Detroit offers digital training to senior citizens

• By: ASNE staff
• On: 05/26/2009 00:00:00
• In: Member news/Industry updates

When Detroit Media Partnership made the decision to limit home delivery to three days a week, we suspected senior citizens would be the most disappointed. We were right.

So weeks before the March 30 change, we started to reach out to them.

First, we contacted all senior apartments and living centers where we were delivering seven days, offering single copy editions the other four. Well over 100 facilities signed on. We also offered same-day mail delivery on the four days, and many individuals took advantage of that, too.

But we also wanted to help senior citizens get to know our digital editions - digitalfreepress.com and edetroitnews.com - which are exact replicas of the print editions online and are offered as part of new subscription packages.

We were hearing from seniors that the traditional Web sites (freep.com and detnews.com) were not the kind of newspaper experience they enjoyed. So we wanted to make sure they understood the difference between the two and show them how to use the digital version.

As part of our senior outreach program, we offered special training classes at recreation centers and public libraries, using computer rooms where everyone could log onto the digital sites so that we could give them hands-on training on all the functions and special features. With our own staff, we've conducted over 15 sessions across metro Detroit and have several more scheduled through the summer.

Each class begins with a discussion about why we made the changes, and then we give the seniors time to vent their frustrations and ask questions. Most are well-informed and understand what's happening in the newspaper industry, and we get a lot of good questions and conversation which set the tone for the class itself.

We have also partnered with Wayne County Community College to offer free one-hour classes taught by teachers at their six campuses. We run a schedule of upcoming classes in the paper to help promote them, and we provide a flyer template to senior centers to make it easy for them to advertise to their members.

In classes I've conducted, I'm pleased that so many seniors find the digital edition to be close to the newspaper experience they're used to. They particularly like the archive search and email functions, we're discovering. We send them home with a 12-page guide and our contact information in case they get stuck in the future.

Each class seems to prompt interest in neighboring communities, so there's no telling when the cycle will end. As long as people want to learn, we're committed to training them.

We've trained more than 400 people so far. The experience is a great one for us. It connects us to an important group of customers in a way that forms a more personal relationship. We hear the concerns of our most loyal readers and help senior citizens learn something new.

I think we all leave a little smarter than when we arrived.

By Deb Scola, Community Affairs Director, Detroit Partnership, dscola@dnps.com