The Westside Express will celebrate its fourth anniversary this month of a successful hometown newspaper covering Los Banos, Dos Palos, Firebaugh and Santa Nella. Our first issue was published on May 25, 2022.
Reaching this milestone is good reason to celebrate. This newspaper has received a lot of support – from advertisers and subscribers and from the many individuals throughout the community who write or edit articles.
During the past four years The Westside Express has been swimming against the journalism tide. It is a start-up newspaper at a time when scores of newspapers were shutting down.
Its success is due to the interest of hundreds of people in Los Banos, Dos Palos, Firebaugh and Santa Nella, all of whom believed in the importance of a local newspaper. They appreciated this newspaper covering city council and school board meetings. They liked seeing stories about their community, especially the accomplishments of young people in school, sports and FFA.
This newspaper has also survived due to an unusual business model which requires more than a dozen different writers contributing each week, some pro bono, some paid per the article. We received the support and participation of dozens of local university, college and high school students, who have written and edited stories — a sign that young people care about local journalism and a hometown newspaper.
The Westside Express has survived, however, on a very thin margin. Even though it has expenses much lower than almost any other newspaper in America, it needed every bit of advertising it received to have the revenue to barely break even. And it needed every subscriber, even though its subscription was among the lowest in the country, a dollar a week for 52 weeks just pays the weekly postage bill.
In the end it is display advertising that has paid the bills of newsprint, ink, plates and the people who do the heavy lifting in printing and publishing a newspaper. And display advertising has its ebbs and flows. Small businesses also operate on a thin margin, and when the bottom line gets shaky, advertising is often the first expense to go, even though ads connect with customers.
Many readers of this newspaper patronize local businesses loyally, especially when they know a business cares enough about its community to advertise in its community newspaper.
We at The Westside Express (did you ever notice the logo for this newspaper is WE, reflecting its interest in all residents of the community?) can’t rest on our past success. Times are tough, but we need more businesses to step up and purchase display ads with us if we are going to continue to succeed and survive.
As we go into our fifth year of publication, WE at the Westside Express are counting on the continuing support of our advertisers and subscribers. But we would also like to hear from, besides these loyal supporters, other people and business owners who agree with what we’re doing, anyone who has any ideas about how we can ensure this newspaper can continue to be self-sustaining.
We are anticipating the future success of our newspaper, but at this point we need more ideas and more display advertising support from our communities if we are to continue a free press which has many hard costs to publish.
