[cjCamel]

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.

[mholmes680]

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...

[tempaccount1]

I'm a journalist turned developer and I had a similar idea a while back. I feel local news orgs are missing a trick because aggregation is something journalists can do very well due to the nature of their job (pulling info from disparate sources, fact-checking etc). With so many sources of general data and info you can easily provide value by giving it local and regional context.

Btw - this a throwaway account. Having trouble logging in with my username carlmungz.

[erikpukinskis]

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]

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/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/columns/how-did-newspapers...