KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. -- The Kirtland Air Force Base Nucleus, our print newspaper, is coming to an end this week. The events, news briefs and much of the content will continue to be published by the Kirtland Public Affairs office across several electronic and on-line media: Kirtland.af.mil; the Kirtland official Facebook Page, @N05/; and the Weekly Roundup email product.
The reach of these electronic media and on-line channels has grown considerably in recent years. People looking for news and events info on Kirtland can find it in abundance on these sites. A single Facebook Post has the potential to reach 22,000 users (and growing). Our App now has more than 16.5K subscribers. Our Kirtland.af.mil official website had more than 653,000 visits last year. Our surveys in recent years and the Air Force’s “Where Airmen Get Information” publication indicate that the old-fashioned hard copy base newspaper doesn’t have the demand or usage in did in previous eras.
Content, as well as platforms, have evolved. All wing PA offices have broadcasters now, and many of you have noticed that we have broadcast coverage all over the place (on our electronic media). We also have a staff of military photographers that capture events visually like nobody’s business (our own Staff Sgt. JD Strong II was recently named Global Strike Military Photographer of the Year). They are publishing many striking photos that can’t fit in a hard copy print format. You can enjoy them all, however, on Flickr, Facebook and Kirtland.af.mil. And the social media activity is sometimes mind-blowing. We recently had a request to honor a World War II vet three days before his 95th Birthday. We used Facebook to wish Capt. Frank Farr a happy birthday and 19,300-plus people got to share in our salute to the former B-17 navigator. What’s more, 99 people sent him their personal birthday greetings and/or thanked him for his service. We were all overwhelmed, especial Capt. Farr.
This is a great example of how the Air Force is generating more content and reaching a larger audience, often with tailored products that are medium-, audience- and event-specific. At Kirtland, we’ve seen a net increase of 62 percent in the number of stories, photos, and news items published across all our channels since 2016. This is not an end to long-form print coverage of Air Force news and events. But rather an evolving, innovative process. The Kirtland App is a great example. Everything you could want in terms of information, and the ability to receive immediately notification when construction will alter a gate approach or weather closed the base.
The discontinuation of the Nucleus is certainly a sad event. I have been developing content for the Nucleus since 2014, and (in a previous tour of duty) its predecessor the Kirtland Focus, going back to 1994. I have worked on base newspapers at six different bases. Five of the six are now gone, and one is on-line only.
Our reach is greater than it’s ever been and our tools are expanding. We have plenty of content coming your way. To help us tell your story, contact us at 505-846-5991, or email the PA org box at 377abw.pa@us.af.mil.