The Republic works

Four years later, this newspaper is in the black. Er, we mean self-sustaining.

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

First the good news: the last four issues of The Republic have been profitable, the first profitable issues in the paper’s four-year history.

Mind you, that profit shows up on the world’s shortest balance sheet. There are essentially three items in the expense column: printing, mailing, and office supplies like elastics, pens, and tape. There is no office rent because it is produced in the basement of my home. There is no staff wages because everyone involved, including myself, is a volunteer. The paper’s research department is the Vancouver Public Library. The distribution department is a 14-year-old Toyota.

However, given all those caveats, it still gives us great pride to think we are one of the very few successful genuinely independent newspapers launched in the last 30 years in Canada to remain publishing past a fourth anniversary. And we’re doing it without taking any money from state granting agencies or from any other hidden hands besides individual readers who kindly send donations and whom we treat anonymously and who get no tax receipts for their generosity.

A professor at the University of British Columbia a couple of months ago phoned to ask if his class of international students could tour a real working independent newspaper office—they were discussing media in their course that week. I told him it would be tricky: they’d have to duck their heads and limbo under the deck to the basement door, pay no mind to the heap of dirty laundry on the washer, and come into said office in groups no bigger than three at a time on account of the fact it’s all that would fit. I was thinking also I would have to replace some burnt out light bulbs if they expected to see anything. I changed his mind, but I should have pressed him to go through with it. International university students should see what is involved in producing a self-sustaining independent newspaper in Canada today.

But there is a terminal problem: I need to sell more advertising in order to increase our print run. We currently print 6,000 copies and usually find over 90% are picked up by readers at one of the 60 or so locations we distribute it to. The industry average, to provide contrast, is about a 25% pick-up rate, and that was before the arrival of three new mass-produced free daily papers in Vancouver.

A larger readership is the ultimate and constant goal for a newspaper like ours. The writers in the paper intend to have influence on the thinking of many readers, influence that, if large enough, begins to have effect upon public policy makers. We think we can earn a much larger readership if we only printed more copies and distributed them to more locations. To do so, we need to raise more revenue from advertising to pay for the extra printing.

Most of the advertising in the paper was earned through personal contact—the owners of the businesses are almost all people I know personally. A few of the ads have resulted from small business owners I didn’t know taking a liking to the paper and contacting us to get in. But in almost no cases that I can recall did myself or anyone associated with the paper approach a stranger in a business and succeed in selling them an ad.

Not for lack of trying, mind you. But I myself own a small retail business and I know what happens when a sales person walks in asking if the manager is around. I disappear. If they catch me anyway, all I am thinking about is how to get rid of them as fast as possible. The air is too poisoned with sham salespeople (especially advertising salespeople) for there to be any chance of selling anything for real with a cold call.

The same is even more true over the phone and especially true over email. No matter how you phrase a subject line or opening sentence in an email, it’s going to sound like someone pushing viagra.

Readers are the key

Publishing a genuinely independent newspaper successfully with only advertising revenue is possible, as we have proved. And there is a large enough number of businesses who are interested in supporting such a newspaper with their advertising, as we have also proved. The problem is strictly one of connection: without a personal contact, there is too much clutter and noise in the way for our paper to shake a friendly hand with those like-minded businesses.

This paper has gotten to its unique position because of the support of its readers. Probably all the hundred or so volunteers who have worked on it at one time or another over the years came to us because they first found the paper and liked it. We have several hundred subscribers but we’ve never conducted what’s called a “subscription drive.” All subscribers joined after just finding the paper and liking it. All the nearly three hundred writers who have appeared in the paper also came to it first as readers. And all the thousands of readers themselves did not come to be readers because of an ad on the side of a bus, a telephone call at dinner time, or because teens were hired to shove it in their hands as they boarded the train. We’ve never significantly advertised The Republic. All our readers found the paper, picked it up, read it, and liked it enough to pick it up again next time.

When I reflect on the magic of all that, I realize that it is the readers who can solve our advertising conundrum as well. I’ve hit up just about all the small business people I know and have all the ads I can get out of them. But I figure that among the readers, there must be thousands more personal contacts with small business owners.

If enough readers from among those thousands who enjoy (if not always agree with) the paper were to reciprocate the free price by taking a moment to show the paper to a small business person they personally know, and to tell them they should call up and get an ad to support the paper because it’s good and because they like it, the result would not just be a more widely circulated and ever more stable independent newspaper, but it would also come to represent, in the mix between editorial content and advertising support, a paper that reflects who its readers are even more closely.

If you enjoy The Republic and wish to see it grow, why not do us the very big favour of simply dropping a copy off at the stores or businesses where you know the people, and telling them right up front that you like this paper and that you think they should support it. The ads are very inexpensive and the advertisers we have so far are all quite happy to remain in the paper. We can look after the selling very well from then on, we just need the personal contact that you as a reader have with those business owners we don’t know. Mention my name if you wish, and then call or write me telling me the name of the person you spoke with, and I can follow it up. I need your help.

It’s possible that working together in this fashion The Republic can be built up from what it is now—a self-sustaining small local paper—to a large, nationally circulated and successful newspaper that may compete in every way with the big corporate products, and most especially to compete with them in the arena of ideas and influence. When politicians want to know what the people are thinking about an issue, they should want to, and be able to, consult more widely than the opinion pages of the Globe and Mail and the National Post. Papers like The Republic should also be on their desks, and I need your help to make that so.

604-218-4952. That’s the number. Kevin Potvin. That’s the name.

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