Our Hometown News

The Virginia Press Association's "Digital Initiative" with Our-Hometown

https://youtu.be/TzeThbqKtJE Last year, Our-Hometown partnered up with the Virginia Press Association to launch our first Digital Initiative -- a program aimed at getting all newspapers under the Virginia Press Association's umbrella on the web with a turnkey digital revenue model. Many local newspapers, especially those covering smaller towns and communities, are still relying entirely on a printed newspaper funded by local advertisers, having neglected to take the next step of launching a ...

OHT Announces "Social Media Marketing for Newspapers" Webinar for April

Our-Hometown is happy to announce another LIVE WEBINAR EVENT coming up in April: "Social Media Marketing for Newspapers." In this webinar, Our-Hometown president & CEO Matt Larson will discuss the basics of growing an audience on social media and provide some techniques for converting that audience into digital subscribers to your content. Learn what you need to consider in order to map out and execute a successful social media marketing campaign! Which social media networks are best for sha...

OHT & OMC Webinar: Serving the Growing Mobile Audience

Our-Hometown is excited to announce that president & CEO Matt Larson will be joining our friends at Online Media Campus on Thursday, April 7th at 2PM EST for another LIVE WEBINAR event: "Serving the Growing Mobile Audience - Tips on Responsive Websites and Native App Design." The presentation will focus on optimizing your website for the best reader experience on mobile devices, including the benefits of using a native iOS/Android app. This event is open to any publishers hoping to attend. J...

Kevin Slimp: Predicting the Future of Newspapers

The following is a guest column contributed by Mr. Kevin Slimp, aka the "News Guru" and host of the Kevin Slimp Webinar Series. It’s late as I write this column, just around midnight. There’s nothing unusual about that. I tend to write my columns, stories, and books late in the evening. Apparently, that’s not the norm for most famous writers in history. Maybe I should take a clue from them. Most famous writers, it seems, were like Ernest Hemingway, waking up as soon as – or before – the sun ...

Limiting the number of devices a subscriber can login with

As a news publisher, it's natural to want to get as many eyes on your newly published content as possible, but how can you make sure that only those who've paid for access are able to read it? In the age of Netflix and other content streaming services, account sharing has become a natural way of life for many digital consumers -- is there any way to stop it? Fortunately, the answer is yes! At Our-Hometown, we have the ability to limit the number of active sessions a user has at any given tim...

Google/Facebook Antitrust Lawsuit Interview REPLAY

Click the image to play Special thanks to Lee Wolverton, vice president of news and executive editor at HD Media Co., LLC — the plaintiff in the federal antitrust lawsuit filed against Google & Facebook, along with Paul T. Farrell Jr. of Farrell & Fuller LLC and Bob Fitzsimmons of Fitzsimmons Law Firm PLLC — two of the firms bringing the suit, for speaking with us at today’s webinar. Watch the replay to learn more about the history and source of the litigation, recent trends in digital adver...

Clarke County Democrat launches Audio Articles in iOS/Android Application

The Clarke County Democrat recently became one of our first customers to incorporate full Audio Articles functionality within their iOS & Android applications! Audio Articles is an exciting feature available to Our-Hometown customers that automatically converts your published articles into audio files that are played back to the reader, freeing up their hands for multi-tasking while consuming the news. Each Audio Article is automatically assigned to a Playlist of articles based on the catego...

New Kevin Slimp Webinars added!

Our-Hometown, Inc. is happy to announce that our partnership with Mr. Kevin Slimp has been extended once again, guaranteeing all Our-Hometown customers FREE entry to his upcoming webinars! Kevin Slimp is a stalwart in the industry, spending much of his time educating news publishers on best practices across a wide array of different tools and software and helping them to improve their publications in whatever ways possible. Slimp holds a webinar roughly every month focusing on a particular t...

Lee Wolverton of HD Media to join Thursday's webinar as a panelist

Our-Hometown is excited to announce that Lee Wolverton has agreed to join Thursday's LIVE WEBINAR as a guest panelist along with Paul T. Farrell Jr. of Farrell & Fuller LLC and Bob Fitzsimmons of Fitzsimmons Law Firm PLLC. Wolverton is the vice president of news and executive editor at HD Media Co., LLC -- the plaintiff in the federal antitrust lawsuit filed against Google & Facebook -- and will provide further insight into the ongoing legal battle against Google and Facebook. Don't miss the...

Tracking stats for Newsletter banner ads

https://youtu.be/KvoY2jkJVN8 Our-Hometown's support team is often asked how to track statistics for an advertisement or banner that is included inside of a newsletter, or if it is even possible to do so. It is important to be able to provide stats for these newsletter banners and advertisements so that you can provide reports to advertisers and potential advertisers inquiring about an open ad slot. We're happy to report that it is indeed possible to track stats for newsletter ads on our plat...

Ease the burden on your staff by enrolling in our PDF Extraction Service today!

The news publishing industry is an ever-changing landscape, and with all of the added uncertainty that the pandemic introduced to the scene, it is no secret that many newspapers world-wide are still trying to cope with the ripple effects. Many newspapers have reduced the size of their news teams, and the remaining employees have been burdened with picking up the slack. In speaking with publishers, several have noted that they are barely finding time to post their stories to the website due t...

Kevin Slimp: Redesigning your print newspaper pages

Redesigns. They’ve been on my mind a lot lately. When Ed Henninger, the undisputed guru of newspaper and magazine design, decided to retire three years ago (I never really thought he was serious), we had several conversations about his decision. I’ll never forget when he told me he was “done.” “I’m closing down my website. I’m getting rid of my Adobe software subscription. I’m going to give my large page printer to you. When I retire, I’m not looking back.” I asked who would take his place. ...

SEO for Newspapers REPLAY

Today's webinar on SEO for Newspapers is available for replay below. https://youtu.be/VNz3VoEXRqw Special thanks to Michael Cottam, SEO Speaker and Consultant, for presenting today's webinar. Michael covered the essentials for getting your newspaper website to rank high on Google search results. Watch the replay below to learn more about the Google "3 Pack", importance of having consistent "NAP" (Name, address, phone number) across all platforms, and some of the ways you can use social media...

Improve your website's SEO by updating your Title and Description

With our SEO For Newspapers LIVE webinar set to take place Thursday at 12PM eastern time, we thought we'd stick with the Search Engine Optimization theme this week and invite our customers to update their Site Title and Site Description, which are two important fields used to help your website perform better on Google and other search engines. Most customers on our WordPress platform are already utilizing the Title and Description fields via the All in One SEO plugin, but some of our long-ti...

Our-Hometown to host interview and AMA with the lawyers behind the Google/Facebook Anti-Trust Lawsuit

Join The Webinar UPDATE: Lee Wolverton, the Vice President of News and Executive editor at HD Media Co., LLC -- the plaintiff in the lawsuit -- will be joining the webinar as a special guest panelist! Our-Hometown is excited to announce that we'll be hosting a LIVE interview & AMA (Ask Me Anything) event with Paul T. Farrell Jr. of Farrell & Fuller, LLC and Bob Fitzsimmons of Fitzsimmons Law Firm PLLC, two of the legal professionals leading the anti-trust lawsuit against Google and Facebook ...

MemberPress: An overview of our subscription management plug-in

https://youtu.be/WL_Ri2ApzZg MemberPress is the plug-in that powers digital subscriptions on the vast majority of Our-Hometown customers' websites. It allows publishers to restrict their premium content to paid subscribers, while also providing all of the tools needed to create and manage various subscription options and collect payment from their customers. Let's take a look at the most impactful ways that MemberPress is used on our platform. 1. Unlimited Subscription Options First and fore...

Damian Radcliffe to join Our-Hometown for a live interview this Thursday

Our-Hometown is thrilled to announce that Damian Radcliffe, the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism and a Professor of Practice at the University of Oregon will be joining us for a LIVE interview this Thursday, January 13th, at 1PM eastern time. Radcliffe's work and research has been referenced frequently by our friends at Today in News Tech, and we're excited for the opportunity to sit down with him and discuss some of these topics in more depth. Best of all, you're invited to atten...

Listen to the news in 2022 with Audio Articles: Playlists

Audio Articles: Playlists is the latest expansion to our innovative Audio Articles feature, taking listening to the news to the next level by introducing curated playlists for readers to easily tune in to the content that they love the most. If you didn't already know, Audio Articles is an exciting tool developed by Our-Hometown that uses text-to-speech automation to transform your published text articles into audio files that a visitor can choose to listen to in favor of reading the article...

Office Hours: Our-Hometown in 2021

During last week's Office Hours, President Matthew Larson and the rest of the Our-Hometown team discussed our recent blog post highlighting our major announcements and accomplishments of 2021. Watch and listen as the team recaps and reflects on the events of the past year in the video below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gl6X89VNb0 Be sure to join us each Wednesday for Office Hours!  Article Link Let us know your thoughts about this episode by reaching out on Social Media! Facebook: ht...

Website Production Representative (Night shift) - REMOTE - Part Time

Website Production Representative - REMOTE - Part Time Position Summary: The Production Representative is responsible for publishing editorial and advertising content to community newspaper websites. Essential Tasks/Responsibilities: Execute a content extraction process on newspaper PDF files to convert the articles and ads to HTML and publish to a WordPress Website. Exercise quality control on content published to website. Correct publishing errors using the WordPress article editor. Must b...

Job Opening: Website Production Representative - REMOTE - Part Time

Website Production Representative - REMOTE - Part Time Position Summary: The Production Representative is responsible for publishing editorial and advertising content to community newspaper websites. Essential Tasks/Responsibilities: Execute a content extraction process on newspaper PDF files to convert the articles and ads to HTML and publish to a WordPress Website. Exercise quality control on content published to website. Correct publishing errors using the WordPress article editor. Must b...

Digital Marketing in 2022 brought to you by Our-Hometown

Over the past several years, Our-Hometown has evolved into much more than just a website provider for newspapers. In addition to all of the tools and features we've developed specifically for news publishers, we're able to provide our customers with additional resources such as LIVE Webinars & Virtual Conferences, free training sessions, and direct connections with industry experts such as The News Guru, Kevin Slimp. You can expect more of the same in 2022, starting with today's announcement...

Announcement: Posting to Social Media from WordPress

Our-Hometown is happy to announce the release of a new feature available on our platform: Social Media Autopost! Social Media Autopost allows publishers to automatically share the latest content from their website across various social media platforms using the Blog2social plugin. Social Media Autopost offers another option for quickly distributing your content across the web to your readers and followers, regardless of what platforms they use to consume the news. It is a great way to make s...

Introducing our new Custom Memberpress Export tool

Our-Hometown is happy to announce our new Custom Memberpress Export tool, now available to all customers on our platform! The Custom Memberpress Export tool introduces an easy way to generate and export a list of subscribers who meet a criteria that you select, which is fully customizable to include/exclude any information fields that are recorded by our system. You can find this tool under Memberpress -> Automatic Member Reports on your WordPress Dashboard menu. Using this tool, you can exp...

Audio News in 2022: Automation, Acquisition, & Monetization

We looked at news from 2021 on podcasting and saw these trends in Automation, Acquisition, and Monetization: Automation New Advertising Opportunities Created by the Audio Podcast Boom | Today in News Tech Local Journalism Sustainability Act, Audio Articles Playlists, and Apple Reduces App Revenue Share | Today in News Tech News Brief: New Advertising Opportunities Created by the Audio Podcast Boom Acquisition Using Audio for Audience Engagement, Kevin Slimp Announcement, Mobile Displays with...

Feature Highlight: Social Media Autopost

One of the exciting new features we introduced in 2021 is our Social Media Autopost tool, which instantly connects your website with your publication's various social media profiles and allows you to quickly and easily share your content with followers on all of your favorite networks. The tool serve several purposes. The primary objective is to increase traffic to the website by sharing content often and directing readers back to the source article on your website. In most cases, more traff...

Live Webinar: SEO for Newspapers - January 27th, 2022 at 12PM EST

https://youtu.be/qrvfqYmfCy0 Our-Hometown is excited to announce the first major LIVE WEBINAR event of the new year for news publishers: SEO For Newspapers on January 27th, 2022 at 12PM EST. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), put simply, refers to the practice of improving your website's performance in search results across major search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Generally speaking, a website that performs better in search results is more likely to see increased traffic from these s...

Feature Highlight: Automated Newsletter Coupons

Email marketing can be a powerful tool for generating new revenue for a newspaper or website, generally by appealing to new subscribers with a preview of your content and inviting them to subscribe. However, a lot of newspapers overlook the importance of appealing to former subscribers -- many of whom are even more likely to subscribe under the right circumstances. Our Automated Newsletter Coupons feature aims to do just that by automatically inserting a coupon code into each newsletter that...

Adding a Subscribe button to your custom newsletter

Nowadays, most publications with an online presence allow visitors to subscribe to an email newsletter to receive important updates and breaking news, even if the visitor isn't yet ready to become a paid digital subscriber. The goal is to build a list of newsletter subscribers that are essentially "leads" -- people who were interested enough to join your free mailing list and receive your emails, but haven't committed to paying for a subscription. These leads are generally much more likely t...

Annual Password Resets will begin December 17th

It's that time of the year again! As a part of our annual system-wide security enhancement process that we introduced last year, all publishers and other newspaper staff members will be prompted to change their passwords beginning on Thursday, December 17th. This mandatory password change will be required for any Users that exist on your website with a role other than Subscriber, or in other words, any user with the ability to edit and publish content or otherwise customize the website. Your...

The Oh, So Special, “Special Character” Tool!

Throughout the Co-VID-19 pandemic, we've learned that people look more to their local news for updates on the virus, local closings, delivery services, and the like. People trust local news. An increased concern for personal health placed people at home rather than at the usual gyms and offices; people spent less time in their vehicles or on mass transit. And, even without the pandemic twist, people need variety. Let's face it - sometimes we're just not in the mood for music! Enter Audio Art...

Introducing Today in News Tech

Here at Our Hometown, we believe that the best way to preserve the news industry is with digital publishing. Now, we're expanding our mission of providing publishers with full-service digital publishing solutions by launching Today in News Tech. Today in News Tech is Our Hometown's new hub of news and commentary about the world of digital publishing. Each day, we share the most important stories impacting  publishers ranging from new technological innovations to keeping tabs on the Big Tech ...

Today in News Tech to interview Mather Economics' Arvid Tchivzhel

On behalf of our friends at Today in News Tech, Our-Hometown is happy to extend an invitation to all of our customers to attend a special LIVE interview with Mr. Arvid Tchivzhel, the Managing Director of the Digital Consulting Practice at Mather Economics! Today in News Tech recently discussed one of Tchivzhel's Mather Economics articles, "Revenue Models Based on Newspaper Subscribers" for their video podcast, and are excited to have him join their program for an in-depth interview on the su...

Kevin Slimp: Why I Joined Forces with Our-Hometown to Train Community Newspapers Online

Don’t tell anyone, but I must be older than I look. I started offering online training long before most people knew such a thing existed. 20 years ago, I worked with a production company in Indianapolis that hosted and produced my monthly webinars for newspapers. It was quite the production. My favorite part of each webinar was when the announcer would introduce me by saying, “And now, coming to you from his LAVVISSSHHH studio in Knoxville Tennessee…where the sun is shining, and the temperat...

Reviving Newspapers in Digital News Deserts

Join Our-Hometown President & CEO Matthew Larson later this month for another LIVE WEBINAR EVENT focusing on Reviving Newspapers in Digital News Deserts, hosted by our friends and partners at Online Media Campus. The presentation is scheduled for November 18th at 2PM EST. In the presentation, Larson will identify ways for newspapers to expand their digital outreach and take advantage of the massive online audience waiting to consume the news each day. Some of these techniques include sharing...

Highlight upcoming Events in your newsletter with our new Custom Events block

Our-Hometown, Inc. is excited to introduce our new Custom Events Block for The Newsletter Plugin, which equips your newsletter with the ability to include Events published to your website's event calendar directly in your daily or weekly newsletter. This new Custom Events Block works just like most of the other blocks in the newsletter editor. When editing a newsletter using the Drag & Drop Composer, simply find the Custom Events option on your list of blocks to the right of the editor and d...

NENPA Conference 2021 Schedule - Day Two

Day two of the conference will begin with the Conference Keynote at 11AM Eastern on Friday. The Conference Keynote will see Emily Ramshaw, co-founder and CEO of The 19th News, join Maria Archangelo to discuss different methods of growing audiences, strengthening partnerships and different funding models that have shown long-term sustainability. Immediately following the keynote, the presentation of the Allan B. Rogers Editorial Award, New England First Amendment Award, AP Sevellon Brown NE J...

NENPA Conference 2021 Schedule - Day One

Day one of the New England Newspapers & Press Association (NENPA) 2021 New England Newspaper Conference will kick off with the Revenue Roundtable at 10AM Eastern on Thursday, featuring publishers, editors and ad directors from various publications discussing techniques and innovative ideas for increasing revenue. The Editors Roundtable will begin shortly thereafter at 11AM Eastern and will feature an in-depth discussion on how editors have managed their newsrooms, particularly in the past co...

Our-Hometown sponsoring NENPA Virtual Conference this week

Our-Hometown is incredibly excited to help out our friends at the New England Newspapers & Press Association as a Platinum Sponsor for their upcoming 2021 New England Newspaper Conference, taking place virtually this Thursday & Friday. Day one of the event will feature a Revenue Roundtable where publishers, editors and ad directors will share ideas and innovations geared towards increasing revenue, as well as an Editors Roundtable where a number of prominent editors will discuss their techni...

Grant print subscribers online access using the Print Upgrade Membership

Some of the most common questions we're asked by new customers or those considering our service relate to how we allow offline print subscribers to claim matching online access, primarily for cases where the newspaper or publication offers online access as a part of any print subscription at no additional cost. This is accomplished using our Print Upgrade Membership tool, with a little help from the publisher. The Print Upgrade Membership tool adds a new subscription option to the Subscribe ...

25 Years of Automating Digital Publishing for Newspapers

Our-Hometown, Inc. is excited to invite you to join us once again for a LIVE webinar, 25 Years of Automating Digital Publishing for Newspapers, on Thursday, November 4th at 12PM EST. This special webinar will focus on the history of Our-Hometown, Inc. as host Matthew Larson takes attendees on a trip down memory lane, highlighting the achievements and milestones the family business has achieved since its inception in 1997. Originally started by his father, Steve Larson, Our-Hometown has conti...

Case Study: News & Review taps into 20k Facebook audience by implementing Social Media Autopost

At Our Hometown, our goal is to develop solutions that help newsrooms of any size reach their audiences and take advantage of every revenue opportunity available to them. Today, we're looking at some promising statistics coming from the recent launch of News & Review's new website and implementation of Our Hometown's Social Media Autopost feature. News & Review is a community paper located in Monticello, IN who was in a bit of a unique situation; They had a very strong following on Facebook ...

What the expiration of Let's Encrypt's certificate means for your readers

Last month, news began circulating online warning readers that some of their internet-enabled devices may stop working after September 30th, 2021. Now that the deadline has passed, we wanted to make sure our publishers were aware in case they get complaints from readers who are unable to access their website. The reason is quite technical, and ultimately has to do with the expiration of Let's Encrypt's root certificate. As a result, many web browsers and devices will no longer trust certific...

Website Security Refresher

At Our-Hometown, the security of our customers' websites and data is one of our top priorities. While there are no new specific security threats to warn you about, we thought it would be a good idea to pass along some general tips for internet security in the COVID-age. 1. Use Two-Factor Authentication Two-Factor Authentication is probably the single most powerful tool you have to protect against criminals trying to access any of your online accounts. Two-factor authentication adds an extra ...

The Facebook Files | Today in News Tech

"Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands".  Watch the video below for a quick breakdown of two stories in this series relevant to news publishers.  #localnews #newspublishing #newspapers Read the full article here:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039

News Brief: News Apps Provide High Engagement and Strenghthen Subscriber Bases

Here at Our Hometown, we try to stay on top of the latest developments when it comes to online newspaper publishing. In this News Brief, we're highlighting a piece by  Mark Jacob over at the Northwestern Local News Initiative which conducted  interviews with publishers about the ways dedicated news apps have impacted papers' subscriber engagement. The article, "Local News Outlets Upgrading Apps and Battling App-rehension," discusses the ways news apps keep readers coming back and give papers...

News Brief: New Advertising Opportunities Created by the Audio Podcast Boom

Here at Our Hometown, we try to stay on top of the latest developments when it comes to online newspaper publishing. In this News Brief, we're highlighting a piece by  Micaeli Rourke over at Digital Content Next about the ways podcasting is impacting ad revenue. "The podcast advertising market continues to rise steadily, quarter after quarter."- said Micaeli Rourke The article, "As podcasting soars, advertising follows," discusses the ways that audio program listenership has increased despit...

Art Cullen of Storm Lake Times interviewed by NPR

National Public Radio (NPR) recently interviewed Our-Hometown, Inc. customer and friend Art Cullen from the Storm Lake Times and has published the full audio of the conversation online, along with a text transcription. The Storm Lake Times is being featured in an upcoming PBS documentary named "Storm Lake", prompting Art to join NPR host Dave Davies to discuss the family-oriented newspaper. To read or listen to the entire interview on the NPR website, just click the following headline: 'Stor...

Our-Hometown Email Service Update

Our-Hometown has made the difficult decision to end our relationship with our e-mail service provider, Rackspace. The quality of service of Rackspace has degraded over the past year to the point where it is no longer a viable service. Emails are no longer being delivered reliably and Rackspace has refused to allow communication from the website server to their email service. They are unable, or unwilling, to resolve numerous issues that have caused us and our customers frustration while wast...

Local Journalism Sustainability Act, Audio Articles Playlists, and Apple Reduces App Revenue Share