Johnson Newspapers' roots going down even deeper

Thirteen-month-old baby, broke the lookin' glass; Seven years of bad luck with the good things in your past.

AUG. 6, 2010: Times are tough in St. Lawrence County. Increasing unemployment, a growing number of welfare cases and plant closings routinely make the headlines every week.

No business is more closely connected to the economy in St. Lawrence County than the Johnson Newspaper Company. Joblessness hurts circulation. Business cutbacks hurt advertising. Every day our revenue streams are at risk.

But instead of playing dead and simply hoping the crisis will soon pass, our company is making significant improvements to ensure our products are around for years to come.

The Watertown Daily Times' sister papers in St. Lawrence County are the Ogdensburg Journal, the Massena-Potsdam Courier Observer, the Sunday Advance News and the St. Lawrence Plaindealer.

The first major change took place years ago when we built an office and press plant in Massena, where we print our St. Lawrence newspapers and the Malone Telegram. It was a major financial commitment to Massena and upgraded the working conditions for our staff.

Some of our pending changes will be easy to see and some will be behind the scenes. Next month we will move into the newly remodeled Rushton Place in Canton, which will be home to reporters, photographers, production staff and our business office for all of our St. Lawrence newspapers.

We aren't moving far, just down Main Street from our present office. But the change will dramatically improve the working environment for our employees. It will also give us room to consolidate business and production jobs — work that is out of sight from the general public regardless of where it is located. That will mean some of our employees in Ogdensburg and Potsdam will soon be working in Canton.

Part of the move streamlines our resources and equipment, allowing us to reduce costs without reducing staff so we can continue to produce content. But it also puts us on top of the fiber optic line to Massena, where we electronically send our pages to be printed.

We will continue to have news staffs in Ogdensburg and Potsdam after the move in Canton is complete.

Meanwhile, we are continuing to hire reporters. Our two most recent hires, who were journalism majors at Syracuse University, are now in our Ogdensburg and Massena offices.

(The nationwide hiring downturn for journalists has been a bonanza for the Times and our sister papers. We have hired four reporters in the last year who are graduates of either Syracuse or Columbia University, two of the top j-schools in the country).

Another pending change involves our computer system for our news departments. We are planning an upgrade soon so that all of our papers have the same level of technology.

We are also upgrading our Websites so that we can provide even more content on our Journal and Courier Observer sites.

As never before, the last two years have shown the importance of having viable newspapers with companion Websites in our communities. The 23rd Congressional District race, the battle over wind farms and embezzlement scandals have all been examined extensively by the Johnson Newspapers. Can you image how little you would know if our role were left to TV, radio and Websites that simply pass on links to other sites?

With the improvements we are making in facilities and equipment, Johnson Newspapers will be telling the north country's story for years to come.