There was a short news story that ran on one of our business pages last week that had a key fact missing.

The story dealt with continued declines in circulation among U.S. newspapers.

In last week’s story, a years-long downward trend accelerated with a steep 10.6 percent drop among the nation’s newspapers in a six-month period between April and September when compared with the same period last year.

That was greater than an October 2008-to-March 2009 circulation drop of 7.1 percent, notable at the time for its steep angle of descent.

So what was the missing fact in that story about newspapers circulation declines?

It was how the Trib has been doing with its circulation since becoming a locally owned newspaper in August.

Granted, the Clifton Robinson family has only owned this newspaper for a three-month period now.

But the numbers are startling because they’re almost exactly opposite the national trend.

In fact, given current trends we expect our daily circulation at the end of October to actually be almost 10 percent greater than the day the Trib became a locally owned newspaper.

Setting our own trend

The trends are even more startling when you start to dig into our circulation data.

Every month since January, for example, our circulation numbers were worse than the month before.

Then came August when the Robinsons, a locally prominent family, officially assumed ownership of the Trib and the decline suddenly stopped. Whether out of goodwill or curiosity, readers stopped leaving us that month and more readers began returning the next month.

By September, the circulation numbers began a steep ascent — one that many longtime veterans of this business had never seen before in such a short period.

Indeed, it’s been a breathtaking three months. Circulation is not the only component of our newspaper rubbing against the grain of the industry.

While newspapers across the country have been in what seems like a tailspin of cost-cutting, the Robinsons have been investing in the Trib far beyond the price of the original sale.

As layoffs continue to plague the industry — The New York Times announced recently that it is shedding 100 newsroom positions — the Trib has been on a hiring spree and intends to increase its newsroom staff by more than 10 percent.

As newspapers shrink their daily page count, the Trib has been expanding our page count significantly.

And as newspapers have been raising the price of advertising to offset revenue loss, the Trib slashed advertising to most local businesses, in some cases by as much as 40 percent.

The idea is simple: Offer readers and advertisers more quality content on the theory that even more readers and advertisers will throw business our way.

So far, it’s been working.

Our goal is also quite simple. We want to improve the quality of tomorrow’s newspaper so that it’s better than today’s.

So far, we’ve been doing that too.

Clifton Robinson, our company’s CEO, has publicly joked that if we continue down the path we are now forging, in 20 years we can expect to be the largest newspaper in the country.

Whether that happens remains to be seen. But what we’re seeing is a vast improvement in our product on a day-to-day basis.

Some might well argue that the day that Robinson’s dog, Annie Poo, had a column in the space usually reserved for my work was a discernible improvement.

I’ll accept that argument as long as we continue this paper’s overall momentum.

Running a vibrant, growing newsroom is infinitely more fun than running a newsroom under financial siege.

More important, reading a vibrant, growing newspaper is infinitely more interesting as well. Fortunately, our owners agree with that philosophy too.

Editor Carlos Sanchez can be reached at csanchez@wacotrib.com or 757-5703.