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Print and ads can still work for local newspapers, says Printed Blog founder

Posted: 19/01/09 By: Laura Oliver

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As the printed newspaper industry suffers swinging job cuts and more titles move online-only, some news start-ups see the recession as a launch pad for their projects.

Few are banking on print to help build their businesses - yet Joshua Karp, founder and publisher of The Printed Blog, remains optimistic about the future of the medium and its potential for his business.

"I really hope that the printed newspaper doesn't go away. Reading the printed newspaper is a different experience. It's tactile and a different kind of emotional relationship," Karp tells Journalism.co.uk.

"When I saw that the demise of the newspaper industry was being published everywhere, it made me think about if there were any principles from the online world that we could apply to print that would reverse the fortunes of offline."

Enter The Printed Blog – a series of twice-daily, printed newspapers compiled from handpicked blog content.

With three Chicago editions and one for San Francisco set to launch on January 27, the titles will feature a mix of local and global content sourced from bloggers, who have been selected for the quality of their posts.

A healthy respect for the bloggers involved is crucial to the project's success - every featured author has given permission for their posts to be used.

"We will respect our blogs the same way a newspaper would respect its journalists. Ideally, once we are up and running the bloggers will get a portion of the revenue from any ads that are placed within their pieces," says Karp.

Online - via Flickr, Twitter, social networks and the main website - readers will be able to vote for blogs they are interested in and a team of editors will chose individual entries for publication, explains Karp.

From this you get content of local interest, without it necessarily being of local focus, he says. He adds that unlike 'local' US titles, which may have to serve millions of readers, these can be tailored to just one neighbourhood.

The technology is in place to roll out more small newspapers and plans are in place for a New York edition, Karp, whose background is in technology and management consultancy, says.

But it's not just the ailing print medium that Karp is investing his own money in, but an advertising-based model too.

Ads in the freesheets will be offered at $15-$20, a rate that Karp says should encourage local businesses, looking for a guaranteed local audience, to spend.

"The model allows us to change the way advertising is being done. Media companies can't compete with those rates," he adds.

"There's such turmoil in the newspaper industry, that it's a time for somebody who has the foolishness or the wherewithal to do something else.

"We are not doing anything that is groundbreaking, but we are taking principles that we can demonstrate work online and making them work offline."

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