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Saturday, September 1, 2007

The Montville Messenger - Should It Continue?

Posted by Ron Soussa at 2:32 PM

Mike Karlan publishes the Montville Messenger, which was recently mailed to residents. He asks for your comments.

Who would like the MM to continue? Should the MM be done away with?

Contributors and advertisers are particularly welcome to join in the discussion.

27 Comments | Post a comment

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27 Comments:

Of course it should continue. Since the town website is so outdated how else would we get information about what is happening with local government?

I do agree with those who wrote on another discussion that it should be mailed only to those who request it, and that it should also be available online.

Posted by Ron Soussa on June 23, 2007 2:38 PM

Absolutely ! There are a lot of people who are 'web-challenged'. Ray Mulligan

Posted by Anonymous on June 23, 2007 7:11 PM

Absolutely it should continue. If it helps to only mail it to those requesting so be it, but it should continue. It is a nice magazine.

Posted by Anonymous on June 26, 2007 10:48 AM

The Montville Messenger should not continue. It is a quarterly magazine. By the time we get it most of the information is out dated. The only timely info in the current issue is the July 4th schedule. However, we should not pay thousands of dollars just to advertise July 4th. Use the website, print flyers, hang a sign -- and put the money back in the taxpayer's pockets.

Posted by Anonymous on June 26, 2007 3:25 PM

Why not have the Montville Messenger on a subscription basis? I , for one, would be happy to pay a nominal fee for the interesting pictures and articles about our town. It is good to celebrate the positive, with all the negativity that surrounds us.
I would like to know the costs of publishing, mailing, vs. income generated by advertising.
Who publishes this magazine?
terry cavanaugh

Posted by Anonymous on July 11, 2007 6:02 PM

Absolutely it should continue. I would like to have it delivered to my home. I think that is has information in it that I like to read. How do I go about getting it delivered to my home?

Posted by Anonymous on July 14, 2007 9:46 AM

How can we say whether it should continue if we don't know how much it costs us?

Posted by Anonymous on July 14, 2007 9:40 PM

Robert Lefkowitz brought up some points on the blog about the town's website that pertained to The Montville Messenger:

"Apparently, at one point in time, the magazine was published as a not-for-profit entity, which was cheaper. The Mayor suggested that someone investigate partnering with not-for-profit organization so that the magazine could be mailed at not-for-profit postage rates. This would be a partnership in name only, and would not cost the partner anything."

My questions are:
Why isn't The Messenger currently a non-profit?

Is what was proposed for teaming up with a legitimate non-profit to get the better postal rate some kind of fraud? Would it be mail fraud?

Posted by Anonymous on July 22, 2007 8:59 PM

Mr. Editor -

Can you copy that post from the website blog to this blog?

Posted by Anonymous on July 25, 2007 12:40 PM

July 25, 2007 11:40 AM

I don't understand. What are you asking to have copied and moved?

Posted by Ron Soussa on July 25, 2007 3:31 PM

The message from Robert L. that talked about the montville messenger meeting that the town council held.

Posted by Anonymous on July 25, 2007 4:13 PM

Anonymous from 7-25-07 -

Is this what you were looking for:

I’ve reviewed the Township Committee meeting from May 8th when the Montville Messenger was discussed. The following are the highlights (in my opinion):
o The Montville Chamber of Commerce submitted a letter to the town expressing concern over the price of advertising in The Messenger.
o May 1st there was an internal meeting including the Township Administrator, Deputy Mayor Neilson, and Mike Karlin, publisher of The Messenger to discuss the future of the magazine. Mike agreed to look into the publishing costs to see if there were any areas where costs could be reduced.
o The Administrator had 2 recommendations from the May 1st meeting: 1) Organizations that publish articles in the messenger should be apprised of the amount of space that they will be allocated. Apparently, they consistently want more space than they are allotted. 2) The town should establish a per-page charge for additional pages for organizations to purchase. The TC endorsed those recommendations.
o The Spring edition cost approximately the price of postage.
o Apparently, at one point in time, the magazine was published as a not-for-profit entity, which was cheaper. The Mayor suggested that someone investigate partnering with not-for-profit organization so that the magazine could be mailed at not-for-profit postage rates. This would be a partnership in name only, and would not cost the partner anything.
o Committeeman Sandham praised the group that met on May 1st for getting the cost of publishing down to $2600 per issue. He also suggested investigating whether the town should be paying the same commission on renewal ads as for new ads.

During the open mic. section of the meeting, Tim Braden suggested allowing residents to subscribe to The Messenger via email. The Mayor said that option is on the town’s radar, and should be pursued down the road.

Notably, despite the fact that credit has been taken in this forum for suggesting that a break-even analysis be performed to determine the benefits of e-mailing The Messenger to some portion of residents, no mention of that was made, nor did anyone offer to perform that analysis.

Ron, would you be interested in hosting the audio of that discussion?

Posted by Robert Lefkowitz on July 27, 2007 2:38 PM

Is Mike still monitoring this discussion? What was the result of your work to reduce the publishing costs?

Posted by Anonymous on July 30, 2007 9:27 AM

Will someone explain to me the logic behind not putting the messenger online? Can't this be done for next to nothing?

Posted by Anonymous on July 30, 2007 8:50 PM

Putting the Montville Messenger online (or emailing it) would not only cost nothing, but it would save us money. In addition, it could provide more benefits to the community than the current paper version.

I've offered to run the numbers and put together a proposal justifying publication of an electronic version of the magazine, but I've been waiting for months for the information that the town said they'd provide to me. Maybe Mike's study (mentioned in the TC meeting) will cover this same ground. It would be great if he could give it to Ron to post here.

Posted by Robert Lefkowitz on August 2, 2007 10:15 PM

Update: I still have not received the information regarding the financial figures for The Messenger, but from the partial information that I have, it would seem that we're losing a heck of a lot more money on the Messenger than is budgeted. What is the point of having a budget if we're allowed to exceed it?

Posted by Robert Lefkowitz on September 15, 2007 12:27 AM

How much is the budget for this? Is it budgetted per issue or for the year?

Posted by Anonymous on September 16, 2007 11:54 AM

Who authorized the messenger to exceed the budget? In the corporate world if the budget is exceeded without permission then it would be shut down. Something doesn't smell right here.

Posted by Anonymous on September 16, 2007 8:52 PM

Why not email the remaining issue to see if it can get us back on budget?

Posted by Anonymous on September 17, 2007 12:56 PM

The budget is either $12,000 or $12,500. Nobody authorized exceeding the budget (at least nobody mentioned it at last week's TC meeting). The fact is, the town does not yet realize that the magazine has exceeded the budget. They have requested an accounting for their next meeting.

Posted by Robert Lefkowitz on September 17, 2007 11:03 PM

I hope the MM continues.
We enjoy getting it and the information in it is very informative!

Posted by Anonymous on October 17, 2007 4:27 PM

The MM should continue. It is a great source of information especially to new home owners and to current residents.

With all the taxes we pay for in this town we should be able to have a local publication that is exclusive to our area.

Posted by Anonymous on October 18, 2007 8:59 AM

Yes I do rely on the Messinger.
I no longer have children in school so I don't get as much info as I use to

Posted by Anonymous on October 20, 2007 5:26 PM

How are they exceeding the budget for this publication? Don't they generate revenues via advertising

Posted by Anonymous on October 23, 2007 9:54 PM

They do generate revenues via advertising, but not enough to cover their costs. Please take a look at my report for further analysis, but at the current rates, we lose approximately $7,000 / issue. Fortunately, we can change some vendors and some processes and reduce this to almost no loss whatsoever.

Posted by Robert Lefkowitz on October 24, 2007 8:46 PM

Why not just change in from color to black and white. I bet just simply doing that would reduce the 7k lose per issue to break-even or possibly a profit. The publication does not need to look like people magazine, it just needs to inform.

Posted by Anonymous on October 24, 2007 9:36 PM

Changing from color to black and white will not fix the problem. While changing to black and white might intuitively make sense, you need to recognize that our advertisers would not be happy with black and white, and we certainly couldn't chart them the current rate if we switch color formats.

The problem is that we're overpaying our current vendors. Moving to the right vendors will help things an incredible amount. I've illustrated this in my report.

Posted by Robert Lefkowitz on October 25, 2007 1:37 PM