new newspaper to serve Fishtown community

[saffo31]

I agree that The Star is more professionally produced and have heard of Spirit writers wage woes, but is this to be the necessary fate of small local papers? You either sell to a corporation or you limp by without enough funding to pay for your writers' time and efforts? Writers move through The Spirit staff quickly because the publisher cannot even pay for part-time stringers (I think that they don't pay some of their writers at all) and ads don't bring in revenue beyond basic production and administrative costs. You, therefore, do not get the high-quality reporting that could make The Spirit a success.

Yet I happen to think that independent neighborhood-based papers are crucial to fostering local neighborhood identity.

The question is: What role should the community play in supporting independent local papers? Does the community even care about the difference between locally-run and managed papers like The Spirit versus The Star? Maybe not.

[danroth]

Originally Posted by saffo31

Does the community even care about the difference between locally-run and managed papers like The Spirit versus The Star? Maybe not.

My sense is that the answer is highly mixed.

First, I think there's an unfortunately large number of people who don't care about newspapers at all. I can count the number of people under the age of 30 I know who read either paper on one hand. Also, I know that on the block I walk from my home to my office, the Spirit and the Star are generally either thrown in the trash can or left to sit on the sidewalk. Neither who produces them, nor the quality of their editorial content, seems to matter to the trash cans and the soaking rains.

Second, I do know a lot of people who do care. For those for whom nieghborhood traditions and/or a sense of community is most valuable, there is a hands-down bias in favor of the Spirit. For those for whom quality editorial content is most valuable, there is a favoring of the Star (albeit with grumbling over the high percentage of ad content).

Me, I'm glad that they both exist, and hope they both continue to go strong.

I also wish both of them would manage a way to show up on my doorstep on a consistent basis.

[CJane]

I too have heard the Spirit has lost many good writers because of their refusal to pay. It can probably be better managed, but it does fill a niche. Who doesn't like to see their name and birthday in print? What I would really like to see is a neighborhood newspaper that isn't all fluff, which the Spirit is. I'd like to see the neighborhood stuff PLUS informative news stories. The cub scout picnic mixed in with local hard news and politics.

Does the neighborhood bear some responsibility? If they did, neighborhood newspapers such as the Spirit would charge to show up at your doorstep or newsstand. How many people do you know would actually pay for it? It's free because if it wasn't, it wouldn't have the readership it does now.

[Scoop0901]

Originally Posted by CJane

How many people do you know would actually pay for it? It's free because if it wasn't, it wouldn't have the readership it does now.

It's also true that if the package were decent (or better!), people would be willing to pay. It's a two-way street.

Every newspaper boasts higher readership rates than circulation. How? Because they do studies to try to determine how many people actually read each copy of the paper once it hits the street. If Moe buys a paper at Frankford and Cottman, glances of the boxscores in Sports, tosses the rest of the paper aside when he exits the bus at the Frankford terminal, and Jill picks up the Entertainment section to read, Bob picks up the front section, that makes 3 people who have read one paper, meaning that for that one copy, there are three readers. Even with more content, some of which you touched on, people will not pay for the package while others will -- even if only for one specific section or page, in this example, the boxscores.