Media Mention: The Sun

The weekly newspaper's paid circulation has climbed 73 percent in six years under new owners.
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The Hummelstown paper’s staff includes, from left, Ryan Boyd,
Lois Musser, Drew Weidman, Danielle Rakow, Dave Buffington.

There’s no doubt that The Sun’s focus is the communities of Hummelstown, Hershey and Palmyra, but the weekly newspaper’s readers give it a global reach.

Just turn to page 3 of most editions for the photo gallery labeled “Fun in the Sun.” You’ll find – and maybe get a little jealous of – readers holding copies of The Sun in any number of distant locales: North Carolina, Hawaii, Hollywood, the Grand Canyon, Nova Scotia, Mexico, Ireland, Paris – and that was just the Nov. 7 paper.

All it took was a throwaway line in one of owner Dave Buffington’s editorials some three summers ago, when he commented about the vacation photos that people were submitting.

“And I said, you get double bonus points if you have a copy of The Sun in your picture. And that opened the floodgates,” Buffington told me, swiveling in his chair toward his computer, on which he counted a 32-photo backlog.

“Fun in the Sun” has become an important part of the paper’s brand, along with the use of big color photos (often aerial shots) and the descriptor “Sun Country” for the territory it covers.

Purchased in 2007

Buffington and his wife, Debbie, purchased The Sun in November 2007 from long-time owners Bill and Rosemary Jackson. The new owners moved The Sun, which dates to 1871, to a more visible location at 40 W. Main St., Hummelstown.

A native of Lewistown, Buffington has spent his life working in communications and politics. As a child, he carried a sandwich board in support of Richard Nixon.

As an adult, the Penn State political science major began writing professionally for a motorcycle magazine and then started the Pennsylvania Political Report, which he described as a “very crude looking” insider newsletter that he edited for a dozen or so years before selling.

He was a corporate communications consultant when he bought The Sun.DSC_0351

On the white board in his office is the number 4,166 – the paper’s paid circulation when Buffington took over. Today, the number is approximately 7,200, he said, an increase of 73 percent.

In some respects, the new owners benefitted from the fact that The Sun had been stuck in a state of solar eclipse. While most newspapers had flipped the switch to computer pagination, The Sun was still being pasted up and had no color.

But because it wasn’t online, The Sun avoided a pitfall that has proved to be the scourge of many newspapers: giving its content away for free.

“We’ve always been behind a paywall,” he said. “You don’t get our newspaper online unless you pay for it. We had the great fortune of having no online presence when we bought the paper six years ago, therefore we didn’t have to try to stuff the genie back in the bottle.”

By giving away their product, Buffington said, newspapers send the message that their work and the reporters who produce it have no value. As long as news consumers are paying for the content he publishes, Buffington is willing to give it to them in the medium they prefer.

“The message is the message,” he said. “We don’t care how people consume our product. We’ll happily give you our newspaper on a piece of paper, we’ll happily give it to you on an iPad, we’ll happily give it to you on your phone.”

As long as they pay for the privilege. The Sun just rolled out a free iPhone app, which the paper will use to send out news alerts. But access to stories still requires a subscription: a special holiday price of $20.14 for a year, $28 the rest of the time.

The Sun also gained from the 2009 closing of the Hershey Chronicle, another weekly that succumbed to the financial woes of its parent company. Buffington subsequently purchased the Chronicle’s subscriber list.

Meanwhile, the daily Patriot-News has incurred staff cutbacks and now publishes its print edition only three days per week. Neither the Patriot-News nor its online sister, Pennlive, covers Sun Country as comprehensively as they used to.

The Sun family

Perhaps what’s most impressive about Buffington’s tenure is that he has reimagined The Sun while retaining the staff that worked under the Jacksons, including Drew Weidman, sports and public safety editor; Ryan Boyd, production manager; and Lois Musser, office manager, who has been with the paper for 29 years.

When ad manager Danielle Rakow leaves at the end of 2013 to take another job (“I’m bummed that she’s leaving, but it’s a good situation for her,” Buffington said.), it will be the first departure of a full-time staffer in more than five years.

Buffington has a full-time staff of six, but the list of “Sun family” members invited to the paper’s Christmas party numbers 30-something, he said.

Asked to explain what drew him to The Sun, Buffington said: “I saw a paper that had a great history, a strong market, weak competition, and, by the way, an exceptional staff. These guys make me look good every week. All they needed to be done was give them the modern tools to do their work and cut them loose.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

Neal Goulet

Neal Goulet, Owner
Having been a journalist, Neal knows writing, grammar and style, as well as the language and movements of a newsroom.
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