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Buying your hometown newspaper, with Samantha & Greg Enslen

Buying your hometown newspaper, with Samantha & Greg Enslen

Released Thursday, 27th June 2024
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Buying your hometown newspaper, with Samantha & Greg Enslen

Buying your hometown newspaper, with Samantha & Greg Enslen

Buying your hometown newspaper, with Samantha & Greg Enslen

Buying your hometown newspaper, with Samantha & Greg Enslen

Thursday, 27th June 2024
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

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get more done. Grammar

1:07

Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty. And today

1:10

we're going to talk about something that

1:12

many writers dream of, but almost nobody

1:14

gets to do. And that's buying your

1:17

hometown newspaper. Today, I'm

1:19

here with Samantha Enslen and her

1:21

husband, Greg Enslen. And you'll

1:23

recognize Samantha's name because she's a very

1:25

frequent contributor to the Grammar Girl podcast.

1:28

And when she told me they

1:30

had bought their hometown newspaper, the

1:32

Tippie Canoe Gazette in Tip City,

1:34

Ohio, I knew I had to have the

1:37

mind to talk about it. And I

1:39

put questions out on social media and

1:41

I got more questions than I have

1:43

ever gotten about anything I've put out

1:45

asking for questions from before. So people

1:47

are really interested in this. Samantha

1:53

and Greg, welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast.

1:56

Awesome. Thank you so much for inviting us.

2:00

see you. Yeah, you bet.

2:02

And it's great for just people to

2:04

see you, Samantha, anyway, just since you're

2:06

such a frequent contributor. But, and my

2:08

understanding is that this was primarily Greg's

2:10

thing. So please tell me

2:12

just how this came about. How did you

2:15

come to buy your hometown

2:17

newspaper? Well, actually, I have

2:19

been wanting to buy it for a

2:21

long time. So it was something I've

2:23

been trying to make happen

2:25

for several years. And

2:27

I used to write for the paper, and have

2:30

written for the paper for off

2:32

and on for the last 15 years. And

2:35

every time it would come up for sale, I

2:37

would try to sneak in the situation

2:40

and make a bid.

2:42

And I never, never was successful before this last

2:44

time. But this last time I got a call

2:46

from the editor and she said, it

2:49

looks like we're shutting down the paper unless we can

2:51

find a local buyer who's interested in buying it. And

2:53

I said, Oh, boy, hang on a second. Let me

2:55

talk to my wife about that. So then we had

2:58

many conversations about it before we pulled the

3:00

trigger. Yeah, I bet. Now

3:02

to be fair, in past times

3:05

when Greg was interested, I was

3:07

like, are you insane? No, we

3:09

do not need another thing to

3:11

keep track of. But, you

3:13

know, over time I was like, okay, this

3:15

actually is something that's really important to him.

3:17

And so yeah, like Greg said,

3:20

we're like, all right, let's figure out how

3:22

to make this happen. Amazing,

3:24

right. Because you have a whole other business.

3:27

I mean, you have Dragonfly editorial. We have

3:29

several other businesses actually, Dragonfly is the big

3:31

one, but I'm also a writer and I've

3:33

written 34 bucks.

3:38

And that's a big part of my

3:40

time is trying to find time to write fiction

3:43

and nonfiction. And then I'm also on our

3:45

local city council, which is a large time

3:47

sink. And Sam and

3:49

I have some Airbnb's. So we're, we're

3:51

quite busy. But

3:54

this last opportunity when it came up, I talked to

3:56

her and I said, I have a, I have a

3:58

theory about. newspapers,

4:00

local newspapers, and

4:03

Facebook. And I think a

4:05

lot of people think local newspapers are

4:08

a dying breed, and I actually think they're making

4:10

a comeback. That's my supposition. So

4:12

we're going to see if it works out. I'm not sure. That's

4:16

great. Okay. I want people to ask questions about that.

4:18

And I will say people did ask, are they

4:20

crazy? And I wasn't going to bring that up. No,

4:22

please do. Yes. Yeah. So first of all, can you

4:24

paint a picture for me of what

4:27

the newspaper is, where it is, what

4:34

it's like, how big it is, what the

4:37

building is like, how many people work there, and stuff

4:41

like that? Well, I would say

4:43

it's a modern business because we don't

4:45

have any employees and we

4:47

don't have any infrastructure

4:49

and we don't have an office and we

4:51

don't have... We have a post office box.

4:54

And I have about 15 people

4:57

that work for me, but we're all freelancers. And

4:59

that's how we've structured the business. So there's no

5:01

overhead, which is great. That makes it a lot

5:04

easier to make fast decisions.

5:06

You fixed overhead. Trust me,

5:08

there's overhead. There's

5:11

some overhead, but not like a brick and

5:13

mortar business, not like an old school newspaper

5:15

with the print presses and all that kind

5:17

of stuff. But yeah, one

5:19

of the things that I think is going to

5:21

be helpful moving forward is that we are a

5:24

group of freelancers and I can bring people on,

5:26

we can let people go if they don't work

5:28

out, and I can keep my rates low on

5:31

trying to get as much content

5:33

into the papers I can in

5:35

a fiscally responsible fashion. Was

5:39

it always structured that way or did you restructure it

5:41

to be that way? It's gotten less

5:43

successful over time as

5:46

a local newspaper would. But

5:48

we're located north of Dayton, we're in Tip City, and

5:50

it's our

5:53

local paper. It's been in business for about

5:55

15 years. There are several

5:57

other towns around here that their papers have closed. So

5:59

we... have tried, paper has tried over

6:01

time to expand some of their coverage. And

6:04

it's a shame to see a

6:07

town loses newspaper, especially a small town.

6:10

Right. And that's Tip City, Ohio, right? Yes.

6:12

Tip City, Ohio, we're north of Dayton. And

6:14

it's difficult for local people to get the

6:16

word out about things, not even businesses, but

6:18

like, you know, PTA and things like that.

6:20

It's hard for them to get the word

6:23

out about events and things that are happening

6:25

if there's no local paper. Mm

6:27

hmm. Yeah. And when one of the

6:29

people asked, you know, how you differentiate yourself

6:31

from the competition, and I was wondering, is

6:33

there even competition? What do you consider your

6:35

competition? Unfortunately, 10

6:38

years ago, this paper, there were

6:40

four papers in this little in

6:42

this business, and those all three

6:44

have closed. So this is

6:46

the remaining existing paper. And

6:48

like I said, there are several small

6:50

towns around here, they're actually larger than Tip that

6:53

don't have a paper. So there isn't

6:55

actually any competition for us except for the Dayton Daily

6:57

News. And then we have a larger town north of

6:59

us called Troy, Ohio, and they have a they have

7:01

a twice weekly paper. So those

7:04

are our competition. But I try not to

7:06

look at it like that. I feel like

7:08

my competition is Facebook and Nextdoor. Those are

7:10

the two things I'm trying to scoop.

7:13

If I can get information to people

7:15

before that, or

7:17

get it out to more people than Facebook's

7:19

algorithm can, then I'm doing my job. Yeah.

7:21

And is it just online? Or do you

7:23

have print as well? We're

7:26

exclusively we were exclusively print, and

7:28

it's a weekly goes out on

7:31

Wednesdays. And then when I bought the

7:33

paper, one of the first things we did was add a

7:35

website, but it is important

7:38

to me that the news be free. So that anything

7:40

that's on the website is free, we don't have a

7:42

paywall or anything like that. I cannot stand those things.

7:46

I feel like they just discourage people from

7:48

learning what they need to know. So we

7:50

have we don't have a paywall, but we

7:52

don't put every story up online. It's about 10 to

7:55

15 stories a week. And it's a selection

7:58

of what's in the print paper. But if If you want to

8:00

know what's going on, you really do need to buy the print

8:02

paper. That's kind of how we're moving

8:04

forward right now. That

8:07

was a common question, is sort of

8:09

what is your business model? Is it

8:11

advertising? Is it subscriptions? How does that

8:13

break down revenue-wise? What

8:16

are you doing to make this work, especially given that

8:18

so many of the others have gone out of business?

8:21

One of the things that Greg is doing,

8:23

which he will probably be too shy

8:26

to talk about, is a

8:28

truly Herculean effort of dragging

8:31

the paper into the 21st

8:33

century, or whatever century we're

8:36

in right now. Literally

8:38

when he bought the paper,

8:42

the subscription system for the newspaper that

8:44

ran the paper was on a laptop.

8:48

The whole thing? The whole thing. A

8:51

single laptop. Using

8:53

a subscription tool software

8:55

that was no longer supported, that

8:58

didn't exist anymore. The company went

9:00

under. I

9:06

found to my horror that we

9:08

didn't even have email addresses for

9:11

most of the customers. I was like,

9:13

how can you not even have email

9:15

addresses? We

9:17

found that because the subscription

9:19

system was so antiquated, subscription

9:22

notifications hadn't been going out. It

9:26

has truly, like

9:28

Greg said, there wasn't a website. There

9:31

was little to no posting on Facebook

9:33

or social media. He's

9:37

been going through, again, he'll be too

9:39

demure to say this himself. He has

9:41

been- Modest. Modest.

9:44

Okay. I wouldn't say demure.

9:47

The demure journalist. I think it's

9:49

incredible. And incredibly accelerated entrepreneurial journey

9:51

since last September, which is what,

9:54

that's just nine months of,

9:56

like I said, dragging every single

9:58

element of the operation. of this

10:01

into the modern era. Starting

10:04

with literally the two

10:06

of us sitting down with the

10:08

laptop, the famous laptop that had

10:10

all the subscription information and Greg

10:13

identified a cloud-based subscription service,

10:15

normal, and we literally sat

10:17

down for hours and hours in his office

10:20

and I read him the people's names

10:22

who were subscribers and

10:25

their address and the last

10:27

check number for when they had sent in a

10:29

subscription and all of that, a

10:32

little bit of it we could pour it over from the

10:34

old system but we had to

10:36

literally enter all the subscribers by hand into

10:38

a new system and

10:42

you had very few writers at

10:45

the paper. You're just inventing writers out of

10:47

the air or recruiting writers out of the

10:49

air to start writing for the paper. I

10:52

mean, I don't know if

10:54

I'm answering the exact question even that you

10:56

asked before but I do not wanna underestimate

10:59

how absolutely huge of a

11:01

venture this has been that he's

11:04

undertaken. Did you know when you bought

11:06

it that it was that bad? When

11:08

I started the process. Somebody

11:12

shaking your head silently, no. What

11:15

do they call that, due diligence? When I

11:17

started looking into it and trying to decide

11:19

if I wanted to buy it, the list

11:21

of things that were needing updates kept getting

11:23

longer and longer and the one that really

11:26

concerned me was the subscriptions because it was

11:28

something that I thought that was the

11:30

basis of the paper. We weren't doing a lot

11:32

of, we weren't getting a lot of advertising in

11:34

the paper so it was mostly a subscription based

11:37

set up and if we were only having

11:39

a third, two thirds, half

11:41

of the people that were actually getting the paper

11:43

were paying for it, then that's obviously problematic. So

11:48

thanks to Sam, we went through the whole

11:50

system and the laptop survived

11:53

and we were able to get everything off of

11:55

the laptop and into the cloud system before there

11:58

were any issues and then we moved. moved on

12:00

from there. And now we have a robust, modern

12:02

system. I can tell you exactly how many subscribers

12:04

we have every day. And that's – I

12:07

can see it when people subscribe online and

12:09

pay. And yes, it's much more robust now,

12:11

and it's not based on one laptop.

12:14

That's scary. Was

12:16

it even backed up? No.

12:19

There was no way to back it up. The

12:21

software was actually from a company that went under

12:23

in 2011, I think it was. So there was

12:25

no support, and there was no way

12:27

to even – I couldn't put a copy of the

12:30

program and install it on another machine and

12:33

port the information over because you couldn't get

12:35

the software. It was exciting.

12:37

Very exciting. So if the hard drive had

12:39

failed, you'd have lost everything. Wow. We

12:41

would have had to start from scratch, but I don't know how

12:44

you would even do that because we wouldn't have anybody's addresses. I

12:46

don't know how we would have done it. You'd have been standing

12:48

on the street corner with signs like, if you were subscribed. Yes.

12:52

And so in answer to your question,

12:55

did we have surprises in

12:57

terms of when – or when drug bought

12:59

the paper, the subscriber situation

13:01

was definitely a surprise because we

13:03

thought we had this many subscribers.

13:06

Well, we had this many names,

13:09

but come to find

13:11

there were only this many

13:13

paying current subscribers. So

13:15

it's been a matter of hopefully

13:17

retaining those people, getting the

13:19

people back who previously had been subscribers

13:22

but who hadn't even paid in quite

13:24

a while and then

13:26

now trying to add more

13:28

people. So like Greg said, you can literally

13:30

see every day. So at first we thought

13:32

we were going to be here. We went

13:34

way down. Now it's like, oh, a little

13:36

bit more, a little bit more, a little

13:38

bit more. That's great. So it's going up. It

13:41

is going up. Yeah. One of the things we've tried to do

13:43

is – my mantra for

13:45

the editor and our writers is to be

13:48

hyper local. So I want to know –

13:50

I literally want to know the score of

13:52

the Little League's team that just

13:54

played at the park yesterday. And

13:56

when people ask me why, I'm saying

13:59

what? What can you not find on Facebook and

14:01

what can you not find in the date and

14:03

daily news? And that's my focus, hyper

14:05

local, because that's what people

14:07

want. And this is how newspapers started. Everybody

14:10

can find out what's going on in

14:13

the world, but you're paying somebody to

14:15

go out and collect all that information and put

14:18

it in a convenient paper and

14:20

buy it. So you're buying the information that someone

14:22

has gone out and collected for you. You could do

14:24

it yourself. And that's what Facebook tried

14:26

to do for a while. But

14:28

the way the algorithms constantly change, I have best friends

14:31

that, you know, they post things on their Facebook page

14:33

and I don't see it. So I

14:35

can't you can't guarantee you're going to find things out. That

14:38

was a common question, too, is sort of

14:40

what is your content philosophy? You know, do

14:42

you have do you get the

14:45

AP stories? How do you balance sort of

14:47

the so no to the AP? That

14:49

makes sense. Like what you're saying about you can get

14:51

your national news anywhere. So you're

14:53

doing, you know, the schools and the events.

14:55

And what about like what are your content

14:58

goals? Like do you also want to hold

15:01

the local government accountable or improve the

15:03

reputation of the local community or like

15:05

what are your big picture goals? Well,

15:08

we started out trying to cover as

15:10

much hard news as possible. And

15:12

that's kind of what the paper focused on before

15:14

I bought it. And I've tried to move it

15:17

more into like the we call it homework and

15:19

recess. And it's it's more one of

15:21

the fun things that are happening around town that you don't

15:23

know about unless you have a friend who's on the tree

15:25

tree board or or if you have a friend who's in

15:27

the arts council, that kind of

15:30

thing. Of course, we're still covering hard

15:32

news and we're covering courts

15:34

and people that get convicted of things

15:36

or in fires and police reports and

15:38

things like that. But I've really tried

15:40

to lean more on the

15:43

positive things that people want because

15:46

a lot of news that's online is if

15:48

it leads. It bleeds, you know, that whole thing. And

15:52

it's not necessarily positive.

15:54

I'm not trying to like paint our local

15:56

area in some kind of artificially positive light.

15:58

I'm just trying to. to surface the things

16:01

that are happening that are local, that

16:04

are good and bad. And we tend

16:06

to lean more towards the positive news.

16:12

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17:17

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17:19

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17:22

seriously, shut the front door. We own this house

17:24

now. But you actually need to say,

17:26

like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

17:29

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17:31

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17:39

just remember, like a good neighbor,

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State Farm is there. State Farm, Bloomington,

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Illinois. And

17:50

you said earlier that it didn't have a lot of

17:52

ads. Are you ramping up your ad sales to

17:57

supplement that part of your revenue? Or is this all

17:59

sub- Yeah, so that's

18:01

what's been interesting. So

18:05

when this whole venture started off,

18:07

I was like, Greg, have fun

18:09

with that. Sayonara, good luck. And

18:12

then I just got more and more interested by

18:14

what he was doing and wound up, you

18:16

know, it's still 100% his venture, but

18:19

I have wound up being involved in little

18:21

bits and pieces more and more.

18:24

One of the things that I did to

18:26

help out was to write a year in

18:28

review article. So in doing

18:31

so, I looked at literally every

18:33

issue from last year, which would

18:35

be 2023. And, you know, did

18:37

summaries of the key stories. And

18:40

I talked to Greg afterwards, and I

18:43

was like, Greg, there

18:45

are almost no ads in this

18:47

paper. Like, I,

18:50

again, I didn't think it was that bad.

18:52

So we have been very fortunate to we

18:54

put we put an ad in the paper

18:57

to for an ad salesperson. That's how you

18:59

do it. And we found an ad salesperson.

19:01

And she has been fantastic.

19:03

So far, she's the kind of

19:05

personality that she doesn't mind walking

19:08

in the door of a local business and

19:10

just being like, Hi, I'm Jodi from the

19:12

Tippie canoe Gazette. And I'd like

19:14

to talk to you about ad sales in the paper. So

19:17

um, good.

19:19

And I'm horrible with that kind of stuff. So

19:22

when I bought the paper, the one of the

19:24

first things I, we talked to my editor, Carla,

19:26

she's in charge of the content. And

19:28

I said, I don't really want to be in charge

19:30

of the content, you're still going to stay in that

19:32

and that's your job. And I want to expand and

19:34

grow. But one of the first things we

19:36

need to do is get somebody on ad sales. And that's,

19:40

that's helped a lot with the financial

19:42

bottom line. And then another hard decision

19:44

we made in February is we actually

19:46

doubled the price of the paper, it

19:49

went from $1 to $2. So that's

19:51

very, very exciting numbers here. But

19:54

there was some pushback on that.

19:56

And we lost some subscribers for

19:58

that because of that. And But what I've tried

20:00

to do is make it worth

20:03

their money and worth their time. So we've grown

20:05

the paper consistently. We were at about 10 pages

20:07

when I bought it and now we're almost always

20:09

16 or 18. And

20:12

I'm hoping that people are getting more twice

20:15

as much value. And that's how I like to say it. Yeah,

20:19

I was out having drinks last night and

20:21

somebody in town. We live in a very

20:23

small town. Let us be clear. I

20:26

was out having drinks last night and somebody came

20:28

up to me and was like, wow, the paper

20:30

is getting so big. It's really exciting. So, you

20:32

know, it is people

20:35

do notice that stuff. It

20:38

is like that local, that

20:40

community focused. Yeah.

20:43

And when I do get complaints, they

20:45

say, why did you double the price of the paper? And

20:48

I said, well, I've taken that money and we've hired six

20:50

new writers. And that's kind of my

20:52

angle is make the paper as

20:54

good as possible and cover our local news

20:56

as best we can. And

20:59

then we have recently started to expand

21:01

into other other

21:03

towns right around us and

21:06

add specific content writers

21:09

that can gather information from these other small

21:12

towns that don't have their own newspaper. So

21:14

we've expanded into West Milton, which is west

21:16

of here. It's a

21:18

little town and then we there's another

21:20

town called New Carlisle, which is east of here and

21:23

neither of them have papers. So

21:26

we're trying to grow those operations and it's

21:29

literally a news gathering operation because I'm trying

21:31

to find people that live there to give

21:33

me news because I can't write

21:35

news for other towns because it doesn't feel

21:37

authentic. I was wondering

21:39

that when you said that the papers in all

21:42

the nearby towns had closed. I was wondering if

21:44

you were planning to expand and this reminded

21:46

me of a person. Hailey Kotara

21:48

wrote a message when I put out a call

21:50

for questions and said they grew up in a

21:53

town of 500 people and still

21:56

subscribe to their hometown newspaper. And

21:58

said, adorably it's shared. with another

22:00

little town and it's folded differently.

22:02

So whichever town you're from is

22:04

on top. And it was so

22:06

cute. And actually they said if you want,

22:08

they will send you a copy of that newspaper if

22:11

you want it. I would love that.

22:13

That would be great. Yes. So, but

22:15

Haley wanted to know how you balance the need

22:17

to find stories with not getting up in everyone's

22:20

business. And she said that our

22:22

newspaper editor struggles with people being hesitant to

22:24

even chat with her casually or socially lest

22:26

they end up in the paper. Also saying

22:28

you were out for drinks and people were

22:30

commenting on the paper. Do you ever run

22:32

into that now? I

22:34

have had a little bit of pushback

22:37

on that. We actually, one of the things I started

22:39

early on in the paper was a new column called

22:41

the social page. And I was trying

22:43

to replicate what you see on Facebook and

22:46

have people send in information

22:48

about their weddings and parties

22:50

and anniversaries and kind of

22:52

like take it back to the

22:54

old school society page,

22:56

but without that nasty

22:58

hierarchies and all that

23:00

business. And that didn't go

23:02

well. People weren't interested in sending in information on that.

23:05

So I would have to go out and find

23:07

stuff. And then after a while we phased that

23:10

out because it just doesn't seem like people really want

23:13

to share that kind of information anymore. And if

23:15

they do, it's on Facebook with

23:17

eight or nine people and it's not

23:19

something that's public anymore. I don't

23:21

know. Yeah. At the

23:23

beginning you said you have a theory about news and Facebook.

23:25

Do you want to talk about that more? Yeah.

23:29

I feel like Facebook came in

23:31

and essentially killed the

23:33

news business, in my opinion,

23:35

when it was very popular

23:38

in the early 10s. I think

23:40

2010 through 2015

23:43

we saw a lot of news getting

23:45

moved from local newspapers onto the web

23:47

and onto, not onto the websites

23:49

of those local newspapers, but the actual news

23:52

was being taken and co-opted

23:55

and just being shared on Facebook. People

23:58

were sharing information locally. The

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get more done. if

38:00

you're going to use AI in the production

38:02

of the paper in any way. And then

38:04

they also wanted to know if you had

38:06

any way or any plan

38:08

to sort of protect yourself from AI. I

38:10

know there was that story about a fake

38:14

voicemail that implicated a high school, I

38:16

think it was a high school principal

38:18

who supposedly said something awful

38:20

on voicemail, but hadn't, it was AI

38:22

generated. So they sort of wanted

38:24

to know if you're going to use AI and also

38:26

if you're going to sort of protect your news source

38:28

from AI and somehow. Well,

38:31

at this point, absolutely not. And that's

38:33

just an editorial decision that we're making

38:35

on our end. Again, we're

38:37

going back to the hyper local and

38:39

the trusted sources and we

38:42

want people to read the story. And when

38:44

I see that person that read the story on

38:46

the street the next day, I don't want them

38:49

to call me out and say, hey, I could

38:51

tell you that was AI written or something like

38:53

that. We want to be hyper local and we

38:55

want to make sure everything we have in the

38:57

paper is authentic. Another thing that we started doing

38:59

when I bought the paper is that everything gets

39:02

a solid proofread edit through

39:05

the system before it goes into the paper just

39:07

to bump up the quality levels.

39:10

And we have used

39:12

AI visualization tools on a few things.

39:14

We were working on a redesign

39:17

of the logo of the paper and I needed

39:19

to send some ideas to the designer. So I

39:21

did, I used it for that just to kind

39:23

of get some blue sky concepts

39:25

of what I think the new logo could

39:27

look like, but no,

39:29

certainly going to have that designed

39:31

by a human. I think they,

39:33

I like them better. Right. So

39:35

to finish up, I have just

39:37

a few fun questions. So Steve

39:40

Ryan from Facebook wanted to know if you've

39:42

ever had the opportunity yet to yell, stop

39:45

the presses. No,

39:48

but I am telling you this is the coolest

39:50

thing ever. I drive

39:52

up to pick up the paper

39:54

every Tuesday morning. So it goes

39:56

to press Monday night. So we

39:58

do have a great down

46:00

the road and I said, please send that

46:02

to me. Did anybody get pictures? Because that

46:04

sells paper. Sorry, it does and it's hilarious.

46:06

And that's the kind of stuff AI is

46:08

not going to come up with, I don't

46:10

think. That was my

46:12

first thought. Did they have pictures? Well,

46:16

thank you so much. The last question

46:18

is actually an important one. It's from

46:20

Aaron Moran, who's a grammar-paloozian. And

46:23

Aaron said, other than subscribing, what

46:25

can regular folks do to support

46:28

local and independent journalism? Well,

46:33

from my perspective, it would

46:35

be to subscribe because you really do

46:37

support the people who are putting the

46:39

paper together every day. And that subscription

46:41

money might feel like a waste, but

46:43

it hires, I'm using that literally today

46:45

to pay a writer that

46:47

we just brought on two weeks ago

46:49

to write about stuff that's happening

46:51

with the school board in another town. And

46:54

I could not cover that story without

46:56

that person. And I couldn't get

46:59

that. People don't freelance for free.

47:02

It's a weird word. People

47:04

do not want to just

47:06

donate their time and money forever. They

47:09

want to be able to get paid for their work.

47:11

And I want to pay them for their work because they're doing

47:13

good work. So a subscription would

47:15

be good if you're in a local town

47:17

and you still have a paper and you

47:19

want to keep that paper in business, I

47:22

would run an ad. That's another huge thing.

47:24

If you've got a business and you sell

47:26

tires in your local town and

47:29

your paper closes, think

47:31

about how you would get the word out

47:34

about your spring sale on your tires.

47:36

It's almost impossible to do without a local

47:38

paper. And the way to keep your local

47:40

paper is to keep it in business. And

47:42

to do that, you have to support it.

47:44

It's just like any other local

47:47

business. If you've got a restaurant you like and

47:50

they close, it's because enough people didn't go

47:52

there. And it's pretty simple. Yeah. And it

47:54

just occurred to me, if you already subscribe,

47:56

we'll be sure to tell the advertisers you

47:59

saw their ad. ads in the paper too,

48:01

so they know. That's a great point. Yes.

48:04

If you ever, if you go into

48:06

a store because you saw an ad

48:08

in the local paper, let the shop

48:10

owner or the business know that you're

48:12

there because of that ad. That's hugely

48:15

valuable. Yeah. It feels like you're doing

48:17

something from the 30s. And

48:19

it seems weird that I'm going to go to

48:21

a store and buy something I could just get

48:23

on Amazon. But I do go to stores and

48:25

buy things that I can get on Amazon because

48:27

I like the idea a

48:29

store I can go to. So

48:31

it's kind of the same mindset. If you like having a

48:33

local paper, you have to support it. Yeah.

48:36

Well, I just can't tell you the amount

48:38

of goodwill that I felt pouring out from

48:40

all the commenters. Everyone was so excited to

48:42

hear you were doing this and wished you,

48:44

even though they were maybe worried or wondering,

48:46

they wished you so much

48:48

goodwill and success. But people really

48:51

are excited about what you're doing

48:53

and want you to succeed. So

48:55

to wrap up, why don't you tell people where they can find you? They're

49:00

listening and suddenly they want to subscribe, even if

49:03

maybe they're not in your town or where

49:06

can people find you? Absolutely. If

49:08

you want an example of a cute little small

49:10

town newspaper to show to your friends, we're

49:13

the tipgazette.com. Just go

49:15

to tipgazette.com. And if you're in the Dayton area

49:17

and you want a paper, there is

49:20

a nice list on the website of where

49:22

it is for sale. We just added two

49:24

new retailers today. I'm very excited about, including

49:26

one of our best donuts shops is going

49:28

to start carrying the paper. And

49:30

I'm like, yes. Awesome. So yeah, that's the best way

49:32

to support it would be to follow us on Facebook

49:35

and Twitter and Instagram and then subscribe to the paper

49:37

so you can see what it's like. And

49:39

take that paper, printed paper

49:41

that you're going to get in the mail. It will actually

49:43

physically come to your house. It's kind of weird. And

49:46

take that paper around and see if

49:48

you can get one started in your

49:50

town. I really do think a local

49:53

paper is a backbone important thing. It's

49:55

like city council or a parks department

49:57

or a school board. really

50:00

something every small town needs,

50:02

really. That's tip,

50:04

is that with two P's, right? Yeah.

50:06

Yes. I'll put a link to that in the show notes,

50:09

and so people can find it if they want to look for it.

50:12

Sam and Greg, thank you so much. Thank

50:15

you for having us. Awesome. Thank you so much. It was great to talk

50:17

to you. The

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50:57

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50:59

and along came A Family Affair. It's

51:01

a great romantic comedy, and it's laugh

51:03

out loud. If you feel like, I

51:06

just need to curl up and watch

51:08

something that feels very comforting. It's the

51:10

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51:12

That's A Family Affair. A

51:14

Family Affair, starring Nicole Kidman, Zach Efron

51:17

and Joey King, directed by Richard LaGravinace,

51:19

Rated PG-13, sexual content, partial

51:21

nudity and some strong language, only on Netflix

51:23

June 28th.

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