The TriCityNews, an Asbury Park, NJ alt weekly with a print run of 10,000, “is prospering precisely because it ignores the Web,” reports David Carr in today’s New York Times.
“Why would I put anything on the Web?” asked Dan Jacobson, the publisher and owners of the newspaper. “I don’t understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper. Why should we give our readers any incentive whatsoever to not look at our content along with our advertisements, a large number of which are beautiful and cheap full-page ads?”
A “‘plog’, a blog on paper” is how Jacobson describes his paper, which employs three full-time staffers and a part-timer . “A little ray of light” in the media beat is how Carr describes the story of the TriStateNews, which is “double-digit profitable, and has been growing at a clip of about 10 percent a year since it was founded in 1999.”
A real made-for-David-Carr’s-column story (which didn’t escape the publisher, who emailed the TriCityNews‘s good news to Carr).
UPDATE: Carr’s headline should be the much less striking: “Local Newspaper Shuns Non-Local Information And Thrives,” argues (more or less) Recovering Journalist Mark Potts. “Contrary to what Carr and Jacobson believe, the secret to the TriCityNews’ success probably isn’t that it fiercely eschews the Web. It’s that it’s fiercely local.” Way to dim Carr’s little “ray of light.”
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.