Okay.. Need a sounding board.

[GordonJ]

Hey Pete,

My weekly newspaper is heavy on LOCAL stories, lots of pics. The NEWS is stale, but they try to put a local spin on it somehow.

It too comes out on Friday with a close date of Thursday AM.

What I might be interested in would be a local UPDATE for the weekend...cancellations, are ball games rained out? ...

Is there an event going on that the newspaper didn't cover very well?

AND...on Monday or Tuesday, I'd like to see a capsule report...that would actually beat the weekly paper.
Especially my local sports teams. In the weekly I'll see one or two pics of the ball game.

ONLINE, you could let people post pics of all the events.

It would have LOTS of pics...and as someone suggested, if you allow postings...sort of like a throwback to the eShowcase days...then Granny C in FL could download pics of Chip sliding into home plate.

With that being said Pete...how much of your retirement TIME are willing to spend on making something like this happen? And advertising revenue usually comes AFTER numbers...it might be hard to sell ads for a new untested idea.

With the weekly paper, advertisers KNOW how many eyeballs they get.

It all comes down to how you want to spend your time. MY opinion is that you have a lot more VALUE to offer with a lot less time involved with a higher profit potential as a ____________ (shoot me an email Pete [email protected]

And I 'll give you a retirement idea that will keep you fishing and hunting 6 days a week. OK?

Gordon Jay Alexander

Pete,

I lived in a small central Florida (Sebring, FL) town for a short while and i
remember I tended to read their newspaper i guess for the same reasons
i read big city ones--random violence, scandals, and real estate ads.

Here's a great newspaper makin' money makin' how to article I really liked.

Pay attention to the five letter word he says is now the key money making technique for any upstart newspaper.

As proof he gives an example of how another central Florida newspaper did it.

The article is geared more toward people with a journalistic bent so seems you'll probably like it.

I liked Ankesh's idea and you may get around the programming idea by starting a local wiki I believe there is open source code for it.

This will allow the community to update the NEWS so you won't have to.

Here's some other newspaper makin sites:Links to journalism resources like Poynter which I absolutely love.