20 ms·

Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly Newspaper

289 points by cpete 10y ago

snikeris 10y ago
Does every NY Times article mention President Trump?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Pfhreak 10y ago
  Nope. (A casual glance through their front page finds several articles that do not.)
  - gotchange 10y ago
    I think that was rhetorical.
    - Pfhreak 10y ago
      Indeed. But it was also ridiculous. So I went with the equally ridiculous, overly wan, and dry response.
      - gotchange 10y ago
        Kill 'em with kindness. On a more serious note, I don't see Trump's mentions in the article to be unwarranted at all. On the contrary, they're very appropriate given his divisive rhetoric about the news media, and I believe that the author was very measured and reserved with his reporting. It is not like he went out of his way to take a jab at him. The references were all on topic and informative. Nothing really to complain about here.
tcarn 10y ago
With so much noise online, there's definately a strong argument to be made for local newspapers like this, great job guys!
dr_ 10y ago
Interesting. I work in Montclair a couple of days a week. It probably is the type of town that could support this, but it's still kind of peculiar. The Montclair Times HQ was shut down - it's now a dialysis center. There is a blog of sorts as the article mentions, Baristanet, that covers local news in Montclair, although I have no clue how many people read it. I would imagine that most people in Montclair read the NYTimes - perhaps it would make sense for the NYTimes to 'up' it's local coverage game in the tri state area.
Dangeranger 10y ago
Within social media I've found the greatest impedance to conversation with people of different opinions is that we stand in alternate landscapes of "facts". I cannot see the information that they see, which shapes their opinions. Each of our "timelines" are unique, and so each of our landscapes are unique. Print media provides a common landscape. And that landscape forms the basis from which meaningful conversation between different opinions can grow.
- kbart 10y ago
  How is print media any different? People get into heated arguments over the entries in encyclopedias, how they can agree on a common landscape, printed or not? Media is just a projection of people's views, so as long as there are different views, there will be different coverage of events inevitably. Actually, the only cases of "common landscapes" I can think of are these in the oppressed societies where media is a propaganda tool in the hands of government.
- freehunter 10y ago
  My small city is going through a minor scandal right now with the city council accused of giving preferential treatment to a developer while the neighbors around the proposed development are strongly against the work being done. Pretty common small city stuff, NIMBY, yadda yadda. We do have a local newspaper, and at every city council meeting the pro and con factions go to war either for or against the paper. The paper prints basic facts, which either side interprets as they will, and one side claiming the paper is biased towards the other side. Now half the city doesn't trust our newspaper. Even one common source of facts can be skewed by personal opinion. The only thing the newspaper changes about the discussion is whose side of the argument the editor is on.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Just printing facts isn't unbiased -- starting with the selection of which facts to print. Facts alone also lack context. You might factually state "radiation from Fukushima has been detected in the US". That sounds quite alarming! So you need to add some context like "This is because detection tech is very advanced. The levels are very low and pose no cause for concern." But then someone will criticise you for downplaying things. So the newspaper could very well be biased and skewed, just in how they present or don't present certain facts, which context they provide, etc.
11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
I miss the morning paper, and I miss the pre-dawn sky.
morsch 10y ago
Local journalism should be able to do better than they are in the changing publication landscape. It's niche by definition: while I can get national news from a wide number of sources, and global news from an almost uncountable number, there are only a handful of providers of local news. It tends to require "boots on the ground". It can also be practically relevant in day-to-day life, more so than the more abstract issues of wider relevance. What I don't need from my local and regional news provider is coverage of national and global issues; yet they keep reporting on them, probably because newspapers of yore were often the only provider of news for many people. That hasn't been true for a while.
webwanderings 10y ago
Local news is the most relevant news there is, in anyone's life, anywhere! Our focus on national and international news takes up too much of an unnecessary time and energy. On top of that, we spend ridiculously more time reading about what far away politicians have to say, or do. Glad to see people from technology sector investing time and money in strengthening the local communities.
- minikites 10y ago
  It sounds like you are privileged with the ability to ignore the policies that far-away politicians enact because they don't affect you. Not everyone is as lucky as you are.
  - abhisharm 10y ago
    I understand were you are coming from with a comment like that, but I would argue that the large majority of people read about and get emotionally invested in news stories that have no impact on their lives. Take, for example, the stories of refugees being taken in by European countries, and those of Donald Trump's view of healthcare. It's nearly physically impossible to be affected by those two things. We can think of plenty of such 'pairs' of stories that people get interested in which it's impossible to be affected by both. And beyond what marginal information you get to inform your voting preferences via those stories, it is pretty pointless to get invested in them.
    - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
      I was under the impression that the new healthcare plan would affect a lot of people, especially the chronically ill. I remember a lot of panic in my social circle that my peers might have to rush marriages to get chronically ill partners under the healthcare of their employer, and the great gnashing of teeth about how something wonderful as marriage might turn into a desperate tool that many other people don't have.
    - Mithaldu 10y ago
      I live in Hannover, Germany. I am physically impacted by both stories: For obvious reasons by the refugee one; And also by Trump's bullshitting with healthcare due to having multiple friends in the USA whose lives are directly and acutely endangered by him and his murderous troupe, which in turn impacts my ability to meet them again.
barking 10y ago
I think local newspapers are better placed to survive than national ones. Round here they send photographers to every community event and people love seeing themselves/relatives/friends/enemies in print. Also district court proceedings esp involving drunks can make for great unintended comedy. Presumably this paper is aiming to be mostly funded by advertising because their subscription target is only €72K p.a. and they have a staff of 7.
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  I wish you were right, but for the past 20 or so years, national media has been less decimated.
  - barking 10y ago
    That surprises me, I'd thought the drop in circulations was less severe at the local level.
    - Ericson2314 10y ago
      I wish，but the news is just a another example of increasing monopolization in America. Economies of scale are a powerful tool against a shrinking market.
eb0la 10y ago
And that's how a big corporation (USA Today) dropped a niche and someone had the vision and the guts to take the gauntlet. Local news are (probably) the last niche for journalism. People care about what's happening nearby - and unless you have a local newspaper, you'll miss that news or they can pass as fake ones. The only problem I see is printing is cash-flow intensive compared to full digital. I mean, for paper you have a daily/weekly expense with a proper credit line/funded account with the printer. In digital "printing" cost is not zero, but scales better with higher audiences - which is not the case for local news unless you have "local" news from a big population cluster (which is probably served by bigCo's like Hearst, Knight Ridder, Berkshire Hathaway, etc..)
- dilemma 10y ago
  >The only problem I see is printing is cash-flow intensive compared to full digital. I mean, for paper you have a daily/weekly expense with a proper credit line/funded account with the printer. On the other hand, with digital you have to spend money to advertise and market to your audience, otherwise it disappears. With print, you own the "platform" because you pay for the paper, ink, and shipping.
  - eb0la 10y ago
    I agree distribution costs both for print/digital are non negligible (let's face advertising and SEO are forms of distribution in the online world). But I am not sure digital should be the default way to go for journalism. Local or not. In digital there are also personnel cost for setting up and maintaining infrastructure costs, and refreshing the front page every X minutes (no, it's not made automatically). Even if you publish on a third party site (like Facebook) you still have to pay lump sum people to publish, promote, SEO, and A/B test landing pages... ... Is it worth for a 30-50K people audience? probably not unless you are thinking on the long run or you're making "evergreen" content... ... But this audience might be enough for a small newspaper printed in paper... even if the content is not "revived" every year/4 years by search engines.
markwaldron 10y ago
As a resident of a neighboring town to Montclair, I couldn't be more excited to see a new local newspaper trying to keep the residents more informed. Needless to say, I spent the $12 to subscribe. If this goes well, I hope to see more papers of this nature popping up in my town and others in the area!
- ct0 10y ago
  As a resident, Im so happy to see something so local and exciting on HN!
itsmee 10y ago
This looks like an amazing initiative - and shows an entrepreneurial spirit! As a side note, it's interesting, how many software engineers consider alternative careers for themselves?
- stanleydrew 10y ago
  Lots. I am considering starting a small-scale residential real estate development company and am actively in the process of starting a brewery, for instance. There are other software developers that I know doing both.
  - enjo 10y ago
    I'm currently enrolled at Washington State studying wine making as a possible second career.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
cjCamel 10y ago
Their subscriber income will be tiny according to their target of 6000 subs at $12 PA. Their outgoings include 7 journalists and printing and distribution costs (currently they are giving away 15000 copies free every week, which they plan to reduce to 5000 per week). I really want endeavours like this to be successful and would love to understand how they plan to make this a sustainable (non loss making) business. The traditional model is classifieds & local ads, but that's not been working for a while now.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  In what sense is it not working? Layoffs don't mean something stopped working, they mean the business model couldn't support the same staff size as before. At some point the internet-driven "correction" in print media is over and it becomes a normal growing industry again.
  - cjCamel 10y ago
    Happy if you are saying that small operations like this one can be supported by a traditional model, but I don't share your optimism for the future of this form of media, unless they come up with a new business model that doesn't compete with digital ad dollars. http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/ http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers http://www.editorandpublisher.com/columns/how-did-newspapers-get-in-this-pickle/ http://www.editorandpublisher.com/columns/how-did-newspapers...
- mholmes680 10y ago
  I was toying around with a similar idea, but figured a local newspaper should provide local services -- hyper data-gathering at the local level. Like I'd love to see a dollar-by-dollar breakdown of where my [specific] property taxes are going, so I can be more informed when voting locally. Make it a special feature, and charge $5 per sub. Gets their $72k to $84k (say half your subs can't refuse @ $5) easy. (assuming i can trade one of those journalists for a data scientist) I also think "local ads" needs a whole new approach, for a variety of reasons. You have local business associations shooting themselves in the foot every time a fellow business is not somehow advertised in any other member store. Also, syndicate [free-ish] articles from bloggers who can help your community better itself. Also, extend into the schools - get a HS writer to report the sports there to pick up more subs. OK, I'm not covering all the expenses yet, but that's just a few ideas...
Ericson2314 10y ago
I'm very happy this exists, but I feel like it's time for the underdog media to give up on money-making, and just register the paper as non-profit. It seems like this developer isn't looking to make a profit anyways, and that move helps ensure he or a future owner has more barriers to changing their minds. Not all valuable endeavors yield a profit-making opportunity.
hypertexthero 10y ago
If you are interested in printing your own newspaper check out http://www.newspaperclub.com/ http://www.newspaperclub.com/ I received their samples in preparation for sending out graphic design and photography promos and the quality is great.
- petercooper 10y ago
  Can second. Received samples last week. Pricing is OK but gets particularly attractive above 1000 copies.
weberc2 10y ago
> the animosity the Trump administration has directed at the news media has injected new vigor into a beleaguered industry. I'm no fan of Trump, but leave it to the NYT to frame its industry as a victim. As though decades of increasingly partisan coverage had nothing to do with the industry's problems.
- wry_discontent 10y ago
  Trump's interactions with the media, and NYT in particular, is far worse than previous administrations. Newspapers have been having (some self inflicted) trouble for a long time, but what Trump is doing is something new and very dangerous.
  - pennydreams 10y ago
    but NYT has seen a massive increase in subs following the election, so there really is no excuse
  - ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
    More dangerous than lying us into foreign wars that kill millions of people and bankrupt the country? That's quite a high bar.
    - smt88 10y ago
      Who did that? What was the last war that killed millions?
      - rapsey 10y ago
        I guess you don't remember the lead up to the Iraq war.
        zerocrates 10y ago
        I believe the quibble there is that millions didn't die in the Iraq War.
bluetwo 10y ago
Hope they find much success and build a model that can be replicated. It is a sin how little effort is put into local news. It is far easier for large corporations to re-package the same national news into different markets, than it is to do good journalism at the local level. Your local news affiliate on ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX mostly just repackages stories from other affiliates, or run something easy to cover stories like a house fire or inclement weather. This local coverage is MANDATED by the FCC to benefit local communities. Want to know what you city council voted on this week? What bills your state senate has passed? What non-profits have done to benifit your community? Good luck. It is unlikely that they will cover it.
- lostphilosopher 10y ago
  Wow. I would love a news media product that covered _exactly_ those topics. (The closest I've found is MPR, Minnesota's local branch of NPR.)
- hackermailman 10y ago
  There's little community blogs/papers here that cover that usually run by retirees and students though the real issue is having people around that can understand the gigantic legislation being pushed through city councils. Common here for thousand plus pages to get floated around nobody has time to sift through unless it's their F/T job to do so.
- Zelphyr 10y ago
  These days I've noticed they're getting even lazier than repackaging stories. They just put a few lines of text before and after pictures of tweets.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  Blame the advertising-driven revenue model. Human attention is the only currency the advertisers respect and are willing to convert into dollars. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat command attention. So do online forums like this one. So do [to a lesser extent] televised sports and performances. Local news is on the losing end of this battle.
- 10y ago
naftaliharris 10y ago
One thing this article and the comments haven't discussed yet is how much the viability of local newspapers depends on the local real estate market. Take a look at your local newspaper if you have one, and I bet it's chock full of real estate ads. (Where I live, the Palo Alto Daily Post certainly is, as is the competing Weekly; example here: [1]). And it makes sense: the most relevant ads for a local population are matters of local interest, and for expensive houses, the ROI for ad-spend can easily make sense. So I expect that a big factor in whether quality local newspapers can survive is the strength of the local housing market, (measured through e.g. median house price and yearly volume). As a practical matter, this means that only in relatively affluent places is local news financially feasible, (although the housing market isn't the only reason why that's the case). It also means that more people searching for property online may present a challenge for local news. [1] http://www.paloaltoonline.com/morguepdf/2017/2017_03_24.paw.section1.pdf http://www.paloaltoonline.com/morguepdf/2017/2017_03_24.paw....
gist 10y ago
> A subscription costs $12 a year, and he is aiming to sign up 6,000 subscribers. That's nothing. Barely pays for basic business expenses. The potential in a market that size isn't even that great and there is also the cost to acquire those subscribers. And 6000 readers doesn't allow you to make any money from advertising at least not w/o taking advantage of the type of advertisers who don't understand media buying and aren't overpaying.
mtreis86 10y ago
Is there a currently updated database of local papers by region? I honestly have no idea how many local news papers are available to my area. I know of at least four from having seen them at the market, but no place online to check for more. I am finding dozens of historical dbs but none current. Edit: http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/ http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/

289 points by cpete 10y ago

snikeris 10y ago

Does every NY Times article mention President Trump?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Pfhreak 10y ago
Nope. (A casual glance through their front page finds several articles that do not.)
- gotchange 10y ago
  I think that was rhetorical.
  - Pfhreak 10y ago
    Indeed. But it was also ridiculous. So I went with the equally ridiculous, overly wan, and dry response.
    - gotchange 10y ago
      Kill 'em with kindness. On a more serious note, I don't see Trump's mentions in the article to be unwarranted at all. On the contrary, they're very appropriate given his divisive rhetoric about the news media, and I believe that the author was very measured and reserved with his reporting. It is not like he went out of his way to take a jab at him. The references were all on topic and informative. Nothing really to complain about here.

tcarn 10y ago

With so much noise online, there's definately a strong argument to be made for local newspapers like this, great job guys!

dr_ 10y ago

Interesting. I work in Montclair a couple of days a week. It probably is the type of town that could support this, but it's still kind of peculiar. The Montclair Times HQ was shut down - it's now a dialysis center. There is a blog of sorts as the article mentions, Baristanet, that covers local news in Montclair, although I have no clue how many people read it. I would imagine that most people in Montclair read the NYTimes - perhaps it would make sense for the NYTimes to 'up' it's local coverage game in the tri state area.

Dangeranger 10y ago

Within social media I've found the greatest impedance to conversation with people of different opinions is that we stand in alternate landscapes of "facts". I cannot see the information that they see, which shapes their opinions. Each of our "timelines" are unique, and so each of our landscapes are unique. Print media provides a common landscape. And that landscape forms the basis from which meaningful conversation between different opinions can grow.

kbart 10y ago
How is print media any different? People get into heated arguments over the entries in encyclopedias, how they can agree on a common landscape, printed or not? Media is just a projection of people's views, so as long as there are different views, there will be different coverage of events inevitably. Actually, the only cases of "common landscapes" I can think of are these in the oppressed societies where media is a propaganda tool in the hands of government.
freehunter 10y ago
My small city is going through a minor scandal right now with the city council accused of giving preferential treatment to a developer while the neighbors around the proposed development are strongly against the work being done. Pretty common small city stuff, NIMBY, yadda yadda. We do have a local newspaper, and at every city council meeting the pro and con factions go to war either for or against the paper. The paper prints basic facts, which either side interprets as they will, and one side claiming the paper is biased towards the other side. Now half the city doesn't trust our newspaper. Even one common source of facts can be skewed by personal opinion. The only thing the newspaper changes about the discussion is whose side of the argument the editor is on.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Just printing facts isn't unbiased -- starting with the selection of which facts to print. Facts alone also lack context. You might factually state "radiation from Fukushima has been detected in the US". That sounds quite alarming! So you need to add some context like "This is because detection tech is very advanced. The levels are very low and pose no cause for concern." But then someone will criticise you for downplaying things. So the newspaper could very well be biased and skewed, just in how they present or don't present certain facts, which context they provide, etc.

11thEarlOfMar 10y ago

I miss the morning paper, and I miss the pre-dawn sky.

morsch 10y ago

Local journalism should be able to do better than they are in the changing publication landscape. It's niche by definition: while I can get national news from a wide number of sources, and global news from an almost uncountable number, there are only a handful of providers of local news. It tends to require "boots on the ground". It can also be practically relevant in day-to-day life, more so than the more abstract issues of wider relevance. What I don't need from my local and regional news provider is coverage of national and global issues; yet they keep reporting on them, probably because newspapers of yore were often the only provider of news for many people. That hasn't been true for a while.

webwanderings 10y ago

Local news is the most relevant news there is, in anyone's life, anywhere! Our focus on national and international news takes up too much of an unnecessary time and energy. On top of that, we spend ridiculously more time reading about what far away politicians have to say, or do. Glad to see people from technology sector investing time and money in strengthening the local communities.

minikites 10y ago
It sounds like you are privileged with the ability to ignore the policies that far-away politicians enact because they don't affect you. Not everyone is as lucky as you are.
- abhisharm 10y ago
  I understand were you are coming from with a comment like that, but I would argue that the large majority of people read about and get emotionally invested in news stories that have no impact on their lives. Take, for example, the stories of refugees being taken in by European countries, and those of Donald Trump's view of healthcare. It's nearly physically impossible to be affected by those two things. We can think of plenty of such 'pairs' of stories that people get interested in which it's impossible to be affected by both. And beyond what marginal information you get to inform your voting preferences via those stories, it is pretty pointless to get invested in them.
  - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
    I was under the impression that the new healthcare plan would affect a lot of people, especially the chronically ill. I remember a lot of panic in my social circle that my peers might have to rush marriages to get chronically ill partners under the healthcare of their employer, and the great gnashing of teeth about how something wonderful as marriage might turn into a desperate tool that many other people don't have.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    I live in Hannover, Germany. I am physically impacted by both stories: For obvious reasons by the refugee one; And also by Trump's bullshitting with healthcare due to having multiple friends in the USA whose lives are directly and acutely endangered by him and his murderous troupe, which in turn impacts my ability to meet them again.

barking 10y ago

I think local newspapers are better placed to survive than national ones. Round here they send photographers to every community event and people love seeing themselves/relatives/friends/enemies in print. Also district court proceedings esp involving drunks can make for great unintended comedy. Presumably this paper is aiming to be mostly funded by advertising because their subscription target is only €72K p.a. and they have a staff of 7.

Ericson2314 10y ago
I wish you were right, but for the past 20 or so years, national media has been less decimated.
- barking 10y ago
  That surprises me, I'd thought the drop in circulations was less severe at the local level.
  - Ericson2314 10y ago
    I wish，but the news is just a another example of increasing monopolization in America. Economies of scale are a powerful tool against a shrinking market.

eb0la 10y ago

And that's how a big corporation (USA Today) dropped a niche and someone had the vision and the guts to take the gauntlet. Local news are (probably) the last niche for journalism. People care about what's happening nearby - and unless you have a local newspaper, you'll miss that news or they can pass as fake ones. The only problem I see is printing is cash-flow intensive compared to full digital. I mean, for paper you have a daily/weekly expense with a proper credit line/funded account with the printer. In digital "printing" cost is not zero, but scales better with higher audiences - which is not the case for local news unless you have "local" news from a big population cluster (which is probably served by bigCo's like Hearst, Knight Ridder, Berkshire Hathaway, etc..)

dilemma 10y ago
>The only problem I see is printing is cash-flow intensive compared to full digital. I mean, for paper you have a daily/weekly expense with a proper credit line/funded account with the printer. On the other hand, with digital you have to spend money to advertise and market to your audience, otherwise it disappears. With print, you own the "platform" because you pay for the paper, ink, and shipping.
- eb0la 10y ago
  I agree distribution costs both for print/digital are non negligible (let's face advertising and SEO are forms of distribution in the online world). But I am not sure digital should be the default way to go for journalism. Local or not. In digital there are also personnel cost for setting up and maintaining infrastructure costs, and refreshing the front page every X minutes (no, it's not made automatically). Even if you publish on a third party site (like Facebook) you still have to pay lump sum people to publish, promote, SEO, and A/B test landing pages... ... Is it worth for a 30-50K people audience? probably not unless you are thinking on the long run or you're making "evergreen" content... ... But this audience might be enough for a small newspaper printed in paper... even if the content is not "revived" every year/4 years by search engines.

markwaldron 10y ago

As a resident of a neighboring town to Montclair, I couldn't be more excited to see a new local newspaper trying to keep the residents more informed. Needless to say, I spent the $12 to subscribe. If this goes well, I hope to see more papers of this nature popping up in my town and others in the area!

ct0 10y ago
As a resident, Im so happy to see something so local and exciting on HN!

itsmee 10y ago

This looks like an amazing initiative - and shows an entrepreneurial spirit! As a side note, it's interesting, how many software engineers consider alternative careers for themselves?

stanleydrew 10y ago
Lots. I am considering starting a small-scale residential real estate development company and am actively in the process of starting a brewery, for instance. There are other software developers that I know doing both.
- enjo 10y ago
  I'm currently enrolled at Washington State studying wine making as a possible second career.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

cjCamel 10y ago

Their subscriber income will be tiny according to their target of 6000 subs at $12 PA. Their outgoings include 7 journalists and printing and distribution costs (currently they are giving away 15000 copies free every week, which they plan to reduce to 5000 per week). I really want endeavours like this to be successful and would love to understand how they plan to make this a sustainable (non loss making) business. The traditional model is classifieds & local ads, but that's not been working for a while now.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
In what sense is it not working? Layoffs don't mean something stopped working, they mean the business model couldn't support the same staff size as before. At some point the internet-driven "correction" in print media is over and it becomes a normal growing industry again.
- cjCamel 10y ago
  Happy if you are saying that small operations like this one can be supported by a traditional model, but I don't share your optimism for the future of this form of media, unless they come up with a new business model that doesn't compete with digital ad dollars. http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/ http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers http://www.editorandpublisher.com/columns/how-did-newspapers-get-in-this-pickle/ http://www.editorandpublisher.com/columns/how-did-newspapers...
mholmes680 10y ago
I was toying around with a similar idea, but figured a local newspaper should provide local services -- hyper data-gathering at the local level. Like I'd love to see a dollar-by-dollar breakdown of where my [specific] property taxes are going, so I can be more informed when voting locally. Make it a special feature, and charge $5 per sub. Gets their $72k to $84k (say half your subs can't refuse @ $5) easy. (assuming i can trade one of those journalists for a data scientist) I also think "local ads" needs a whole new approach, for a variety of reasons. You have local business associations shooting themselves in the foot every time a fellow business is not somehow advertised in any other member store. Also, syndicate [free-ish] articles from bloggers who can help your community better itself. Also, extend into the schools - get a HS writer to report the sports there to pick up more subs. OK, I'm not covering all the expenses yet, but that's just a few ideas...

Ericson2314 10y ago

I'm very happy this exists, but I feel like it's time for the underdog media to give up on money-making, and just register the paper as non-profit. It seems like this developer isn't looking to make a profit anyways, and that move helps ensure he or a future owner has more barriers to changing their minds. Not all valuable endeavors yield a profit-making opportunity.

hypertexthero 10y ago

If you are interested in printing your own newspaper check out http://www.newspaperclub.com/ http://www.newspaperclub.com/ I received their samples in preparation for sending out graphic design and photography promos and the quality is great.

petercooper 10y ago
Can second. Received samples last week. Pricing is OK but gets particularly attractive above 1000 copies.

weberc2 10y ago

> the animosity the Trump administration has directed at the news media has injected new vigor into a beleaguered industry. I'm no fan of Trump, but leave it to the NYT to frame its industry as a victim. As though decades of increasingly partisan coverage had nothing to do with the industry's problems.

wry_discontent 10y ago
Trump's interactions with the media, and NYT in particular, is far worse than previous administrations. Newspapers have been having (some self inflicted) trouble for a long time, but what Trump is doing is something new and very dangerous.
- pennydreams 10y ago
  but NYT has seen a massive increase in subs following the election, so there really is no excuse
- ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
  More dangerous than lying us into foreign wars that kill millions of people and bankrupt the country? That's quite a high bar.
  - smt88 10y ago
    Who did that? What was the last war that killed millions?
    - rapsey 10y ago
      I guess you don't remember the lead up to the Iraq war.
      - zerocrates 10y ago
        I believe the quibble there is that millions didn't die in the Iraq War.

bluetwo 10y ago

Hope they find much success and build a model that can be replicated. It is a sin how little effort is put into local news. It is far easier for large corporations to re-package the same national news into different markets, than it is to do good journalism at the local level. Your local news affiliate on ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX mostly just repackages stories from other affiliates, or run something easy to cover stories like a house fire or inclement weather. This local coverage is MANDATED by the FCC to benefit local communities. Want to know what you city council voted on this week? What bills your state senate has passed? What non-profits have done to benifit your community? Good luck. It is unlikely that they will cover it.

lostphilosopher 10y ago
Wow. I would love a news media product that covered _exactly_ those topics. (The closest I've found is MPR, Minnesota's local branch of NPR.)
hackermailman 10y ago
There's little community blogs/papers here that cover that usually run by retirees and students though the real issue is having people around that can understand the gigantic legislation being pushed through city councils. Common here for thousand plus pages to get floated around nobody has time to sift through unless it's their F/T job to do so.
Zelphyr 10y ago
These days I've noticed they're getting even lazier than repackaging stories. They just put a few lines of text before and after pictures of tweets.
prostoalex 10y ago
Blame the advertising-driven revenue model. Human attention is the only currency the advertisers respect and are willing to convert into dollars. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat command attention. So do online forums like this one. So do [to a lesser extent] televised sports and performances. Local news is on the losing end of this battle.
10y ago

naftaliharris 10y ago

One thing this article and the comments haven't discussed yet is how much the viability of local newspapers depends on the local real estate market. Take a look at your local newspaper if you have one, and I bet it's chock full of real estate ads. (Where I live, the Palo Alto Daily Post certainly is, as is the competing Weekly; example here: [1]). And it makes sense: the most relevant ads for a local population are matters of local interest, and for expensive houses, the ROI for ad-spend can easily make sense. So I expect that a big factor in whether quality local newspapers can survive is the strength of the local housing market, (measured through e.g. median house price and yearly volume). As a practical matter, this means that only in relatively affluent places is local news financially feasible, (although the housing market isn't the only reason why that's the case). It also means that more people searching for property online may present a challenge for local news. [1] http://www.paloaltoonline.com/morguepdf/2017/2017_03_24.paw.section1.pdf http://www.paloaltoonline.com/morguepdf/2017/2017_03_24.paw....

gist 10y ago

> A subscription costs $12 a year, and he is aiming to sign up 6,000 subscribers. That's nothing. Barely pays for basic business expenses. The potential in a market that size isn't even that great and there is also the cost to acquire those subscribers. And 6000 readers doesn't allow you to make any money from advertising at least not w/o taking advantage of the type of advertisers who don't understand media buying and aren't overpaying.

mtreis86 10y ago

Is there a currently updated database of local papers by region? I honestly have no idea how many local news papers are available to my area. I know of at least four from having seen them at the market, but no place online to check for more. I am finding dozens of historical dbs but none current. Edit: http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/ http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/