Starting a new paper?

Oh goodie, I certainly hope so.

 

See you there. I can't wait.

 

What about starting a serious online paper? Not a blog or a "community journalism" site. But a professional, as-near-to-full-service-as-you-can-get newspaper that only publishes online? No printing costs, no circulation hassles. Just journalists, ad sales, a good web guy or two and a solid advertising budget to drive traffic to your site.
You'd probably need to be in a decent-sized market to make it work, but seems like that sort of thing could make a run in a college town or some small cities, or sections of big ones. I've thought about it a few times. But alas, no capital.

 

Oh, you know that's not true. They're just saying that because they have forgotten how often they said, "This paper sucks" and "I don't buy it, I just look at it if there's one laying around the coffee shop."

I would love to win the MegaMonsterPower Lottery for $392 million, take my cut and buy a small paper somewhere.

 

For me, the problem with that is I'd have to live in my hometown. The town isn't terribly bad, but I think the school system there is as bad as it gets in my neck of the woods and I'd be afraid my kids would turn out like me or worse.

But I'm positive I could do it better than the folks running the current paper.

 

My publishing boss actually commissioned someone to find out what people in the Nova Scotia community felt wasn't getting enough coverage. High school sports and news was the one big thing that did not get coverage. So four years ago, boss applied to get money to start the publication and now it's alive and well.

At first the publication was just sports but in the last three years, it has branched out to cover all high school issues and I have been there since the publication's inception. Our readership has flourished to 10,000 readers and many more online. My boss goes out and gets the advertising to pay for the paper, while I am in charge of recruiting writers, setting up each issue and troubleshooting (I do write predominately sports, but do major news stories when needed)

The last four years had been hard labour for my publisher and I to make this publication a viable one in the province, and I am happy to say that the publication is here to stay.

The advice I would give you is if you are going to get into this, make sure you have funds secured, advertising secure, good management, get the word out and make sure you have a great writing and editing staff.. With small town papers, it is hard to survive, but if you do things right and give it an honest go for at least a couple of years, you will see the dividends of it.

I am sure my boss would be more than willing to talk to you if you want.

 

Get funded by a Venezuelan billionaire... Piss it all away in 18 months...

 

Do it the right way and it'll work. I just came from a start-up weekly. First five years circ went to 9,500, and the paper won back-to-back state weekly of the year as well as getting several sports, arts and entertainment, and stories and photos awards. You need money, though, or a great crew of ad getters.