taking chance on start-up?

Well, then it's a matter of whether you're OK with that, what the initial pay is, and what the potential (with ownership) is.

 

Mrs. Editude's last two full-time gigs were with start-ups, and while she has moved on from both to a freelance/part-time approach, she enjoyed parts of both experiences. Keep your eyes open, get details in writing and be prepared for issues that wouldn't come up otherwise.

 

Are you trying to become a pathetic looser bootstrapper at The Berkshire Beacon?

 

I took a gig at a start-up weekly about three years ago. All kinds of promises were made, none were kept. After working there for about five months, I started asking hard questions about ad revenue and printing costs. They were losing about $12,000 a week. Yikes. So I interviewed at a PM M-F, fortunately was offered the job and took it. Six weeks after I left, the weekly folded.

I wouldn't do something like that again unless I as unemployed.

 

Within the last year, a copy editor in our shop took a job at a start-up in suburban Chicago.

That paper no longer exists.

 

Unless they win a contract to print the city/county legal ads, pass.

 

great point.

make sure they're on top of this whole internets thing.

seriously, if they're counting on subscriptions to the print edition to make or break them, that's a big problem.

 

Even better if it's a Betamax.

 

Listen to what DH said. I had a friend at a weekly a few years back that almost went under, but they were able to get the county voters list from a larger paper. According to the laws in that state the list had to be published at least three times. The revenue from the list was over 200K and my buddy learned later, that without it the weekly would have shut down.

 

Find out who is setting up the office's networking systems. If it's a pro who does nothing but computer networking, that's a good sign. If it's some random asshole who tinkers with networking on the side, run away in terror.

 

A college friend of mine actually did what many of us have talked about doing but were never insane enough to follow through with: Thought the paper he was working for was bad enough that he quit and started a competing paper in the same community. This was in 2004, and his paper is still going. It's a weekly, and he's just now moving from free to pay.

It has been really difficult. The hours have been ridiculous. It probably wrecked his marriage (him and his then-wife were his only employees for quite awhile). He went in with almost nothing in savings, very little in business knowledge and now he has a good bit of personal debt. He has had issues with pretty much everything, from printers to delivery (he still delivers them, I think), employees to advertisers. At one point, he was able to round up a group of investors to keep the paper going.

Today, he has an office, a handful of writers/paginators and a pretty good rep in the community. He has also hurt the old paper pretty badly. I think it was really ballsy and equally naive to do what he did, but it's impressive he has kept it going for this long. It has been really, really hard, though, and he has gotten the best business education you could get. If he gets lucky, he'll be able to sell soon (he has gotten some offers) for enough money to erase his debt and start fresh. Hopefully, he can.

 

Yes. In July 2003 I went to a start-up in New Hampshire. It started 9 months earlier, in a town with an established daily that thumbed its nose at our presence. The paper went from start-up to a circ of just under 10,000 in my four years there, becoming the largest paid weekly in N.H. in the process, winning Weekly of the Year two years in a row, not to mention loads of other awards. We thrived. If you've got the guts, dedication, gusto and willingness to sacrifice, I'd say go for it. You only live once.