posted 5 years ago
I have just founded a newspaper, The People's Voice of Scioto County. My printing equipment is incoming on a truck and my press credential is coming in the mail. I got the printing equipment for a song (80 bucks) after talking to a friend who was in the business since the 80s. He was a journalist in Kentucky and an editor in New York City. He gave me loads of information about how it works and told me where to get the equipment.
I'm interested in writers for a regular monthly gardening column, as well as for a regular monthly farming column. My farm is too small to inform me of all there is to it. Besides, I'm the editor, interviewer, and printer already. I can't do it all. Being close by is a plus. Be in mind, our growing conditions are very wet, formerly zone 6b. The OSU extension office has noted a shift in climate to be warmer than that so it's more like zone 7 now.
Pay:
I can't pay until I'm no longer bankrolling the printing out of my own account. But after that we can negotiate. I do intend to pay the writers and for printing from ad revenue, I just don't have any yet. People who submit articles will go in my contact book and I will get ahold of them in the future if there is an article we need and can pay for.
This is not a business, it's a public service. My county is poor as hell. 80% can't afford to buy a paper. So it is free to get one. There are 2 newspapers available, one local that never has useful information for the reader, and one from Columbus that has nothing to do with what's going on here. As the media for the nation is now in the hands of a very few companies with their own interests, we have no choice but to create a platform for our own voices. No paper or news source available in the region cares about our lives or problems. No mass media company is going to interview local people about local issues. So we have to do it. There is no pillar of smoke by day or fire by night to lead us out of this wilderness, we just have to start walking and find our own way. The name of the paper is the People's Voice for a reason, we will feature articles by and about the people living here. We will also have articles by people from outside the area when the topic demands it. I plan to interview people from all walks of life: first responders, farmers, homeless folks, teachers, doctors, pipe fitters, librarians, ministers, retired folks, steel mill workers, barge pilots, carpenters, mechanics, immigrants, school kids, and anybody else that has something to say that everybody needs to hear. What I will not feature is any sort of hateful speech. The paper exists to give us a voice and unite us as a community. It is not to divide us.
This paper will come out weekly, on Mondays most likely. My planned points of distribution are the Library and places where folks are already going to be. I don't want people to have to go out of their way to get one. I'll drop them off when I go into town on errands. The paper will have 2 pages printed on both sides to start.
Note, I'm still doing the other projects, but this was too important to wait. I already write prolifically, why not put that to use I figure.
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