Letter from the Editor
Thank You and an Apology
Island Matters Readers—
Thank you for completing our survey. We will do this every year. The results were both uplifting and informative.
Net Promoter Score
They were uplifting because we wanted to learn our Net Promoter Score (NPS). We were humbled and flattered by the results. The average response rate in a survey like this is 12%. Our response rate was 18%, so the results are highly valid.
A good NPS is 47. The average range for a business like ours is from 24-57. You gave us a 61! We can’t thank you enough other than by continuing to earn your trust.
Coming Changes
Your comments on “What one thing could we do to improve IM?” were enlightening. You gave us about a year’s worth of projects. With a 3-person staff, we can’t do them all at once, but we will start with your most frequent recommendations and move down the list.
One of the most common comments was that we were sending out too many emails. We are going to try to respect your inboxes. Currently, we are producing four newsletters a week. We will reduce that to 2 a week. We will experiment with a Tuesday-Friday schedule, but we want your feedback. Please send it to me at george@islandmatters.org
On Tuesdays, we will send out our calendar, letters to the editor, and anything else not produced by Island Matters staff: Pet of the Week, Health and Fitness, non-profit press releases, etc. On Fridays, we will have a week’s worth of IM staff work: Islanders, Governments, Business, etc.
The Apology
A few people reminded us always to be fair. We took this to heart to see where we needed to be more fair and objective. Sarah Lozano, our lead reporter, scrupulously footnotes her stories with links to documents and videos, so our readers can fact-check us as they read. We reviewed any article that could be controversial to see if we were factual and objective. We were.
What we noticed is that no one mentioned a specific article but referred to a general feeling. This led us to review our online presence. This is where we failed you. In our drive to get more subscribers, we fell victim to posting “clickbait.”
Our advertising included phrases like, “They did what?” or “Can you believe what City Council just did?” These were all in beautiful sunset gold, so they drew the eye. We added subscribers, but we also lowered your trust. We were unfair.
To the City Council and our readers, I apologize. We immediately changed our advertising back to match our values. A sample of it is below.
