Newspaper Disruptor – Page 2 – Changing the newspaper game one day at a time

Small market zilch gets attention of E&P

February 12, 2020 JoeyYoung Comments 0 Comment

I write this blog primarily to scream into nothingness about the newspaper industry with the assumption that only a few folks I am friends with might take a look and care. It’s therapeutic and something that has kept me from pulling my hair out. Throughout the years, I have become friends with lots of people in the industry, many of whom surely think I am full of hot air and are probably right. Occasionally, you find some like-minded folks, get…

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Why Buffett selling his papers doesn’t bother me

January 30, 2020 JoeyYoung Comments 1 comment

I like to think I am well read. When Lindsey and I started this journey of newspaper ownership over seven years ago, we didn’t do it blind. We read “The E-Myth” by Michael E. Gerber and “Brewing Up a Business: Adventures in Beer from the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery” by Sam Calagione before we ever signed the dotted line for our first paper, The Clarion. Since then, I have read anything I can get my hands on about…

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Internet is best friend, worst enemy of news

March 9, 2018 JoeyYoung Comments 0 Comment

This is a new era in our shared history. Simply put, the Internet is the best and worst thing that has ever been invented in human history. Feel like that is hyperbole? It’s not. The most powerful thing in the world is sitting in the palm of your hand, and it can be manipulated to overthrow governments, kill someone’s character, and track the movements of everything and everyone. Not all of that is bad, either. There has been no era…

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Two years of Newton Now

August 7, 2017 JoeyYoung Comments 1 comment

There wasn’t one person, outside of Joel Klaassen (founding publisher of The Hillsboro Free Press) that thought we would succeed long-term with Newton Now. We got a lot of support early. I love these people more than you can know. They wanted us to succeed, but I could see it in many eyes as we told them our plan to launch a competitive weekly newspaper in a market that had a 5-day corporate newspaper. They were going to support us….

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You can’t “Own Local” from 1,000 miles away

July 11, 2017 JoeyYoung Comments 0 Comment

I often wonder why I torture myself. It’s almost like I want to get angry when I see the link in my inbox, see it is another story about how Gannett or Gatehouse is screwing up journalism for the rest of us, and instead of hitting the trash button, I dive right in and get pissed off all over again. This week it was an interview with Alain Begun, VP of Marketing at Gatehouse Media, on a podcast hosted by…

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South Dakota is pretty great. Yeah, I said it.

May 3, 2017 JoeyYoung Comments 0 Comment

South Dakota is pretty great. Now, I am not sure how many people have written those words who weren’t from the Dakotas, but I am here to tell you, South Dakota is great. That comes from a native Texan and an adopted Kansan. I love my homeland, but South Dakota was somewhere I could see myself living if we ever left the great State of Kansas. Why? I love newspapers, and South Dakota does, too. Both Dakotas are mostly comprised…

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Why can’t people just get things right?

April 20, 2017 JoeyYoung Comments 2 comments

What I am going to say is going to piss some journalists off. I am OK with that. I am so sick of hearing about the death of newspapers, it is starting to drive me insane. Why do so many good journalists just accept that the industry is dying without looking at the mounting evidence that it is simply changing slightly and there are not just a few good years left, but decades, and more for a lot of us?…

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The biggest financial failure in our company

March 3, 2017 JoeyYoung Comments 2 comments

It never seems to go away. Sometimes failure is the best learning application you can have in life though, and I would like to tell you about one of the biggest ones I have ever had: Maize Free Press. It’s something I will never forget. About a year after purchasing The Clarion, a newspaper that covers five towns along the K-96 Highway corridor between Hutchinson and Wichita, Kan., we were coming to some fairly strong realizations about our small community…

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