Adventurous publishers have been turning blogs into books for a couple of years now. Here comes a guy with a twist on that idea. Joshua Karp, will begin publishing hyperlocal blogs in jolly old newsprint. His enterprise, The Printed Blog, launches in Chicago and San Francisco next week.
According to The New York Times:
As pay newspapers lose readers to the Internet, where they can read the same articles without charge, many free papers have held their own.
“The free newspaper business model is still very workable,” said David Cohen, a founder of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, a group of free weeklies south of San Francisco that was sold to Knight Ridder in 2005 and is now owned by MediaNews. “There’s a huge readership that wants the local news, and local businesses tend to increase their advertising in bad times because they have to capture people’s attention.”
The Printed Blog already has 300 blogs signed up to contribute content for free. Left wing political blog, The Daily Kos will be one contributor.
To pay for the paper, ink and old school distribution, Mr. Karp aims to sell 200 ads an issue. The Printed Blog will charge $5 to $10 for classifieds and $15 to $25 for business ads that reach 1,000 readers.
About 15 advertisers have signed on for the first issue, including Flowerpetal.com, a florist in Chicago. “The great thing about it is you can change your pitch based on different neighborhoods,” said Brian Crummy, Flowerpetal.com’s founder.
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