A paper mill, a cotton mill and a little bit of tourism put food on the table in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. Its plain but serviceable downtown is circled by pleasant neighborhoods. The town high school is one of the state's best.

But the town is surrounded by rural poverty, above-average unemployment and high adult illiteracy rates. Most of the shopping has moved from downtown to a nearby Interstate 95 interchange. The rest moved 40 miles down the interstate to Rocky Mount.

Most newspaper people would not pick Roanoke Rapids as a place for a readership success story. But Carol Moseley did. David Hager did. Bill Moss did. And so did Ronnie Bell.

Carol Moseley started 16 years ago as a clerk in the Daily Herald's circulation department. In those days, there were few records. Pickup trucks simply appeared and took newspapers away to subscribers known only to the drivers. As Moseley worked her way up, she improved things. Today, she runs a model, small-market circulation operation with an intense focus on customer service.

David Hager took on a press that barely worked, leading the Herald to color reproduction executed to contemporary standards.

Bill Moss didn't let a big-city reporting background blind him to the value of drilling the Herald's all-local content ever deeper into the community. His small staff does bragging-rights work on complex issues like groundwater quality, and it scoops up every cheerleading contest winner and Eagle Scout in the county.

And Ronnie Bell, the Herald's new publisher, thinks he's found hidden treasure in central North Carolina, just south of the Virginia line.

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED EVERY DAY

With household penetration of 59 percent and growing, The Herald's treasure is its tight relationship with its readers.

"We publish a weekly newspaper every day," Bill Moss says. By that, he means 10 to 16 pages of local news – local news as defined by the community.

"You have to be humble about it," Moss says. "They know, day after day, that if they call us up with any little news item, it will be in there."

Moss who has since joined The Times-News in Hendersonville, N.C., as executive editor, found an intensely local newspaper when he arrived at the Herald. He added a second local page full of meetings, honors and class reunions, a public-records report and more local bylined stories. Herald reporters average 8 or 9 bylines a week.

Moss also emphasized in-depth reporting on local issues. Recent projects have included an examination of the economic impact of a new highway interchange and an investigative series on well-water quality that pushed local officials to expand public water systems.

This kind of reporting is important to readers, but Moss keeps it in perspective. "I'll get a lot more calls if I leave out a brief somebody has sent me," he says, "than I will about a major investigative piece."

The Herald’s editor doesn’t have to wonder what the readers want. Though small, the Herald pays for professional, market research every few years and supplements that with surveys published in the newspaper.

The Herald also listens to its readers by simply being plugged in to the community. Publisher Ronnie Bell recites a list of sponsorships that is worthy of a larger newspaper: a basketball tournament, a scholarship fund, military band concerts, a fair, the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra and a corporate spelling bee that raises funds for literacy programs.

"If there's a major event in the community, we want to sponsor it or co-sponsor it," Bell says.

GETTING INTENSELY LOCAL

When Carol Moseley sells a subscription, she knows she is giving her new customer an intensely local newspaper that helps hold the customer's community together. This improves her odds of keeping the customer. Outstanding service improves them even further.

As with many small newspapers, circulation sales are a challenge at
the Herald. The newspaper once hired local people to make sales calls from their homes but found production was low and unreliable. The Daily Herald decided to take a risk on an outside telemarketing firm and now gets 50 starts a week. New subscribers are asked to send back a postage-paid card to confirm the start.

CUSTOMER SERVICE GETS PERSONAL

In a small town every subscriber is important, and Moseley wants her staff to recognize that. She has posted this message over each desk in her department:

Whenever you reach for a ringing phone, remember this standing rule: When you pick it up, smile. And keep smiling as you talk. The caller will hear that smile in the cheerfulness of your voice. A smile on your face is absolutely essential to sounding pleasant and helpful.

Smiles can work wonders in other kinds of human contact, too. Everything starts better with a smile – even criticism. At least it shows the other person that you are basically friendly and wish him or her well. That's the good news. If it has to be followed by bad news, so be it. The pleasant approach will improve your chances of an attentive hearing and constructive reaction. Everyone ought to use it more often.

One serious customer-service problem for newspapers with extensive rural circulation is persuading carriers to drive miles on bad roads to reach a few more subscribers. They often refuse, cutting the newspaper's readership.

Moseley is not the kind of person who lets that happen. She has turned carriers over, often replacing them with corrections officers from a nearby prison. And she adjusts wholesale rates according to a route's population density, giving carriers an incentive to drive that extra mile.

But she offers no financial incentive to potential subscribers. Instead of a discount, she offers regular verification that service is good and a money-back guarantee if it isn't. Her carriers do the bill collecting because, she says, "I want them to face the customer."

Advertising is another challenge for the newspaper. With a high unemployment rate, local merchants have found it hard to survive. Rocky Mount offers more retail variety, and residents usually travel there to shop. It’s also where the Daily Herald finds its largest advertisers. High penetration and readership are especially important in such a market because the newspaper can’t rely on asking out-of-town advertisers to help another local business. The salespeople must sell the value of the product.

To provide extra value, the newspaper is willing to zone distribution down to any combination of its 64 routes. A total market product makes sure advertisers can reach all households and not just subscribers.

Printing quality also is an issue. Out-of-town advertisers a have right to expect good reproduction. That’s why five years ago the Daily Herald bought a new press.

When David Hager's shiny, new Web Atlas press is churning out the daily press run, it seems like the heart of The Herald's operation, humming along just steps from every desk in the small plant. But the true heart of The Herald may be a sign posted on the wall above the news editor's desk. In big block letters, it reads:

COME SEE THIS GUY

...for community announcements, education items, photographs, complaints, letters to the editor, story ideas, or just about anything that is, was or should be in the Daily Herald.

This is how the Daily Herald says "yes" to its readers, and that is why Roanoke Rapids says "yes" to the Herald.