Down River – May 28, 2015
We’re Excited:
We can always tell when ex-Lock Haven mayor Rick Vilello is excited. Our right-up-front ex-mayor starts out his sentence, “I’m excited…” and proceeds to tell us what it is that excites him.
So if Down River can, we’d like to borrow our favorite Vilello-ism to share with you what has The Record excited.
The paper has been around since 1871 and has been a part of Clinton County ever since (not many current businesses can trace their lineage back that far). And there have been occasions eliciting some excitement.
A major one occurred in 1993 when the heretofore Renovo Record became The Record, as noted in this article from The Record of Feb. 24, 1993:
RENOVO—John Lipez, president and general manager of WBPZ/WSNU radio in Lock Haven, and Buck O’Reilly, former editor of The Express daily newspaper, have joined in a partnership with Ron Dremel, publisher of The Record, to expand The Record’s weekly news coverage and circulation to include all of Clinton County, Dremel announced today.
Historically, The Record, which was founded in 1871 and is Clinton County’s oldest newspaper, has confined its focus to the western part of the county. Beginning with the March 3 edition, the weekly newspaper with a circulation of 2,357 will be covering news and sports throughout the county.
“We will be expanding,” Dremel said, “but we plan to maintain the editorial and business offices in Renovo, and we will retain the employees who have worked so well to make The Record successful through the years. Western Clinton County isn’t losing its newspaper; it’s gaining a better one.”
“We will be covering all the news and sports pertinent to Clinton County,” said O’Reilly, who will serve as editor. “We’ll have in-depth coverage of the governmental bodies and issues that shape the county. We’ll do features and personality pieces. We’ll provide broad local sports coverage.”
“And we will address the important issues facing the county and its citizens in columns of opinion. We invited letters to the editor, and we are committed to providing an open forum to every person who wishes to express a point of view.”
Lipez, who will be the newspaper’s general manager, said: “With the expansion, the newspaper will be available through mail subscription and newsstand sale. We will provide a bright and lively publication that our readers will keep around for reading throughout the week.”
The Record is produced at its offices at 129l Fifth Street, Renovo, and the finished pages are taken, camera ready, to the Danville News printing plant each Tuesday afternoon. The newspaper will be available at newsstands throughout the county Tuesday evening, and mail subscribers within the county will receive their copy Wednesday.
In the subsequent 22 years a bit has changed, co-owners Dremel and O’Reilly exiting some years back. The paper switched to a Wednesday printing/Thursday publication date in the interim and The Record is now printed at the Centre Daily Times in State College.
It doesn’t have to be taken “camera ready” to the CDT for printing, but is dispatched by computer to the presses there and then delivered to Clinton County for distribution.
In the overall print Record scheme of things, not all that much has changed; the print edition is still a weekly, does present a countywide view of events and maintains its locally owned, locally produced flavor, not part of a chain-owned operation outside the area (and that’s important to all of us at The Record).
Not much has changed, at least until November of 2013 when therecord-online.com came on board. And therecord-online.com is a major change, a major upgrade, increasingly in tune with the way more and more Americans and more and more Clinton County residents get their news and information, from their computer screen, from their smartphone, from their tablet.
therecord-online.com has continually evolved since its beginning, webmaster Butch Miller fine-tuning the product over the past year and a half. If you have not checked our online product in recent months, please do so.
More and more are viewing therecord-online.com. The viewership response to our free product has been staggering. There was a couple day stretch during a contentious event in Clinton County in April that saw more than 27,000 online readers visit our site. That is a truly staggering number for a county of less than 40,000 people.
Not only has viewership been a level beyond impressive, so has the advertiser response. Because of that growing advertiser response, The Record has made a commitment to keep its online edition free to you, our readers.
We initially planned to have a subscription fee for online viewers, but upon further review, determined that if we can put out a product that folks all over the world can see at no cost and advertisers know a good deal when they see one, taken together we’ll keep therecord-online.com available to you at no cost.
The bulk of our advertisers are life-long members of the community that have been serving Clinton County for a generation or two. These are the folks that make it possible for us to bring you the latest in local news and sports coverage. Much of this group is also the backbone of the charitable side of the community and stands tall when called upon to support our local service organizations, sports teams and charities. We hope you will continue to support these businesses as we venture forth with this new effort to meet the challenges of this new millennium.
The first 144 years for The Record have been pretty good ones but times change and so do we; we’re proud to present therecord-online.com to get you started on the next 144.
