Chris Hardie is a software engineer with a deep interest in journalism. Chris worked for Automattic for five years and recently completed a master's degree in journalism. In 2022, Chris combined these two passions by acquiring Western Wayne News in Wayne County, Indiana. The paper has a WordPress site and a weekly printed edition. It covers the spectrum of local news, including events, sports, government meetings, and business.
This episode features Steve Burge from PublishPress and Dan Knauss from Multidots.
We covered these topics and more:
Chris shares his journey to becoming a newspaper owner and introduces Western Wayne News.
Chris talks about is Wayne County, a quiet place but within an hour of Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Dayton.
What changes has Chris you put in place since taking over? Is it as simple as modernizing their tech stack, or has he made other changes in how the news is delivered?
What does an average day look like running a newspaper?
How does a small newspaper like this earn revenue? Subscriptions? Selling the print version? Classifieds, legal announcements etc?
How have the finances worked out so far?
What has been the biggest challenge in going from WP development to journalism?
What is Chris doing differently from the rest of the news industry?
Chris Hardie is a software engineer with a deep interest in journalism. Chris worked for Automattic for five years and recently completed a master's degree in journalism. In 2022, Chris combined these two passions by acquiring Western Wayne News in Wayne County, Indiana. The paper has a WordPress site and a weekly printed edition. It covers the spectrum of local news, including events, sports, government meetings, and business.
This episode features Steve Burge from PublishPress and Dan Knauss from Multidots.
We covered these topics and more:
Chris shares his journey to becoming a newspaper owner and introduces Western Wayne News.
Chris talks about is Wayne County, a quiet place but within an hour of Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Dayton.
What changes has Chris you put in place since taking over? Is it as simple as modernizing their tech stack, or has he made other changes in how the news is delivered?
What does an average day look like running a newspaper?
How does a small newspaper like this earn revenue? Subscriptions? Selling the print version? Classifieds, legal announcements etc?
How have the finances worked out so far?
What has been the biggest challenge in going from WP development to journalism?
What is Chris doing differently from the rest of the news industry?
We talk with people interested in WordPress publishing. You'll hear interview with publishers who happen to be using WordPress, and also people in the WordPress space.
Steve Burge:
Hey. Welcome to the PublishPress podcast. I'm Steve Burge from PublishPress. And I'm Dan Knauss from Multidots. And in this episode, we're talking with Chris Hardy, who was a WordPress developer and left that life a couple years ago to take over a newspaper in Indiana.
Steve Burge:
The newspaper is called the Western Wayne News, and he's been applying some of his WordPress development skills to running a newspaper.
Dan Knauss:
And I'd followed Chris, and his journey up to up to this point, and then he's gotten quite quiet in the last 1 to 2 years. So I knew he must be busy doing a lot of cool things. And so we, we got to find out what that was. Some of the technical side, the human side, the all the parts of running a a business, quite successfully too, it sounds like.
Steve Burge:
Awesome. Thanks, Dan. Let's jump in and hear from Chris.
Chris Hardie:
Hey, Chris. Welcome to the PublishPress podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Steve Burge:
So, Chris, I've been following your story for several years now since you took the leap from being a a WordPress developer to a a newspaper person. I'm not quite sure what the newspaper owner or the correct title for you is. Hey, how are things going a couple of years into this journey?
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. It's going really well. I'm I'm having a lot of fun. I'm learning a lot. It's really hard.
Chris Hardie:
It's probably the hardest work I've ever done, hardest job I've ever had. And I'm just thrilled to be doing it, but it's, yeah, it's a challenge. Can you introduce the newspaper?
Steve Burge:
Sure. Where is it? What do you cover?
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. So, I'm the publisher and owner of a hyper local, news community newspaper called The Western Way News. And we appear in print, once per week and we publish, online throughout the week. And we cover Wayne County, Indiana, so we're here in the Midwestern United States and the county, you know, is somewhere in the, 60, 70000 people range and pretty rural, but with a couple of, city, the city of Richmond where I live. And I'm the 3rd owner.
Chris Hardie:
The the paper was started in the early nineties by a woman named Janice who kind of noticed the lack of information available about the the western part of the county. It's kind of a newsletter style, at that point, very informal and, you know, community driven. And then about, 7 years ago, her daughter Brenda and Brenda's husband, Jim, took over. And they kind of expanded and professionalized it a bit and started looking more like a traditional newspaper, hired some folks to do, you know, with a journalism background to do reporting that way. So, and then I took over 2 years ago and I can tell you that story too, but it's, Yeah.
Chris Hardie:
How did
Steve Burge:
you get to that point? How did you decide, okay, I need to take a fork from being a WordPress developer. Rest. And how did you decide on this new direction?
Chris Hardie:
Well, yeah. So I mean, I grew up with, you know, a transition happening in the world of journalism and newspapers. Right? I mean, I I, was a newspaper carrier and, as a kid, and I worked on school newspapers, in high school and college. I was a blogger from, from the beginning of blogging and, you know, loved the immediacy of that and thought, you know, thought to myself probably at the time like, okay, newspaper world is dead, you know, blogging is the future.
Chris Hardie:
And kind of became a local media critic, if you will, for a while. I was, you know, very closely watching how the community got its information and the role that the local daily Gannett paper had in that. And I and I guess through that critical, I really came to appreciate the the depth and fact checking and context building that a newspaper can do that some some blogging wasn't doing. And so I was like, okay, maybe there is a place for, journalism and reporting in this mix. And long story short, I mean, I continued to get involved in politics and community improvement and not for profits.
Chris Hardie:
Just my concern and my thinking about where people got their information just kept growing. So even as I was building my career as a software developer and WordPress developer and small business owner, I was thinking about that question, you know, where where do people get their info and how do they make decisions and and how do they decide what's important to them? It was on a sabbatical from my work at Automattic, when I realized that I should probably pursue that a little bit more formally because I was spending so much time thinking about it. And so I decided to go back to school for, a master's degree in journalism and that was, you know, helpful, informative. Wasn't quite clear where I was going with it.
Chris Hardie:
And then I was also doing some consulting for the previous owners of the Western Way News, the newspaper, mostly, you know, tech stack, but also strategy, digital strategy, kind of growing that part of the business. And that relationship, you know, grew over time. And so at some point, the they said, you know, we're thinking of retiring. Would you like to would you like to talk about owning this paper? And, you know, took a long time with that question and that process and thinking that through with my with my family, but eventually decided that that was what I wanted to do.
Chris Hardie:
And so worked out an offer and a purchase agreement and and here I am.
Steve Burge:
So what did you what did you buy? What did you acquire? Is there a an office, a printing press? What comes when you buy a local, county level newspaper? Right.
Chris Hardie:
I mean, maybe a little bit similar to a SaaS business. I mean, you're you're mostly buying the production infrastructure and the customers, right? We don't have our own printing press. We we've outsourced that. So it's the brand of the paper.
Chris Hardie:
It's the subscriber list. It's the the archives, the history and the community goodwill, you know, and that's that's what I stepped into. We do have an office, but, you know, some people come for a tour thinking they're going to see a printing press or the the inner workings of of newspaper production and really it's people sitting at desks looking at screens. So I guess I bought bought some computers and some screens too.
Steve Burge:
So you're in Indiana? That's right. The the actual printing is done with a a company for a couple of hours away from you that's trucked in every morning?
Chris Hardie:
That's right. The when I started, the the press was about 45 minutes away and, about a year, year and a half ago, we switched printers, to one that's about 2 and a half hours away. As as you all know, I mean, I think the world is, printing is is shrinking as well as the world of newspapers. And so there's, presses closing all the time. And that's, something that keeps me awake at night a little bit is, you know, where where will the newspaper be printed if something happens to our current printer?
Chris Hardie:
Fortunately, the one we have is great and they're, you know, family owned business that they've made some some long term plans that we're really impressed with. So so, yeah, a truck shows up every Wednesday morning and drops off the papers from from them and it arrives in our lives and then it's our job to help help get it out to the world.
Steve Burge:
How integral is the printed part of the newspaper In terms of the number of people, kind of, working on it, in terms of the revenue, in terms of how much of your day it takes up? What's the spread between the online version and the paper version? Yeah. I I mean, I think
Chris Hardie:
if you had asked me when I was first thinking about buying the paper and then buying it, I would have said, you know, the the print version is a nice to have and might go away sooner rather than later. I've since realized how wrong I was about that. I mean, it's it's very integral to to what we do. Part of it is, you know, in a in a rural place where some people either don't have reliable Internet access or they're choosing not to, you know, spend a lot of time with with Internet access as a way to get information. The paper showing up at their doorstep is is a way that they're gonna get news and information that they wouldn't otherwise get.
Chris Hardie:
It it has a certain amount of credibility building for us. Right? You know, we've invested in that that infrastructure and that cost of of getting a printed product out the door. And that's different in some ways, you know, for some people, not for everyone. And it tends to be a driver then for things that we're doing online or other projects.
Chris Hardie:
So so I've I've kind of come around to the idea that we're gonna we're gonna keep printing a paper for as long as we possibly can because we're reaching people we wouldn't otherwise reach. And even for younger folks, I've I've heard them say that they enjoy and appreciate being able to sit down with the printed paper and, like, focus on it in a way, you know, it's just a distraction free way of taking in information and reading stories. And and they appreciate the contrast to, never ending scrolling.
Steve Burge:
Do you charge for it? Do do people need to get it delivered? Okay.
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. So, so we're, you know, a mix of advertising and subscription driven. Right now, it's about 43% subscriptions and retail sales and then about 57% advertising. And so our like, our base subscription rate is $55 for the year. We charge a little more if you get it mailed to you outside of the county or outside of the state.
Chris Hardie:
But it's very affordable. You know, it works out to around a dollar a week, for what might be 28 or 32 pages of news articles and information and calendars and sports and all this stuff. So, I think it's an incredible value myself. And There's very little
Steve Burge:
we can get for a dollar a week now.
Chris Hardie:
That's right. That's right. But we have some people who remember it when it was $18 a year and they're like, you know, oh, 55. That's that's a lot. But other people are like, oh, you you should raise
Dan Knauss:
your prices. That's crazy. It's it's so low. So yeah. So that's a factor too.
Dan Knauss:
Right. Are they is there a digital only option? Or they do they get both and the advertisers appreciate having both options? Or was that a transition you had to go through?
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. So when I when I took over, the the digital presence was there, but it was kind of an after thought. All of the time and energy was on, you know, let's let's get the print edition out the door. And then if we can throw a couple of the articles on the website, that's that's great. And there wasn't really a a paywall strategy or, you know, much beyond that.
Chris Hardie:
And that that's a part I worked on a lot. And so now, you know, my goal is to get the digital experience to parity with with print as much as that's possible. If you buy a digital subscription, which you can do annually for 50, So just a little bit a price below the the print edition or you can do a monthly option for $6 a month. That gets you kind of the the PDF e reader experience. You can kind of flip back and forth between pages, there.
Chris Hardie:
It gets you unlimited access to articles that we're posting on the site and then a few other things. People can still read articles. We we have a leaky paywall, so metered paywall, some people call it. So, you know, you can read a couple articles for free if you're completely logged out. If you create a free account, you get a few more every month.
Chris Hardie:
And that's been a really strong driver of subscriptions as well. There there wasn't really a paywall strategy in place. And when we put that in place, we we saw a big jump in paid subscriptions, which has been great.
Dan Knauss:
Was that Newspack by chance you were using? It looked a little Newspacky.
Chris Hardie:
No. It's well, so yes. We we use a news pack theme. It's the new one of the news pack child themes that then I've kind of turned into yet another child theme of that. We don't use the news pack plug in, but we bring in some of the same functionality.
Chris Hardie:
The paywall itself is is custom, but heavily inspired by the folks at Leaky Paywall. Leaky. And I've I've just been a fan of some of their writing and and publishing about paywall strategy and just, yeah, pieces gathered from my time in in school and kind of all all around. So, yeah. And it's a, you know, it's a WordPress, plugin that I wrote and maintained.
Chris Hardie:
But it's it's it's pretty basic, but it does does the job. So.
Steve Burge:
So you had a post up recently explaining that you built a newspaper management system, I think you called it. Well, basically, you have a tech stack that goes all the way from the the original creating the original PDF that gets sent to the printers, to putting that content online, to the subscription management, which I believe is WooCommerce. You you basically renovated the entire tech stack that runs your newspaper since taking over?
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. It's it's funny, you know, when I first started consulting for the paper, I came into the office and I said, you know, can you show me your subscriber database? And they walked me over to a card catalog and, you know, pulled out the 3 by 5 cards with the handwritten notes about the subscriber, history and each time they'd renewed. And it was delightful and amazing, but the software developer me in me said, no, no, no. I'm like, we can't.
Chris Hardie:
There's no opportunity to do that. Right. Yeah. So step 1 was just just bringing the the subscriber database in into something that we could work with and that that ended up being a custom Laravel app, using, the filament, administrative, tools on the back end to kind of build admin panels and screens. And so so I brought the subscriber database in and, you know, then step 2 was okay.
Chris Hardie:
Now I need to be able to export that in a way that's useful to our printer. So, you know, I was connecting it up to that process every week of sending the order off to the printer. And then it was, you know, okay. Right now, we're sending out subscriber reminders for renewals by someone sitting down and, you know, hand printing a bunch of mailing labels and postcards. And so I said, okay, well, what you know, is there a service out there where that has an API where we could generate a postcard and send that off?
Chris Hardie:
And I found 1 and made my tool talk to that. So it you know, that those were the beginnings and it it's basically I've just I've just gone wild from there. Like, how how many processes, how many things that are taking up someone's, manual time every week can I turn into a, you know, if it makes sense, not, you know, not unreasonably so, but can I turn into a tool? And, you know, I haven't I haven't let anybody go or fired anybody, said, you know, you're being replaced by software. But through natural, you know, retirements and people leaving for health reasons and other things, you know, we've lost some people in in these couple of years.
Chris Hardie:
And I think I've been able to, I would say, cover about 2 full time positions with this with this application, in terms of the features that that I've built. And for a small team, that's a big difference. You know, it's meant that I've been able to, you know, help us focus on that some of the more creative stuff by by letting software do some of
Steve Burge:
the more tedious things. It sounds like a gold mine for someone who's process orientated. There's so many things that would had no process and Right. Right. If your brain works that way, you can come into an old newspaper and create processes for days to get things done to make things more efficient.
Chris Hardie:
Right. And, I mean, and there were processes before, but it was, you know, information locked up in someone's head who, you know, we had someone there who was there for 30 years and was, just, you know, masterful expert level, you know, working on the domain of, let's say, our our legal advertising, public notice publishing. Right? And it's this really nuanced thing that involves state law and, all these weird billing things and and convention and communication and local governments. And, you know, that was something that, you know, she could do really well, but it was not something that would scale or be, you know, replicable by somebody else.
Chris Hardie:
And so a lot of my focus, again, I think, you know, maybe to put it in SaaS terms, like, there was product market fit and there was, you know, clear idea validation. And I'm I'm here to make it scale, in terms of number of subscribers and what we're doing in the community. So I've enjoyed that process and it's been fun to bring my software development background into the mix that way.
Steve Burge:
Nice. Can you just describe Wayne County? It it's, from looking at on Google Maps before we talked, it seems like it's a fairly rural place, but also almost smack bang in between several big cities that are an hour away. What's Wayne County like? What's the audience that you're talking to through the newspaper?
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. That's that's a great question. I mean, it's, it's an interesting place. I I find it interesting. It's, I mean, it's a mix of rural, agriculture, farming.
Chris Hardie:
It's, there's several higher education institutions here, college, universities. There's a small but growing high-tech scene. There's a health care industry. You know, a long time ago, it was a place known for its kind of manufacturing capacity and and entrepreneurship in that world. Obviously, that's that's changed a lot in the the global economy.
Chris Hardie:
And, you know, I think we're still a place trying to find where we fit into that global economy. We don't we don't have a strong, identity where where people say, oh, you know, Wayne County, it's it's everyone knows it for x or y or z. We're starting still trying to figure that out. And, and we have some of the same struggles that a lot of similar communities do with substance abuse and poor health and, literacy and housing and things like that. So it's it's a place that, you know, might feel familiar to folks who have lived in the Midwestern US or maybe other parts of the world, but I think there are some things about it that that make it special too.
Chris Hardie:
And, you when I came here, I didn't intend to stay, but I've really made a made a life here and really appreciate
Steve Burge:
what I have. To what extent are you tackling those problems you describe? How much how much of the output that you have is kind of positive building up the brand of the area, showcasing all the the positive things that are going on? And how much is harder journalism, perhaps, dealing with some of the problems and, of a fairly small rural county?
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. It's interesting because there are there are people who think that newspapers should be that that first thing. Right? The the booster of of the community and tell the positive stories and and that's it. And, you know, if there's negative stuff, you know, okay, once in a while, but peep you know, people don't wanna see that.
Chris Hardie:
And, you know, I I guess I still think that as a as a journalistic publication, we have a responsibility even, you know, when it's very local and it's sometimes about our neighbors and people we know, you know, to bring accountability and transparency and context, even if that's, hard hard stuff. I think we do a good job of of telling the stories of of good things that are happening or people who are tackling challenges. And and we reduce, you know, a mix of hard news of features of profiles of sports. Sports is amazing. It's another one of those things that, like, I don't think I fully understood the role of the sports pages when I was coming in.
Chris Hardie:
And now I understand how much, you know, parents and families and grandparents and teams, just the the sense of accomplishment and camaraderie that that goes with that world and seeing their name and their photo and the paper and what that means. It's amazing and it's really heartwarming and it's really cool. So we spend a lot of time on government meeting coverage. It's one of those things where like, you know, one of my reporters, Mike, you know, spent all day yesterday, at county commissioners and county council meetings, you know, throughout the whole day because, you know, he was the only, reporter there and the only person who was gonna be covering what they were doing at those meetings and kind of bringing context and, detail. And there are times where I'm like, oh my goodness, like we're spending so much time like attending these meetings, school boards, government entities, and commissions and you know, think of all the think of all the stories we could be writing if we weren't doing that, but it is a really important way I think that we serve the community and bring accountability.
Chris Hardie:
And every once in a while, you know, we land on a story that's I think really important to the community, good or bad or something else that we're able to get because we have those relationships and recovering those things. So I think it's a good mix. I think there's always room for improvement and it's something I always wish I had more time to fiddle with. But with a small team, you know, pretty, pretty limited in what we can try out there.
Dan Knauss:
So what is the workflow like, from the reporter at the meeting all the way to, printed and and digitally published article?
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. It's it's pretty streamlined. We our our print production timelines still drive a lot of what we do, and that's one thing I'm hoping to keep gradually shifting. So, you know, Mike, again, to use that example, covered yesterday's meetings, took a lot of notes, probably spent a lot of today writing up articles about those meetings, breaking them out into topic appropriate, you know, segments and then sends that into a story database where it's marked as ready for editing sometime in the next couple of days. Myself and one other contractor we work with for editing is gonna dive into that and get it ready for publishing.
Chris Hardie:
It will most likely wait until the print edition to actually be published. If it's particularly timely or juicy or interesting, we might try to publish it online before then. But usually, the digital publishing is happening at the same time. Again, I'd like to keep experimenting with that a little bit so that, you know, an article that, is about a meeting that happened yesterday that's, you know, coming out and getting in people's hands a week, a week and a half later. I think there's room for improvement there.
Chris Hardie:
But right now, we're, yeah, we're kind of driven by that print process. So, yeah. I don't know if I'm answering the part of the process question that you're interested in, but that's that's the overview.
Dan Knauss:
Yeah. I'm always interested in a little more on the technical side too and where WordPress gets into the pipeline. And are you doing the editing level in inside WordPress or out outside then bringing it?
Chris Hardie:
Outside right now, we actually are using an Airtable setup that was in place when I when I bought the paper. And it was, Airtable is really nice, in that, it seems really usable for largely non technical folks, pretty intuitive, and also has lots of capabilities that then we can integrate it. So, the team figured out like, okay, we can we can plan an issue using Airtable. That process is was in place and I haven't really touched it since then. I've added some fields and some integrations.
Chris Hardie:
So reporter will, create a record in Airtable for the upcoming issue, dump the text in there when the article is ready, and and then it's a status field that's marked as ready for editing. We have a bunch of Slack bots that, you know, then come back to an editing channel that says, okay, there's 15 things that are ready for editing for this issue, and then we can, kind of take that on. And then, you know, as things are marked as ready for, publishing, they can go into the layout process and get pulled into InDesign. Then also, excuse me, built some tools that will take an article straight out of Airtable and draft a post in WordPress with all the, you know, kind of meta fields filled in. So as we're prepping the print issue, I'm hitting a button that says bring all this into WordPress.
Chris Hardie:
And so then those drafts are ready for kind of final review and publishing as well. Nice. It feels clunky at times, but, you know, when I have seen other papers and other processes where it's a lot more copying and pasting, I feel good about, you know, minimal copying and pasting. Still, you know, plenty of human human oversight and and involvement. But again, I think we're down to the part where the humans are doing some creative things instead of a lot of clicking and copying and pasting.
Chris Hardie:
Right.
Dan Knauss:
Does that do you go to InDesign from WordPress or from Airtable? That's a interesting step of starting more digital and then going into print.
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. It's it's kind of wild. And I mean, I I became aware I mean, there's a bunch of like enterprise level tools for integrating with Adobe products. I I'm I'm not enjoying Adobe products in general. So, I mean, there's things that that they make possible, but it's it's kind of a, you know, use it because we we need to.
Chris Hardie:
But I did figure out a way to have a script installed in everyone's Adobe InDesign installation that you can basically run to say, for the page that I have open right now, go ahead and pull in the stories from Airtable that are ready to place on this page. So basically, the layout person can click that button, and all of a sudden, they have these blocks of stories they can move around on the Airtable page, to place and, you know, the headlines in the right spot with the right style applied and the cut lines and everything else. So and that that talks to my kind of central application and that then goes out and talks to Airtable. So we could theoretically swap in another source if we needed to pretty easily. It's not it's not a direct Airtable connection.
Chris Hardie:
Same thing for, you know, built some other InDesign tools for generating the PDF edition of the paper that get that then gets uploaded to WordPress, you know, doing things like that too. So there's software everywhere. Nice. But sometimes it feels like a big ball of, duct tape and twine holding it all together.
Steve Burge:
There's a ton of APIs involved in almost every step.
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. And and I, you know, I like that, but it means that I'm I'm spending a lot of time I don't know about a lot of time. Means that any given week, I may be jumping in and out of the role of of IT and software development at times where I don't wanna be. If an API goes down or a spec changes or, you know, something about my test coverage didn't catch something that, you know, when when I added a feature. So it's it's a little bit fragile that way.
Chris Hardie:
It's one of the reasons I'm not, you know, pitching this application I've built to other publications at this point because it's, it's pretty bespoke for us. But, it's all it's not, it's not totally falling apart. It's just a lot of complexity there that's, you know, interesting to maintain.
Steve Burge:
What does an average day look like for you?
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. So I mean, there's there's a core set of things that have to happen every week, right, to to get the paper out the door. And that's that's pretty relentless. And, you know, no matter what, those things have to get done and then everything else is, you know, if I can fit in other things on top of that, that's a bonus. Any given week can be full of surprises.
Chris Hardie:
As I said, there can be breaking news, there can be production issues, there can be technology issues, it can be people issues, people get sick, people need time off, people have life, things happen. And we're pretty understaffed, so we're, you know, we're constantly running around and stretched pretty thin. There are, for me, subscriber support requests that might need my input. Again, I've largely connected our WordPress WooCommerce subscription setup to my central management app, but sometimes there are edge cases there that need my involvement or just, approval. Right now, I'm handling, handling a lot of advertising inquiries and doing that because we don't have an ad sales rep.
Chris Hardie:
I'm helping prioritize our news coverage, figuring out what meetings we're gonna go to, which ones we're gonna have to skip or, or, catch up on video later. I'm doing editing, I'm paying bills, running payroll, interacting with our contractors and vendors. And then, you know, where I can, looking ahead to features and coverage and schedule changes and publishing challenges. Sometimes I'm doing page layout. Sometimes I'm doing ad design.
Chris Hardie:
I helped my daughter start a paper route so she could deliver just a handful of the papers that are, being mailed, to our neighborhood instead of going through the postal service, having her deliver those. So I've been accompanying her on that, route just for fun. And then once in a while, I even get to write some articles and and do some journalism.
Steve Burge:
I I was about to say, it sounds as if you're doing everything apart from actually writing the stories.
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. I I would say, at this point, I'm writing, you know, maybe an article a month, sometimes less. And I'm certainly involved in in a lot of our our articles. I mean, my my editing role and my publisher role means that I'm talking with my reporters about how we're gonna approach a given story. What, you know, what are the things that we should we should focus on?
Chris Hardie:
There are times where I'm writing articles but they're you know, my byline isn't on them because it's more of a a staff report, press release, rewrite, or it's pulling together some data into, you know, an article. So so I'm doing a lot of writing and a lot of editing, a lot of reading, but my yeah. My name isn't on a lot of the individual pieces. So it's, it's a funny funny state.
Dan Knauss:
Have you found any, good partnerships or ways to collaborate with other people in the same same business? It's, there's so many small papers, there's so many on, on WordPress. I remember going way back some of the first really cool plugins developed for going from digital to print. Or for like, I think that was Banger Maine, Banger Daily News? Yeah.
Dan Knauss:
Quite a while. Are there are there kind of common code bases or or any just ideas and things you swap around? What's what's the network like for peers? Yeah. It's a
Chris Hardie:
great question. I I always want more, but I have found a lot of great resources. Locally, I mean, there's a there's a state, press association, and I've gone to some of their conferences. And so again, it's meeting other people who are doing the kinds of things I'm doing in in Indiana. Sometimes, you know, I I find, you know, they they may be part of a larger, corporation, and so they have their own tools or they, you know, have a different budget or a different approach than we do.
Chris Hardie:
But I've I've been able to make some connections and colleagues there. We're a part of like the Lion, group, local independent online news publishers. They had a great gathering recently in Chicago that I was able to go to and, you know, basically spent a couple of days in small groups and workshops with other publishers and other, reporters and writers who were struggling with a lot of the same questions that we are and, a lot of the same challenges and that was, heartening and, you know, amazing to connect to them. I've been to a couple other, you know, conferences, events. It's something I try to do once or twice a year just to be, connecting to people outside of, my local community because I I need that perspective.
Chris Hardie:
But I think I think where I have Yeah, maybe look for things that I haven't found is Yeah, just people hacking on news tools in general. I mean, there's a there's a Slack called news nerdery, that I'm a part of and it's technical people working on news related things and that's, you know, that's been great. But a lot of it's like, you know, getting ready for this election cycle or, doing this particular data journalism project. It's it's less, you know, ongoing things. But there's like a, you know, there's a CMS channel there where we talk about, you know, things you're doing with your CMS.
Chris Hardie:
There's the news product alliance. There's a group called Gather. And they have some WordPress specific things. So, yeah, I've been able to find connections. They're scattered around and it's, you know, there's so many people working on and thinking about this.
Chris Hardie:
And so you always wish for more kind of tightly integrated networking communication and, but I've been able to find some of that for sure.
Dan Knauss:
That's cool. I'm just looking up NewsNurtry. It looks like, I see Adam Swaggart and Daniel Bach Huber and it's a bunch of WordPress people.
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. I see Adam Adam in pretty much every every time I you know end up in a place virtual or real I see Adam there across the room and he he seems to be involved in so much so much of
Dan Knauss:
that so that's been really fun. That's that's cool. I'm working with a client now that's more of a traditional, unique, but traditional and old, news publisher part of the company. And, I'll have to get on this.
Steve Burge:
Yeah. Awesome. Chris, I posted on Blue Sky that, I was gonna be talking to you today and got a couple of questions from people, if you don't mind. Sure. One was from Joe, Joe LeBlanc.
Steve Burge:
What has been the biggest challenge in going from WordPress development to journalism?
Chris Hardie:
I mean, there's the obvious, you know, with software, you can make a change, push it live, see the impact right away. With with journalism and especially print publishing, you know, there's there's a longer timetable for things. I've been able to, make improvements and changes. You know, there's also a sense that you want you want to create some consistency and meet expectations and and, you know, serve the needs of the community. And that's a that's a much broader challenge, I think, than like, can I can I launch this feature that will that will do this one thing?
Chris Hardie:
I thought project management and client relationships in the software development and website development world were were hard. And that the timelines and the pace and the the deadlines were, you know, something that could bring stress if you if you allowed it. I didn't, you know, know what was waiting for me around the corner when it comes to newspaper publishing and just, yeah, the the weight of, you know, the stories we're bringing to the community. Is it the right mix? Are they the right stories?
Chris Hardie:
Are we bringing the right voices? Are we catching the right news? Are there things happening that we're not aware of that we should be? And, you know, I don't know. It's a it's a different level of stress or, just worry or wonder.
Chris Hardie:
And, you know, you you can have as much process as you want or as much, good tooling as you want, but then news breaks out and you, you you know, you have to jump into action to to cover it. And that's a that's a human level thing that has all the, question marks and unknowns of of human level activity. So I love that about it. And it's, you know, it's been rewarding and it's been feeding me, but it's just a, it's a very different world and experience from, from software. Sounds like you're saying that software development is easier.
Chris Hardie:
I would say Okay. I mean, I never developed software for, you know, medical uses or moon landings or things like that. So maybe there are people who would, have a much different experience. But I, you know, I worked on some pretty high profile, high stakes, WordPress projects in my time, and, those all felt easier than what
Steve Burge:
I'm doing now. So This engages far more parts of your brain, probably. I think so.
Chris Hardie:
I think so. In a wonderful way. Yeah. Have you
Steve Burge:
been doing anything different? This again is a question from Blue Sky. Have you can you think of anything where you swum against the stream with what you're doing? Are you are you fairly following a fairly sort of standard approach? Or have you tried any big experiments with with the newspaper?
Steve Burge:
I mean, I guess I have
Chris Hardie:
the benefit of not having been in the newspaper world for very long, and so I don't have a deep knowledge of of convention. And I guess that that may be serving me well in some ways. You know, for example, I have some reporters who who have come from the world of, like, Gannett Newspapers and, you know, they they've told me stories of, you know, the relentless focus on clicks and views, for example, you know, what what's the headline or what's the story that's gonna get this certain level of online engagement? And we don't really do that. Like, we don't we don't write stories for engagement.
Chris Hardie:
We write them for, you know, are they informational? Are they useful? Are they interesting? And overall, that's been my approach to the paper is, like, how how can we create something that is useful to people, that engages them, that inspires them? And, you know, that's that's what we're gonna do.
Chris Hardie:
Like, that's that's the thing that we're gonna create. And if they find that useful, they're gonna pay for it. And that's turned out to be true. So I I feel grateful that I'm not spending time worrying, you know, how how are we gonna, respond to an advertiser's demand for a certain number of views on an ad. You know, like, we're just we're just not doing that.
Chris Hardie:
We've tried to be community driven, in the sense that we had when I took over the ownership of the paper, had some listening sessions. We'd set up meetings at local libraries and just invite people in to say, like, what do you think of the paper? What do you wanna see? Do you want to see more of? What do you want to see less of?
Chris Hardie:
And really incorporate that feedback into what we do. I've tried to make sure we confront ways in which we are not including some voices in the community. We're we're a pretty white staff. We're a pretty, just demographically, like, not very diverse. And so thinking about like, how could we bring in other voices both on our team as reporters or otherwise?
Chris Hardie:
And how can we make sure that we're reaching out to parts of the communities that were, you know, maybe wouldn't naturally be connected to? And I think the other thing is just, take taking the long term approach that, like, we're, you know, trying to build something that's that's focused on my staff, making better wages, trying to eventually get health insurance, trying to have some of the perks that I experienced in the tech world. And when it comes to, like, hey, there's a professional development fund. And, like, maybe we can send you to a conference now or, you know, send you, you know, put you through a workshop or something that would be beneficial to you. And try to build the company in a way that is is looking toward that long term attracting and retaining people as opposed to what I have gathered as the standard for a lot of the news industry, which is put people through the grinder, and and extract as much value from them as possible before they burn out and move on.
Chris Hardie:
And I'm not saying that every newspaper does that or any particular company does that. But I I think that that realized. So,
Steve Burge:
yeah. It sounds like you fully expect to be doing this in 10, 15 years' time?
Chris Hardie:
Well, it depends because, the, you know, the version of it now really relies on a small team being stretched too thin, myself included. And, you know, I have conversations with my wife and my family all the time about, like, what is sustainable? And, you know, if if we can't find more people to help us and if the people we have now eventually, you know, decide they can't do it anymore, like, we can't exist. So I can't, you know, I can't automate journalism. There's no AI that's going to do the kind of reporting we're doing.
Chris Hardie:
And so it really does depend on the people. It depends on my family being very understanding about my schedule and at work. But yeah, like, I would like to set the paper up for long term success. I would like to keep growing into new, revenue streams, new parts of what we do, new ways of reaching people and and have a thing that exists for a long time. But but my goodness, I can't I can't do this particular version of it for 10 or 15 years because I yeah.
Chris Hardie:
I I just can't.
Steve Burge:
It is fair to say you're not sat there with a, your Google Analytics chart up on the board for everyone to see, chasing the chasing massive fits. You're you're not chasing clicks. You're operating at a pretty different pace
Chris Hardie:
with different roles. Yeah. I mean, I think the advantage I mean, we're we're lucky in that we're, you know, we're a hyper hyperlocal publication in a place where there aren't a lot of other great options for staying informed. I mean, culturally, as you all have seen, I mean, there's a shift away from people spending time going out looking for news or, you know, journalistic resources to stay informed. And so we can only keep doing that as long as there are people willing to pay for it.
Chris Hardie:
I will say, I think our, you know, our print audience certainly skews older. Folks with disposal income who grew up in a time where there was a daily newspaper that they found useful, at some point, those folks won't be around anymore. And if if younger generations are are not filling in with that interest, then, you know, we have to adapt to that. I don't know, you know, how long we can survive that, but that's where I'm trying to try other things with podcasting, thinking about different kinds of community events for engagement and and growing our audience too. So there's a lot to do.
Chris Hardie:
I think there's a lot to try. There's some amazing experimental fun stuff happening in the world of local news. And so it's it's an amazing time to be in this world, but there's a lot at stake too.
Dan Knauss:
Can you say more about audience engagement and how you've done that? Or and how you think you that might change? I I see you've got like comments disabled, but a high newsletter subscription. So, do different things happen there? And there's a contrib you let people contribute potentially, citizen journalism.
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. I mean, one thing I'd really like to do is pursue the documenters model that's come out of Chicago and just the idea of training and educating folks locally on what it means to show up to a government or a school board meeting, be a source of, you know, documenting what happens there, posting a summary and a transcript or what whatever it is in a way that's available to the public, letting that be a kind of citizen journalism. It's not quite the same thing as writing an article about what happened at the meeting. But I think that's an amazing approach that that holds a lot of promise for us. And there's a growing kind of Indiana focused and rural focused version of that that's that's happening too.
Chris Hardie:
We certainly put I mean, we have a feedback survey in every print edition. We solicit feedback through the email newsletters we send out. We have a retail storefront where we're talking to our subscribers and readers on a regular basis about what they think and what they like. So, there's a lot of that as well. But yeah, like I I have not yet cracked the nut of, you know, when someone says I'm I'm involved in the community, I care about what you're doing, I want to contribute, maybe I have a blog or I've, you know, I wrote for my school newspaper, but they don't have journalistic experience.
Chris Hardie:
They don't have, you know, the connections or the training to to then be thrown into the deep end of, you know, covering a meeting or investigating something or whatever. Like, what so how do we how do we bring them along? And I don't I don't mean to sound condescending towards folks who don't have a journalism background because I think there's still, you know, a lot of ways we can engage, but, I have to be careful not to dilute, you know, the the service that we're providing, when it comes to being a journalistic publication as well. We have yeah. We have some community contributors.
Chris Hardie:
We have some columnists. We have some contractors who work with us. And and so we've been able to do that, you know, to some degree, but there's there's definitely more to do there that I think about
Steve Burge:
a lot. Final question about the newspaper. Feel free to evade this question as much as you feel as much as you want to. Okay. This question from, Blue Sky again.
Steve Burge:
Can you tell us a little bit about the about the finances? You mentioned a little bit about the revenue coming from subscriptions and from online subscriptions and advertising. How does it break down? Are you getting money from obituaries, from legal listings? What does the finances look for look like for this morning's bid?
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. I'm I'm actually happy to share about that. And one thing I've done that I guess is a little bit against the norm is I've been publishing transparency reports where I actually put our finances out there, our revenue and and expenses. I am actually a couple quarters behind on that, but it's on a the the parent company is called CivicSpark Media. So it's on the CivicSpark Media website.
Chris Hardie:
And so every quarter, my goal is to to put those those numbers out there because I want other people who are working on this problem space of of local news to to either learn from what we're doing or to avoid, you know, mistakes we've made. This this fiscal year, we're probably on track to to have about, $500,000 in in revenue. And again, about 43% of that, will be from subscriptions and retail sales. Yeah. See how old that is?
Chris Hardie:
I mean, I really need to update that. So within that 43%, I I looked and about 85% is subscriptions and 15% retail sales. So that's the kind of like, subscriber reader side of things. Within that 57% of our revenue that's advertising, 70% is display ads, so just color or black and white ads that appear throughout the paper. About 13% is our legal advertising and public notices.
Chris Hardie:
About 4% is obituaries, 1 and a half percent classifieds, and then about 1% online. So we've barely done anything with online advertising. There's also, we have a little kind of business card directory. It's about 11% of our advertising income. And then, you know, there's a few other things, the design services, transcribing things, that that kind of things.
Chris Hardie:
So I've been able to get to the point where, you know, of of that revenue, you know, somewhere in the 10 to 15%, you know, profit margin range. And really, I've been pouring that, you know, back into raises and benefits and savings and infrastructure stuff. Just trying to, you know, build a build a foundation that that will help us last for the long run. I don't have the full history of the profitability of the paper before me, but I, you know, have some sense that it was an up and down thing. Certainly, with COVID, advertising was very limited for a while.
Chris Hardie:
But my my staff seems, you know, pleasantly surprised that not only are there no pay cuts, but there are some pay raises. There's some, you know, benefits being added, here and there. And, that we can, you know, buy lunch once in a while, and we can, maybe get a new laptop once in a while, things like that. So I feel happy about those things. Again, very very different than some of the spaciousness of finances that that I experienced in the tech world, but I'll take it.
Steve Burge:
I'm curious what Dan thinks about that. At least my gut feeling is it's probably a little more money than I expected for a newspaper of that size.
Dan Knauss:
That's impressive. Yeah. I I think that's that's great. The one I was involved with that it's founding that's still going is only a monthly paper in Milwaukee and definitely there are ups and downs. It's it's cool.
Dan Knauss:
It's still going, but it was, very much the baby of the publisher and a few other people that would come and go and, just very much a community institution connected with a few others. It's really interesting when the community holds it together. But, yeah, small urban neighborhood with some reach. I don't know, maybe comparable numbers, probably about half the circulation of what you're, you're doing. That sounds, that sounds great being in the, in the black is better than the other.
Chris Hardie:
And but I should be clear again. I mean, it's only possible because I have a team who are willing to work for less than they could make elsewhere. They're willing to figure out, you know, health insurance Yeah. On the public marketplace because we can't offer it. And, you know, they work hard because they care about it and would probably be doing some version of it even without pay.
Chris Hardie:
And that's, you know, I I I don't take that for granted. I can't take it for granted. And in no way do I want to misrepresent that we're, somehow, you know, financial success story when we need to be paying people more and keep working toward that. But it's a, you know, it's a balance and I I feel like we're on a good path.
Steve Burge:
Awesome. I'm just really impressed with the amount of information you've shared about it from detailing your whole tech stack to those revenue numbers. You're doing a wonderful job.
Chris Hardie:
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
Dan Knauss:
Yeah. It sounds great.
Chris Hardie:
Yeah. And I I mean, for me, like, there's probably a whole other conversation to have about tech stack and, you know, the ways in which, you know, WordPress is a tool and Laravel is a tool, PHP, I mean, have enabled some amazing things for me and and and, you know, what we do. And I, I know between the 3 of us, you know, a lot of experience experimenting with building tools, plugins, SaaS products. And and I think the newspaper world has a lot to learn from the SaaS and startup world and and vice versa. And and I guess that's, you know, for me, this I've just found this really amazing sweet spot of being able to experiment with those 2 worlds and bring them together.
Chris Hardie:
And I I want to keep having conversations with people who are interested in that stuff. So it's really fun. Congrats, Chris. Thank you.
Dan Knauss:
Yeah. Congratulations. Great work. Yeah. I, I've always enjoyed your, your personal newsletter, but noticed that that was very busy when you were new to new to this.
Dan Knauss:
Yeah. And then got quiet and like, that's probably a good thing. Basically, all
Chris Hardie:
yeah. All extra writing and, you know, if you ask my family, you know, things around the house have have, been paused in in the name of, trying to get things stabilized and and, shored up with the paper. And and, you know, I'm struggling to find that work life balance because it is a labor of love. And, you know, there's lots of things I'd like to be doing like blogging, personal blogging and that kind of thing too. But, you know, again, I'm grateful for the opportunity I have.
Chris Hardie:
It's just, it's non stop and it's pretty pretty all consuming.
Steve Burge:
So I've got a a final blog roll question for you. Is there a a publisher, a group of people, or a single writer who is writing something really good you enjoy at the moment. Is there a, like, an outstanding publisher that you're enjoying and reading a lot at the moment?
Chris Hardie:
And in particular, around news and journalism or just anything?
Steve Burge:
Just anything in general, really. You know, when I
Chris Hardie:
look at my RSS feed reader, if there's something from 404 media lately, I've been I've been clicking on that. I think they're doing a good job.
Steve Burge:
That's the second time in, like, 3 podcasts that someone's mentioned 404 media.
Chris Hardie:
And, you know, there's a there's a great podcast, I'm gonna get the name wrong, but I think it's called It's All Journalism. And it's, you know, he just interviews, people who are in the world of journalism, and I tend to listen to those pretty quickly when they come out. Yeah. There's lots of, you know, industry, sites and newsletters and stuff that I read, and I'm I'm often just skimming or picking out pieces that I can here and there. But, I think, on the media, the the podcast is one that's been really a consistent one for me.
Chris Hardie:
I I think they've they've helped me understand the media world over the years in ways that I wouldn't otherwise. So that that's another one that comes to mind too. But, yeah, lots of podcasts, I guess. Less less reading. I do I get all my reading in every week when I'm editing articles for our papers.
Dan Knauss:
So Yeah.
Steve Burge:
Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Chris. It's been wonderful to talk with you.
Chris Hardie:
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks for, all that, each of you is doing in, in, this world and others too. Yeah. It's great to catch up.