Scene in Passing: Appeal is at the corner of consumer and market

Commerce is the oil that makes a city’s economic engine purr, sometimes roar.

Information amounts to the grease and the fuel that keeps business wheels turning.

Advertising information is a good dab of grease applied with care to keep tires rolling where the rubber meets the road at the intersection of consumer and marketplace. News, sports and entertaining news features provide information to accompany advertising in publications. Such news is fuel — the gasoline and diesel, if you will — that keeps people in gear and helps the well-oiled engine fire on all cylinders.

The above is by way of introducing a shameless plug for the Nevada Appeal in particular and Sierra Nevada Media Group in general, which publishes the Appeal and other news purveyors in the region. Though shameless, this column is overdue. In difficult times, the Appeal and SNMG publish as good a set of papers as any employing me in the past four decades.

Pound for pound, this bantamweight of the news business packs a punch, is nimble on its feet and is long on stamina. Radio, then television and particularly the Internet chipped away at and then knocked news publishing for a loop. Survivors must capitalize on community; the Nevada Appeal, which strives to do so, is coming out of the not-so-great recession slowly but well-positioned.

Classified and displays ads, plus insert advertising, grow slowly but surely. What some brand professional news people but I call craft persons dig up, write or edit news, sports and entertaining features that knit community concerns and fun together, providing what used to be called “the daily miracle.” That was a misnomer in days of ample newsroom staff, but the Appeal now is a near-miracle each day.

Self-serving drivel, you say? Try publishing a paper yourself and see. Better yet, save yourself considerable grief. Keep subscribing or advertising, or start doing so, because this is a sound newspaper in a solid community. Both can forge ahead in part via the symbiotic relationship involving the Appeal and the people it serves.

Not long ago I cautioned a fellow columnist against writing too much on journalism, a caution readers may think has been violated here today. But this isn’t so much about journalism in theory or for ideal purposes, more about newspaper work in practice and for business. It’s not about just the Appeal’s business, though it may profit if citizens, contributors and advertisers take heed.

This is about community and commerce. A great newspaper helps make a great community and vice versa. Read the Appeal.

Make this city’s economic engine roar again.

John Barrette covers Carson City government and business. He can be reached at jbarrette@nevadaappeal.com.