Charles Apple

Jim McBee, managing editor of an interesting new startup newspaper in Fayetteville, N.C., called SmartNews, wrote last week:

Finally got SmartNews into the lineup for Newseum’s Today’s Front Page. You can look us up at newseum.org.

We publish Tuesday through Friday, so you won’t see anything Saturday through Monday. A Saturday edition will come one of these days.

My goal is to push this more in the direction of a magazine feel.

SmartNews has been publishing not quite a month-and-a-half, now. Jim’s boss, publisher Randy Foster, is the brain behind the operation. Randy spent six years an editor with The Fayetteville Observer. He quit to go into competition with his former paper.

Randy told the Free-Daily blog last week:

I am 47 and have held every job at newspapers but one: publisher. I’ve also consulted for other papers to help them look better, read better and be more efficient. Almost every paper I have worked for or with became General Excellence papers. Papers where I was the senior editor have all grown in circulation. I thought it was time that I put what I know to work for myself.

Smart News circulates in Cumberland, Sampson and Hokie counties in southeast North Carolina. So far, it’s been a real do-it-yourselfer for Randy. He told Free-Daily:

On our first day, we had six people — friends, relatives and employees — and four of our five sons out trying to deliver 15,000 copies. Another six people we hired for distribution didn’t show up. Getting distributors to show up for the job has been surprisingly hard.

We scaled back on distribution to better reflect our resources, and 8,000 copies, four days a week, has become a comfortable zone. My goal is to get back to 15,000 a day and add a Saturday edition sometime in the next six months.

Randy is doing it all right now with:

• two editors
• two correspondents
• one paid news intern
• three news stringers
• four ad salespeople
• two full-time circulation employees
• and 16 independent distributors

He’s gradually staffing up. Randy says:

“Quality not quantity” is reflected in how I staff the paper. I pay premium wages, and I mean premium. I’d rather have a few great people than a roomful of people who don’t know how to excel.

Randy says he’s been surprised at…

…how thirsty people are for an interesting newspaper.

I’ve been in the business a long time and have read about and written about the gloom and doom predictions for the newspaper industry. And working for dailies, I could see why people wouldn’t want to pay for them. As an editor, most of the stories I read I only did so because I was paid for it. They’re dull, irrelevant, arrogant, inaccessible — even among papers that say they are trying to change all that.

The mantra these days is “local, local, local”, but I think “interesting, interesting, interesting” is even better. We’re aiming for interesting and local. And it is working.

Sounds terrific. So I thought I’d pop off a few quick questions to Jim McBee — who, again, is the newly-hired managing editor of SmartNews.

Q: When did you start?

A: I started July 9.

Q: What’s it like to be back in Fayetteville?

A: Well, I’m not really back, yet. Naturally, my career move comes right after the bottom dropped out of the real estate market. So I’m working from home while I try to sell this place in Bluffton, S.C. At this early stage, that’s acceptable. As we grow and I need to hire and manage people, that will be more problematic. However, for now, I take my dog to work every day.

The Earth moves for Jim McBee
at SND/Houston in 2005.
—

Q: What kind of hardware and software are you using?

A: I bought a MacBook Pro, a 23-inch cinema display and the basic InDesign CS3 design suite. I stay in touch by instant messenger and phone.

Q: What is the size of each day’s edition? Number of pages, I mean.

A: 16 full color pages.

Q: The web site is curiously empty. When does Randy hope to get that up and running?

A: We haven’t dealt with the Web, yet. But certainly it looms as sort of the next big thing in the back of my mind. We really need to channel reader input into the paper, and the Web is a major component of that.

Q: This is your second consecutive start-up paper. Any advice for folks who see the ads for free tab startups and wonder if they should gamble their careers on them?

A: Any job you take is a risk. At a conventional paid daily, you know the business model is failing — it’s just a matter of time. Can you get what you need from that job before you get a pink slip?

At a startup, the potential is much greater, but the possibility that the enterprise just suddenly goes belly up is greater, too.

All the growth in newspapers is in freebies, however. All the shrinkage is in paid circulation.

Q: How many hours are you working?

A: I haven’t really been tracking time. The plan is to add a Saturday edition when the advertising builds up to that, but spread that workload over four days. So I think we’re looking at four long days and then a nice breather.

Q: Are you happy?

A: I’m on the right track.

And now, for the samples. First, three front pages from last week and today’s front. As always, click on the thumbnail for a larger view:

 

And here are a few inside pages:

Find the SmartNews web site here:
http://www.smartnewsnc.com/index.htm

Read the Q&A with Randy Foster in the Free-daily blog:
http://free-daily.blogspot.com/2007/07/editor-opens-free-daily-in-n-carolina.html

Find McBee’s online portfolio here:
http://www.newspagedesigner.com/portfolios/portfolio1.php?UserID=2398

Keep up the good work, Randy!

And Jimbo: Keep us posted, please.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 8:50 am and is filed under Industry woes, Job changes, News design, Newspapers, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.