Newspaper entrepreneur stirring up Concrete
Concrete, Washington, that is. It’s a small town about 60 miles northeast of Seattle. Population 790.
The entrepreneur is Jason Miller, an unemployed writer and editor who’s worked in marketing and as a home-and-garden writer. He’s seeking advertisers and donors to help resurrect the local weekly newspaper, the Concrete Herald. Which folded 18 years ago.
Jason Miller, right, looks over an old copy of the Concrete
Herald with town clerk and treasurer Andrea Fichter.
Photo by Mark Harrison/Seattle Times.
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Eric Lacitus of the Seattle Times reports:
Miller is looking for $10,000, with $6,000 going to buy Mac equipment, and $4,000 going to buy an existing monthly shopper in the area, the Upriver Community News. Miller would carry on with the shopper’s advertisers and considerably expand the news coverage. The shopper makes a profit of about $150 a month.
What Miller doesn’t get in donations (as of Friday afternoon he had collected $1,454.54), he says he’ll make up with a loan against his house.
Ten grand doesn’t sound like enough to us. Miller is aware of it. He says, in his web site’s FAQ file:
I have friends and relatives who are helping me get this off the ground. I’m paying them with homemade jam. That’s why I only need $10,000 to start.
The plan is to cover six local towns. He’ll publish monthly beginning May 6, aiming for 2,000 copies of a 16-page edition, including four color pages, he hopes.
The old Concrete Herald building currently houses an
antique shop and a liquor store. Photo by Jason Miller.
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After a year or so, he’ll move up to publishing twice monthly.
A year’s subscription by mail will cost $24, Lacitus reports:
There also would be a daily Web-site update. The Web site would be free for the first three months, then cost $12 a year. Miller doesn’t believe in giving away content.
“Don’t you think people would pay $1 a month to get updated news?” he asks.
There’s quite a bit more to the story — the reporter follows Miller around as he hits various businesses up for donations or for advertising commitments. Read the story here.
Find Miller’s web site here.
Learn about an effort to scan every historial Concrete Herald front page here. Read about Chuck Dwelley, a colorful Herald publisher here.
How colorful? Here’s one issue from 1958:
So what did “we” win that was so important? World War II? A national football championship?
Nope. Dwelley beat a speeding ticket in the nearby town of Lyman. Read about him here.
Thanks to Tony Briggmin, just up the road in Bellingham, for the tip on all this.