Staying Alive
You Too Can be a Cub Reporter; Digital Reading Devices to the Rescue!
By Jeffrey S. Hall | June 29, 2009
Times are tough in the publishing business, everyone knows that.
But my marching orders from community leaders is very clear: Stay alive, no matter what it takes. Whatever cutbacks we have to undertake for now are OK and understandable; our readers and advertisers will forgive us, I'm told. The key thing is to stay alive.
Popular wisdom has it that the Internet is putting papers and magazines out of business. I don't think that's too big a factor at the local level -- at least not yet. Right now, it's truly the crummy economy that's holding us back.
In recent months we've been on an irregular publishing cycle as we wait for enough advertising revenue to come in so we can pay the printer and the delivery guy. But advertisers are crying the blues and have cut way back, so there's only so much we can do right now.
I've decided to call this next magazine our "summer" issue and we'll see you again in September. Maybe by then the economy will be better.
In the meantime, I urge you to go to our website, www.WestsideToday.com, and check out all the daily activity.
You too can be a cub reporter and post your own stories and calendar items directly onto our site.
If you go to the site, scroll down the left side till you get to "contribute." Then you can click on the links and "fill in the blanks." We do filter stories before they appear on the site, but usually this doesn't take long.
Though we've not publicized this "post your own story" feature on our site, it's amazing how many people have figured it out. During the finals week of American Idol, someone wrote an article that discussed the politics behind voting for Adam Lambert vs. Chris Whatever-His-Name-Was.
Suddenly there was an explosion of people commenting on the original story by Charlotte Laws and we were the number-one ranked site on Google for a few days when it came to stories about Adam Lambert.
If your inner journalist has something to get off his or her chest, now's your chance. Give it a try!
We also work with some terrific guys from Price & Item Media who put out a series of "This Week" e-mail blasts. Go to www.ThisWeekInBeverlyHills.com, www.ThisWeekInBrentwood.com, www.ThisWeekInSantaMonica.com, www.ThisWeekInPalisades.com and www.ThisWeekInMalibu.com. This is a nifty service that tells you, community-by-community, what's going on in the neighborhood each week.
I personally think all these digital reading devices we're hearing about will be the ultimate answer here. Chopping down trees, printing ink on paper, bundling all this up into the backs of gas-guzzling trucks that then drive up and down every street as some guy chucks magazines out the window and onto your driveway does seem a bit antiquated.
I played with an Amazon Kindle the other day and liked it; there's a device from a company called "Plastic Logic" that will be released soon that looks very cool; and of course, who would be surprised if Apple came out with something amazing?
Our "Westside Gadget Guy," Karl Susman is always writing about new toys. If you are into this space, be sure check out his column on the site, which gets updated all the time.
Hang in there with us as we hang in there by our fingernails. We've survived 18 years. Somehow, some way, we'll make it through this as well.
Have a great summer!
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