America’s news guru helps out DCI

Over the coming weeks, you’re likely going to find some tweaks to the overall layout and design of the newspaper. That comes after we had the luxury of bringing in the news guru of America last week.
Kevin Slimp is largely considered to be a favorite speaker and trainer in the publishing world, at least when it comes to community newspapers. He has been training and advising newspapers for 21 years. He works with all sizes of newspapers from tiny weeklies to large dailies and everything in between. 
He is an expert with InDesign, which is the computer software we use to put together our pages every week. Last year alone he worked with more than 100 newspapers across Minnesota. 
We found Slimp to be extremely knowledgeable, dynamic in his presentation and entertaining to boot. He brought a new level of excitement and energy to our newspaper that we’re hoping to share with readers in coming weeks. 
The Independent is one of the newspapers that can now be added to Slimp’s growing list of publications he’s worked with to improve. He came in for three days last week to work with our editorial and design team to make us an even better paper. Let’s just say our heads are spinning with great ideas that Slimp brought to the table for us to possibly implement.
Readers won’t see any bold changes right away, but some subtle tweaks here and there will be coming in future editions. It’s all part of my effort to provide our readers with one of the best newspapers in the state. It’s important for me to give you a quality paper that is attractive to read each and every week. 
Slimp is very complimentary when it comes to describing Minnesota newspapers. He calls them “phenomenal.” One of the things that impresses him the most is that most papers in Minnesota are not owned by far-away corporations. They’re not suffering the staggering circulation declines and disappearing profits that plagued many papers across the country.
He told me that the trend of large groups who own newspapers is to cut staffs to bare minimum, then watch their circulation and profits deteriorate. Minnesota newspapers, for the most part, have done a great job to make sure that doesn’t happen. 
I can personally tell you that cutting isn’t in my vocabulary. While other papers have cut pages and staff, leading to decreasing circulation, we have done the opposite, with the opposite results. I am focused on building a large readership base and quality journalism. Our state and national awards show that we are doing something right.