Marietta Register
The Marietta Register is a weekly, community-focused newspaper published in Marietta, Ohio.
History
Launched in September 2006, The Marietta Register attempts to bring honest, conventional journalism to the small towns of Marietta, Devola, Reno, and Belpre, Ohio and Williamstown and Vienna, WV.
Founded with the belief that the local print media options were limited in scope and usefulness, The Marietta Register attempts to cover local and national news with an eye towards covering issues regarding the impact of political and economic events on the local population of the towns in its distribution area.
The Marietta Register closed down in March 2009.
Regions Covered
Based on the free distribution, advertising-driven model The Register is placed at more than 150 drop spots in Washington County, OH and Wood County, WV covering the cities of Marietta, Devola, Barlow, Reno and Belpre, OH as well as Williamstown and Vienna, WV.
Locally Focused
The founders of The Register realized that even with the large amount of news options available to consumers in the modern era there was little actual coverage of local news and events. This led to the founding of The Marietta Register with an exclusive focus on the region, it's politics, economy, and events and people of interest.
Every article in an issue of The Register is generated locally and is about local news or the impact of national events on the region. Currently the only part of The Marietta Register produced outside of the region are the crossword and sudoku puzzles with are produced by Universal Press Syndicate in Chicago, IL.
Coverage of focus for The Marietta Register includes such items as city council minutes, conflicts between Marietta's Mayor, Michael Mullen and Council, the impact of school board decisions on the community and the ways in which the local economy and job base is impacted by local, regional and national events.
In early 2007 The Marietta Register was the first weekly newspaper in Ohio to feature a one-on-one interview with new Governor Ted Strickland.
Place in the Community
As a community newspaper The Marietta Register strives to represent the entirety of the community and continually welcomes visitors into the newsroom for discussion and the presentation of their ideas in print. On several occasions when local citizens have objected to the contents of articles such objections have been presented as full-fledged opinion columns in subsequent issues. In addition, during periods of controversy The Marietta Register opens its letters page to all in the community to share their views. At times these letters have taken more than 20% of the entire print in an issue.
In addition, The Marietta Register has featured several open houses where all are welcome to join the staff to discuss issues of the day. On election night 2007 the offices were open to all to come and observe how the election issue is put together and how The Marietta Register works to be first and most accurate to the results of such events.
Web Presence
In September 2007 The Marietta Register went into its second year and launched its website at http://www.mariettaregister.com
The website is considered to be an extension of the hardcopy newspaper and not a replacement for it. While some articles appear in both print and online form the website is more useful for publication of city documents such as the recent state Performance Audit of Marietta City Government and the Conciliator's Decision regarding the Firefighter's contract, both of which The Marietta Register published online for its readers to download and read for themselves.
In addition, staff at The Register have begun recording City Council meetings and press events and making the entire audio of such available to the public via the website.