asked for more human interest stories and "positive" news, better advanced notice of coming events, more coupons, additional stories on local history and expanded coverage of youth events.

Not all of the responses, Horner said, honed in on editorial content or the philosophy of reporting.

"I like the Herald very much," one reader wrote. "Just keep my paper coming and out of the water and the ditch and I'll be happy."