Our Plan

There are five cities (Dupont, Fircrest, Lakewood, Steilacoom, University Place) that I feel are under-served by our local newspapers. It’s nothing personal, it’s simply a matter of economics. The News Tribune is trying to cover everything from Auburn to Olympia. That is a huge area. It’s not possible to cover that much ground while providing the local flavor so many in our community desire, and deserve.

That is where The Suburban Times will come in.

Some of you may remember, or know, my mom and dad (Mary Lou and Dave Sclair) as the past publishers of the print version of The Suburban Times. They grew the newspaper into a formidable product serving much of south Puget Sound twice a week. Even though they sold it in 1980, people still tell me they loved that paper. I must admit, there is a warming in my heart when I see the yellow newspaper tubes diligently hanging on in a few locations around town.

That said, I don’t plan to fill those boxes any time soon. So, with that brief background, let me fill you in on our plan.

All content will be available, FREE OF CHARGE to our subscribers.

DELIVERY: To keep you apprised of new content (which will be posted as it is ready, not according to a press schedule), we’ll offer an email announcement service (also FREE OF CHARGE). If you sign up, we’ll send you an email (most likely daily), of what’s new around town. You can then click on the story you’d like to read.

As an alternative to clogging your email inbox with yet another message, we’ll also offer an alternative to email notification. It is called RSS. In the right-hand column you will see a link, Syndicate this site (XML) and depending on the browser you are using, you will see an RSS button in the lower right of your browser window. With the appropriate software, you can get notification of new postings to this, and many other sites on the web.

CONTENT: As I state in our Welcome to The Suburban Times post, our mission is simple. To inform.

This is a site about people and business in our community. We’ll perform our mission fairly, respectfully, and timely.

If you just had a baby, and want to share that with your neighbors, email us a note (and a digital picture). Planning an event at your church? Your business having a sale?, hire a new employee?, reach a milestone?, send us a note and we’ll let your neighbors know. We’ll cover area school sports (hopefully with lots of pictures), as well as crime, local government and more.

If we’re not covering something you think your neighbors would be interested in, it’s your duty to let us know. This online newspaper will be developed by all of us. It is also not limited by how many pages we can afford to print (that’s the cool part).

ADVERTISING: We will have banner advertising that will be inserted among our content. You, as the reader/consumer, have a duty to patronize those businesses as they are, in large part, responsible for this much needed resource.

PRIVACY POLICY: While we may ask for personal information to gain access to certain services, we’ll not share any individual information we gather with anyone outside of The Suburban Times.

For example, we will be asking people to fill out a survey to aggregate such information as who are our readers, what you are interested in, and whether or not we are doing a good job.

This aggregated information is how we’ll sell advertising. We will not sell your name to an advertiser, we’ll simply show our advertisers the statistics:

• XX% are in this age group
• XX% like to water ski
• XX% are into knitting
• XX% wash their car more than 2 times per month
• XX% follow local sports with a passion
• XX% of our readers live in Steilacoom, but work in Lakewood

Any information you receive from us, via email, RSS or on this site directly is coming through us, not a third party. I’m not sure I can state it any more clearly than that.

Lastly, thank you for taking the time to read this. I do hope we are able to succeed in delivering a quality product to our community. We are up to the challenge. Are you?

Thank you for your interest. Check back soon, and often.

Sincerely,

Ben Sclair
Publisher