Amy, remove the comma from your URL link above.

URL fixed. Thanks! --TedE

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ted E.,

And good luck, SchoolWeek, this is where the tire hits the road. I'm pulling for you.

Amy/Diane,

Will the PDFs be searchable or will they be "image" files?

It is searchable.

Thanks Amy! Thanks Middlein! Hello BB!

I've just put a sample pdf online edition on our web site in case you're interested in checking it out. Here's the url.

Kind regards,

Pete Reinwald
Glen Ellyn School Week

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ted E.,

Are you sure it's a good idea to charge for SW? What will that do to circulation? Don't get me wrong....I'm a playa with a lot of disposable geedahs, but others prolly ain't gonna cough it up.

Don't newspapers sell ad space and live of off big numbers for advertisers?

That's too bad. While SW was IMO well worth it's previous price, I will not be subscribing. (Well, for a while I thought that might be my only way to get my Amy fix...)

Hello, Clam. Great points and questions. You're right: Newspapers typically make by far most of their money on advertising.

We had made some gains on selling ads -- but we hadn't made them fast enough, largely because we have had to try to sell them ourselves as we report, edit, photograph, plan and design the newspaper. I still work full-time in downtown Chicago (I design the paper and build and update the web site on nights and weekends and cover weekend events and write feature stories when I can). That leaves wife/editor/boss Diane Rado to do her best to sell ads, in between doing the bulk of the writing and reporting and 10,000 other things for the newspaper. Thank goodness for Amy and for Suzanne Burdett.

We've tried to hire an ad salesperson on a commission-only basis, but we've gotten little interest. Please send anybody who might be interested our way.

Because we haven't been able to sell nearly enough ads to support the newspaper, we could no longer afford the enormous cost of printing and distributing 10,000 copies.

What we've done is a risk, we know, but we had no choice. We're hoping that the overwhelmingly positive feedback we've gotten over the past year -- though we realize that not everybody likes, appreciates or understands us -- will translate into enough subscriptions to at least help us to break even, which would be much easier to attain by priting and distributing fewer newspapers. Of course, as you point out, we've had to slash our ad rates as a result, and we're hoping that more and more advertisers will take advantage of those can't-pass-up rates (we've pledged, by the way, that ads will never take up more than 40 percent of our newspaper, that we always would increase the number of pages accordingly. As you can see, we haven't had that problem yet).

If all goes right, who knows? Maybe we'll be able to go back to a mass free distribution.

I realize this is a lengthy explanation. I wanted to explain the best I could why we made a decision that might not make sense to many people.

It really was our only option.

Here's hoping this can work. We still think it can.

Thanks again for asking. We're always open to ideas.

Pete

Thanks, Pete. FYI, your sports coverage is better than your competition, IMO.

Good luck.

Aw shucks. Thanks Clam.

Another thing I'd like to add: Advertising for newspapers is down all over the country. We're certainly not alone in that respect. We're hoping that we can create a new model in which our newspaper is supported largely by subscriptions -- by the community itself. We're doing quality journalism, putting out a quality newspaper and giving readers in Glen Ellyn news and information they're largely not getting anywhere else. We're hoping that the community is willing to pay a relatively small price for it. We'll see!

Pete