Who funds this website?

The only ads I see here are for the Chicago Reader. Does this website really attract enough new subscribers to pay for the connection, bandwidth, hard drive, UBB upgrades, etc, etc?

I know the moderators work for free, but this other stuff costs real money. Where does it come from?

Keeves: I know the moderators work for free, but this other stuff costs real money. Where does it come from?

Newspaper sales. :slight_smile:


I looked in the mirror today/My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs/I think I’m going bald - Rush

Actually, I live in Chicago, and the Chicago Reader is free. I guess they only make money on ads and classifieds.

Steve, that’s useful info. But, wow! I never heard of a mainstream paper that survives on ads alone. Is the Reader a regular newspaper, or is it just an advertising rag that has a few features so you’ll read it? This is getting interesting.

The Chicago Reader is a weekly. It is out on Fridays. It’s for the North Side of Chicago. It is the best publication to get if you are looking for an apartment on the North Side, or if your trying to find out what’s going on for the bar/club scene in Chicago. (The music section has an ad with almost every bar showing who’s playing, what the specials are). It’s basically like a college newspaper on a grander scale.

I get one every Friday to see what’s going on. You can get one at most neighborhood Starbucks, grocery stores, music/video stores around the North Side.

As I susspected, the Chicago Reader is a member of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies http://www.aan.org.

We have a similar paper in C Springs, it’s free and supported by advertising.

Keeves, these papers are not like The Enquirer, they are mainstream in a reporting way. Our locally weekly focuses a lot on local politics, some very well written human interest stories etc.

Unlike our daily, their news reporting isn’t watered down by some large news organization that only cares about the money and not the content :slight_smile:

BTW, the Straight Dope column is Section 1, page 2. (First thing I always read)

Neat. Sounds like a genuinely concerned local paper, rather than a money-grubbing monster conglomerate. That would explain why they’re willing to spend the bucks on something like these message boards. Thanks, all.

The reader seems like the Metro that runs in the San Jose area, as you may suspect, the Metro is the paper that runs The Straight Dope.


Life is tough, it’s tougher if you’re stupid.

When I moved from Tampa to Chicago, I thought I would dearly miss The Weekly Planet. Nope, got the Reader.

My local alternapaper, New York Press, sticks Cecil way in the back with the tranny ads and “It’s not enough to get laid, I’m looking for kinky” personals. I don’t read Cecil on the subway.


Livin’ on Tums, vitamin E and Rogaine

Really?!? I always thought the 25 cents or so a “regular” newspaper costs to be incidental - like “we’d better charge something or people will think we’re not a real paper.” I can’t imagine that the money a newspaper collects this way pays for much. Add in the fact that most newspapers heavily discount subscriptions, and the money collected from newspaper sales vs. advertisements is pitiful indeed. I would venture to say that MOST newspapers survive primarily on advertising.

Right now the newsprint Reader is subsidizing the online version. (In addition to the Straight Dope website, the Reader has its own website at www.chicagoreader.com.)) At some point we’d like the online versions to become self-supporting. Our usage numbers are rising steadily and we’re starting to sell a few ads, so we’re headed in the right direction.

Free newspapers, known in the business as “shoppers,” have been around forever. The Reader was one of the first to pioneer the idea that you could give away a quality newspaper. This has become the business model for most U.S. alternative papers. I think even the Village Voice, which used to charge, went to free circulation not long ago. All newspapers, not just free ones, make most of their money on ads.

I’m always checking out www.chicagoreader.com I actually found my apartment using it. The online apt. ads come out Tuesday at 7 p.m., so you get a huge jump on people waiting for the print version.

It’s also a lot easier than looking through the print version because you can limit your search to show only what you want.

The Long Island Voice, an offshoor of the Village Voice, started a few years back as a shopper by several former colleagues of mine, the went under at the New Year. Most of its editorial matter was from the mother paper, with some local music stories. They just never got the advertising revenue.
And, indeed, advertising (and good circulation numbers, which translate into greater rates) is the way newspapers make money.
renee

BTW, I did know that the Chicago Reader was a free paper. :slight_smile:

I’ve heard of some newspapers that let their deliverymen (who fill the coin-op boxes) keep the money from them in lieu of a better salary. The money from them is trivial to the paper, which does make most of its money from ads. This also motivated the deliverymen to make sure the boxes on their route are stocked in a timely manner.


Judges 14:9 - So [Samson] scraped the honey into his hands and went on, eating as he went. When he came to his father and mother, he gave some to them and they ate it; but he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion.