If You Were To Start A Newspaper Today

I hope you're right, but I'm not convinced. I'm afraid the print revenue has dried up enough that in order to remain profitable, a newspaper will have to have less newshole, less staffing, etc. That makes for a worse product, which will in turn damage the ad revenue further and the downward spiral will continue.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope the economy bounces back and we come back with it. But I'll not be holding my breath.

 

You probably shouldn't hope I'm right. The question was "If" I started a newspaper, what would I do. Given that hypothetical, I'd say the best chance is with a small print operation.

But without the "if," I wouldn't start a newspaper at all, because I think they are all doomed.

You can choose print and have a million in costs and $750k in revenue, or you can choose online and have $250k in costs and $75k in revenue.

 

On average what is overall cost including salary/ expenses for reporters at a metropolitan newspaper-- $100,000 per?

 

Mostly freelance? You'd publish a lot of blank pages.

In theory, not a bad idea. In reality, a disaster.

 

When I was in high school and my picture was in the paper, we always went out and bought a few copies. I gotta think that mindset still exists. So I'm with RickStain: shovel in every name and every picture that you can. I always think back on a survey they did in a small town where I worked that showed what people wanted to know was, who was in that car crash they passed? So lots of nitty gritty stuff like that, too.

However, I think Frank_Ridgeway has a good point, too, about the local merchants in such towns not having a ton of money for advertising. So while I think this would be a paper people would buy and there would be money to be made, I don't think anyone would get handsomely rich off it.

 

Frank R. makes a great point about reaching out to places like Mesa/Scottsdale and Ann Arbor, Mich., both areas with no shortage of affluent customers and (I hope) local businesses who would advertise. Those would be good possibilities for startups, but the most likely scenario would be buying an existing paper, especially a weekly. It's certainly a buyers market!

As we've discussed here before, when the economy rebounds and consumer/merchant activity picks back up, will there be reliable vehicles for ads to reach the consumers? I'm sorry, but at this point, web ads just aren't getting the job done, and as newspapers close or slash the size of their print products, where are the ads going to go?

One thing I'd definitely do from the start: stress the local news and sports. And reader opinions. Yes, they make us cringe sometimes, but show me a newspaper with tons of letters to the editor each day and I'll show you a newspaper that's doing well with its circulation.

 

TV, radio, web, direct mail. That's more than enough.

You can't pretend the problems with newspaper advertising come from the economic problems. Newspaper advertising revenue was death-spiraling before the economy went bad, and it's been dropping much faster than other forms of revenue since.

 

I'll grant you TV and radio -- although those mediums are losing audience big time, too. And out here in the boondocks, where TV stations try to cover such a big area geographically, it doesn't make sense to do TV if your business is on the outskirts of their "market."

In my experience, it's too easy to ignore web advertising. How many people go on the Internet to look at the "display" ads? Or the pop ups? They're just obstacles to work around.

I still think newspapers -- at least ones people pay for -- give a local business the best return on their advertising dollar. You know who and where the subscribers are.

At least I hope the above is true! Of course, maybe I've had a few too many drinks of Kool Aid at the office.

 

I'd like to believe all that, but the numbers (and the blood in the streets of the Journalism Only forum) don't lie.

 

For a weekly with circulation of say 4000 what would be a reasonable weekly average ad revenue projection ? $10,000?, $15,000?

 

I'd probably do a weekly similarly to how I tried to operate at my last shop.

We'd do community news, but we'd also take on heavier topics such as the recent outbreak of AIDS cases, the fallout from the sub-prime mortgage crisis, etc. I'd need three full-time reporters, one or two full-time photogs and two or three full-time production staff and one or two full-time ad reps. I'd contract out for printing.

As far as the Web is concerned, I'd actually do something similar to what my old shop did. If you want access to PDFs of pages or read any story online in its entirety, you have to subscribe online. Want the paper edition? Either buy it or subscribe to it. Want both? You can get both by paying $10 more. I'd also do microcharging, so if someone wanted access to one story online, they'd have to pay a nickel for it. If they wanted a day pass, it'd cost a quarter.

What I might do is have one paragraph teasers to every story on the Web site, but if you click and you're not already subscribed, you get to the payment screen. If you are subscribed and you're logged in, you get to read the story.

 

Agree wholeheartedly. Ads on the Internet are ignored more than they are in newspapers.