Since January we have been working with the American Press Institute to gain a better understanding of what local stories produced by The Day newsroom are important to our readers.

Using a tool called Metrics for News, editors and reporters are attaching subject tags to stories to keep track of how widely each story is read, how much it is shared on social media and whether reading certain stories is leading you to other stories in the same subject area.

As part of this initiative we are launching a reader survey that will be emailed to both subscribers and nonsubscribers. You can also find the survey at www.theday.com/news-survey.

We hope the survey results in a stronger connection to our readers and informs us on how we cover our communities.

The survey asks each of you what is important in your life, what lifts your spirits or keeps you awake at night. We want to know about your interests and how you spend your free time, or even whether you have any free time.

For many years, newspaper companies assumed that they knew what was important to their readers, but now we want you to tell us. It may be, for example, that you want us to continue to cover a town or a beat such as the military or casino industry, but you would like us to cover it in a different way than we do. If you tell us what is essential to how and why you live in this corner of Connecticut, we can give you stories that can inform you, entertain you, explain how our local government agencies work, teach you about the history of our area, and report on your children's games and schools.

Or maybe we are not covering something that is important to you. Tell us what that is.

Media companies are facing a challenging time. Traditional advertising revenue has eroded. Each year revenue from print and digital subscriptions makes up a larger percentage of our overall revenue. Our goal is eventually to expand our digital subscription base to a point where that revenue will support the operation of the newsroom.

But we need your help.

By taking this anonymous survey you will be sharing valuable information about yourself and your life that will help shape our coverage and deliver the kinds of stories that are important and impactful to you and your family.

Thank you in advance for participating in the survey. For those readers who want to share their email address as part of the completed survey, we will choose several respondents randomly and give them a gift card, Block Island ferry tickets or a one-year digital subscription.

Once the survey is completed, we will share the results with all of you.