Veteran publishers seek to start newspaper in Detroit
Two veteran publishers announced plans Tuesday to launch a newspaper to fill a void left when the city's two major dailies reduced home delivery earlier this year.
Mark Stern, 63, and brother Gary Stern, 67, said they hope to publish within 60 days the first issue of a newspaper serving the Detroit area. The Detroit Daily Press is expected to sell for 50 cents daily and $1 on Sundays.
They said they were working to secure contracts with two printing plants and lease office space and were looking to hire department heads for the privately funded newspaper.
Mark Stern said the Detroit Daily Press should appeal to older readers who prefer a print copy of the paper, and its primary niche will be those who want their paper home-delivered. The newspaper also will have a Web site with a brief summary of the news for nonsubscribers.
"There is a definite need here," Mark Stern said at a news conference in the Detroit suburb of Southfield. "People are used to having a newspaper in their hand. ... That's what we're going to do — provide a newspaper."
To deal with declining circulation and advertising revenue as well as changing readership tastes, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News launched a plan March 30 to reduce home delivery to Thursday, Friday and Sunday and began offering an electronic edition.
A message seeking comment was left by The Associated Press Tuesday morning with the Detroit Media Partnership, which oversees the business operations of the Free Press and the News.
The partnership announced last month that it was laying off about 10 percent of the Free Press' staff in response to a continued economic downturn and steep decline in advertising revenue. About 5 percent of the News' staff and 7 percent of the partnership's staff also were laid off.
The Sterns said they can avoid the financial problems of the existing Detroit dailies because they won't have overhead costs such as delivery trucks, pension funds or facilities. Advertising and editorial employees will work for the newspaper, but not distributors or press operators.
"We aren't going to get into a situation that will put us in the red," Mark Stern said.
The brothers previously published daily newspapers in Detroit in 1964 and 1967; in New York in 1978; and in Minneapolis in 1980 when workers at those cities' major newspapers went on strike.
Afterward, Mark Stern said he published weekly entertainment publications in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for 22 years but was called out of retirement when he learned of the Detroit newspapers' plans to scale back home delivery.
The Sterns said they expect to start with a fairly small staff and paper, but each would grow as advertising revenue increases. Mark Stern said "several hundred people" would be needed to publish the paper but declined to discuss specific staffing levels.
Mark Stern said he expects to attract talented reporters and editors, including those who have been laid off from the Detroit dailies and many other newspapers that have cut back.
They did not release the size of their investment, but Gary Stern said they could subsidize the operation for one to two months. They said the break-even point would be a circulation of about 150,000 subscribers.
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