You say newspapers are dead and the Internet is the media of the future?
Don’t tell that to Jim Ryan. The Elm Grove advertising and promotional man has a 4-month-old monthly newspaper covering his western suburban community, and while there may be a limited online presence in the future, he’s banking on ink on paper.
The Elm Grove Times Independent was born of frustration at seeing the old Community Newspapers Inc. Elm Grove Leaves newspaper lose its identity as CNI’s owner, Journal Communications, sliced and diced the CNI market and replaced locally identified newspapers with consolidated papers as well as hyperlocal websites, all bearing the name NOW.
Ryan is reluctant to openly trash the Journal Communications publication. But when news about Elm Grove was consolidated with Brookfield in a single print outlet, “they lost the flavor of the community,” he says. “It was almost all Brookfield. There was one or two pages of Elm Grove, and half of it was the police log. We always took a back seat.”
As president of a community business group, Ryan says he tried to get the message across to the Journal Communications and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel hierarchy. And he acknowledges that the Elm Grove NOW website has “a lot more stuff” tied to the village. But that doesn’t make up for what the community has lost, he says. “We like to have our own publication.”
The Times Independent, launched this past September, has a total free circulation of 6,000. Of that, 3,100 copies go to every post office box and residential and business mail address in the Elm Grove zip code via bulk mail – a 99 percent saturation, Ryan says. The other nearly 3,000 copies are distributed at drop-off points around the community where passersby can pick up the publication. Advertising supports the paper, which has a lean budget.
“We have a knowledge and passion for letting people know what’s doing about Elm Grove,” says Ryan, who describes it as “a user-friendly newspaper about the community and for the community.”
Is it breaking even? “I’m almost there,” says Ryan, who carries the title of publisher. “I’m not drawing a salary myself, but I’m paying all the principal people involved with it.”
To help put the publication on the map with village residents, it sponsored a community expo to promote local businesses, and itself, in October after just one month in existence.
The paper’s business and distribution models both amply support the publication’s publication strategy, Ryan says. “Print is still viable. People like to look at it in their hands.” And for advertisers, it’s a low-cost buy, he insists. “Our lowest price is for an $80 display ad. You couldn’t do a mass mailing for that.”
Ryan and editor Lisabeth Passalis-Bain, who had worked for the Leaves before it folded, started talking a couple of years ago about the idea of a new newspaper. He wasn’t sold at first on the concept but about a year ago decided to give it a go.
Much of the content is produced directly by the newsmakers themselves. There’s a “Report from Village Hall” in the first issue penned by the village manager. December’s front page includes a story about the Elm Grove Police Department joining a “booze and belts” crackdown on drunken drivers and the failure to use seatbelts.
Other content will be sponsored, says Ryan. And the paper is rich in community-boosting news, such as wish lists from local social service and nonprofit groups.
Already the publication has covered its own “big story”: local distress at the prospect that a downsizing Elmbrook School District would close Elm Grove’s only elementary school. The paper ran letters in opposition and publicized meetings to challenge the proposal. Ryan says the paper insisted that letter writers keep their comments short and sweet (50 words or less) – and not anonymous. In December the district postponed its decision, with opponents to the closing claiming victory.
So what about an Internet site in this digital age? Ryan has bought a domain name for the paper, but a Web launch won’t happen until well into next year – and even then, it will be mainly to promote the print edition, he says.
And Ryan says he’s already getting feedback from other communities, where residents want to see more coverage than they are finding in existing media and are asking him to consider starting up more editions.
“The answer is probably down the road,” Ryan says. “But I’ve got to grow something first.”
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What do you do when someone tells an outright falsehood to the press?
A New York Times story that ran in the Journal Sentinel on Dec. 26 illustrates the problem.
The story reports on administrative rule making by the Obama administration that would ensure that doctors get reimbursed by Medicare for the time they spent with patients explaining end-of-life decisions, including advance directives on whether or not the patient wants extraordinary measures taken to prolong life.
In the story is this quote from a “pro-life” group:
“Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the end of life.”
This is either a deliberate falsehood or represents simple, woeful ignorance on the part of the speaker. (Recall the phony “death panels” claims about the health reform bill in 2009? PolitiFact, that fact-checking operation that has a franchise now at the JS, called it the “lie of the year” for 2009.)
To be fair, the Times does explore the erroneousness of similar, earlier “death panel” claims. Those comments got cut from the JS version, however, almost certainly because of space limitations.
There’s nothing automatically biased here. Such editing happens almost universally in papers all across the country. Wire-service stories, whether from the Times, the AP, or even the Journal Sentinel itself (whose articles are distributed nationally on the McClatchy/Tribune News Service wires), typically appear in highly truncated form on the pages of papers nationwide with ever-shrinking news holes.
Yet the result allows a lie to get a head start on the truth in the footrace for public opinion. Would it be so hard to have preserved some of the skepticism that informed the Times‘ original report?
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