November 9, 2011
Old Truths about the New Media
Richard Rein
Founder and Editor, US 1 Newspaper
Old Truths about the New Media
Richard Rein
Founder and Editor, US 1 Newspaper
Richard Rein, speaker and Lanny Jones, introducer
Minutes of the Ninth Meeting of the 70th Year
The hospitality hour of the Old Guard here at the Friend Center last week threatened to spill over into 10:16 a.m. but President Bob Varrin thundered down Thor’s hammer and called the ninth meeting of the 70th year to order. Don Edwards led the invocation. [John Frederick presented the minutes of the Nov. 2 meeting, about the fabulous Roebling family and its legacy.]
[There were three guests: Sherman Gray introduced Charles Miller; Allen Kassof, his wife, Arianne, and Lanny Jones introduced Henry Von Kohorn.]
One hundred fourteen members and guests attended.
A moment of silence was observed in memory of Thomas Gillespie.
Jack Riley announced Harry Mayo’s promotion to emeritus status, and President Varrin noted that Guy Dean would be stationed at the back of the room for those whose dues were in abeyance.
Lanny Jones introduced the speaker, Richard Rein, the founder and editor of the popular newspaper U.S. 1.
Twenty-seven years ago, Mr. Rein was a successful freelance writer and reporter in Princeton who, as Lanny said, realized “that the only sure way to have access to the free press was to own one.”
“Rich came up with idea that just about everyone who knew anything at all about the media could tell him it was the worst idea they’d ever heard.” In Princeton, a town already too small to support two weekly newspapers, he planned to add a third, that would be given away free. Its editorial mission was to cover local business and entertainment, and, Lanny noted, it “most implausibly would be called U.S. 1. Rich was going to try to forge a reading community out of a local highway best known for filling stations, fast food and traffic jams.”
During the digital revolution when just about every newspaper faces severe cutbacks and pressures, Mr. Rein has not only survived but owns and operates a thriving U.S. 1 newspaper, with 19,000 weekly circulation, Lanny said. In 2000 he launched a sister publication, the biweekly West Windsor-Plainsboro News, delivered to 12,000 homes. Mr. Rein maintains an online presence (PrincetonInfo.com and wwpinfo.com), a social media presence on Twitter and Facebook and a blog, PrincetonDeals.biz.
Lanny said, “You’ll be happy to know that I have negotiated with Rich and he has offered to make available to the membership here, at the special Old Guard rate, his current issue absolutely free of charge."
Mr. Rein is a 1969 graduate of Princeton, where he was chairman of The Daily Princetonian. He began his professional writing career with his hometown newspaper The Binghamton Evening Press. He served as a correspondent on Time magazine, among other posts. When he is not editing, reporting or writing and rewriting he rides herd on his two boys, one in college, one a senior at Princeton High School.
Speaking the morning after the Princetons cast their vote to become Princeton, Mr. Rein played official greeter, saying: “If anyone here is from the township, I would like to pay you a special welcome from Princeton Borough. We’re glad you’re with us, we hope you can pick up part of our property taxes and help us negotiate with the university now and then.”
The election in Princeton and in West Windsor, reminded him of his genesis in journalism and stepped back into the twilight of 1965 and his time at the Binghamton Evening Press, where he covered the local sports scene before transferring to the news side the next year.
He noted the many changes he’s seen over the course of his career and cited as an example the aggregation of news boxes that haunted various corners of Princeton a few years ago, particularly those in front of the United Methodist church on Nassau Street. There were so many there, in fact, that passengers in cars parking in front of the church found it difficult to reach the curb. Today, Mr. Rein pointed out, only two boxes remain there--The Packet and U.S. 1.
One hopeful change in journalism is the hardware involved. A mentor in Mr. Rein’s earliest years, Pete Dobinsky, a Binghamton Press correspondent in Oneonta known by the speaker as the “mad Russian,” gave him an old Underwood typewriter in the back of the room. “I’m typing away,” he said, “and then you hit the carriage return like this [pushing both hands in front of him] …this typewriter was so creaky and so old it took two hands for every carriage return.
“Lanny’s introduction was too nice,” he said. “This is a modest enterprise. U.S. 1 at its peak probably had $1.6 million in revenue, after four or five years of slight decline, it’s down to about $1.3. It seems to have plateaued there, hopefully bottomed out and will come back. We’re not The New York Times, we’re not even Town Topics.”
Mr. Rein said. “I may be the only newspaper owner who is also an editor. And I’m one of the few editors who’s also a reporter.” And he said he could assure us that he was the only editor who was out on Election Night covering events in West Windsor. “In fact there were no reporters from anywhere covering West Windsor,” he said.
He then explained that there were just two rules of publishing. The first, Rule No. 1, he called the Rule of Reason. “A paper might survive,” he said, “if it has reasonable content delivered to a reasonable audience that would appreciate that content--and that it is delivered in a reasonable way.”
In his early career, he freelanced at Town Topics and came up with an idea for a story that he called the Battle of the Hotels. The Hyatt and Scanticon had just started and were fighting for corporate business.
Mr. Rein said that the hotels had huge parties with free food and drinks and that “every single guy in Princeton had managed to find out about it and show up at them.” Why? “Because all the travel planners, people who are trying to book the business, they’re all young ladies,” he said. “So all of us were over there. Huge parties, 200, 300 people would show up.”
He said he thought that would be a fabulous business story for Town Topics.
Barbara Johnson, then a Town Topics reporter, said, no, Scanticon is in Plainsboro; the Hyatt is in West Windsor. That’s not a Princeton story, that’s a Route 1 story.
“She was right,” Mr. Rein said. “That was literally where the light bulb first went off. And then within two months I had a prototype out, and we were off and running.
Mr. Rein said the desktop publishing revolution at that time was loaded with possibility. “You didn’t need to go to a Linotype machine, you could do it on your kitchen table. One fellow, who broke Rule No. 1, decided to turn a fancy advertising brochure for a store into a newspaper, saying, “We will address the Yardley-Newtown-Princeton Triangle,” as if it were a known geographical entity. “So he went out of business,” Mr. Rein noted.
Now he gave us Rule No. 2, noting that we were halfway through his rulebook. “I brought out U.S. 1, and it did seem like a stupid idea, except to a few people who said you’ve just become the first publication in a reasonable and workable niche.
He was advised to come up with a regular, predictable frequency of publication. Frequency, Mr. Rein said, “meant deadlines, and deadlines as you soon discover in this business, are your friends. They really help you get it done, and without them you’d be lost.
Mr. Rein said all one has to do is look at the “feeds” on his computer’s “favorites” folder to get a glance into the changed landscape of local online journalism. His feeds include AllPrinceton, Planet Princeton, The Daily Princetonian, Central Jersey.com and The Packet, The Trentonian, Central Jersey Patch, Princeton Patch, PrincetonScoop, Princeton Tour, Town Topics and WWPToday.
“It’s beginning to look a little like that line of news boxes at the Methodist church,” he said.
“From a publisher’s point of view,” he said, “think of the incredible opportunities here: no printing cost, no delivery, no rainy days, no digging snow out of the parking lot…and the best part of all, the customer can create a lot of the content…just let them post the events, their comments, let them submit articles.
“So the product that is being sold is being created by the people who are buying it. It’s terrific, it almost sounds too good to be true.
During the Q&A period, Mr. Rein was asked how much time and expense goes into putting out a paper as opposed to his online operations. He said that “almost all the budget we have goes into the physical production of the paper.”
But, he added, online operations have a hidden cost--the time it takes to update them, and offered an example.
“You might have an online Old Guard Web site,” he said, “and wouldn’t it be great to put all of this stuff online and the guy who volunteers for that--just say a prayer for him and wish him well. We see many, many Web sites, and sometimes even our own, just languish because other things come up. That’s the hidden cost online.”
Let it be known that many of our members took advantage of the Old Guard discount. There were no copies of U.S. 1 remaining by the podium only moments after Mr. Rein finished his presentation.
Respectfully submitted,
Roland Foster Miller
[There were three guests: Sherman Gray introduced Charles Miller; Allen Kassof, his wife, Arianne, and Lanny Jones introduced Henry Von Kohorn.]
One hundred fourteen members and guests attended.
A moment of silence was observed in memory of Thomas Gillespie.
Jack Riley announced Harry Mayo’s promotion to emeritus status, and President Varrin noted that Guy Dean would be stationed at the back of the room for those whose dues were in abeyance.
Lanny Jones introduced the speaker, Richard Rein, the founder and editor of the popular newspaper U.S. 1.
Twenty-seven years ago, Mr. Rein was a successful freelance writer and reporter in Princeton who, as Lanny said, realized “that the only sure way to have access to the free press was to own one.”
“Rich came up with idea that just about everyone who knew anything at all about the media could tell him it was the worst idea they’d ever heard.” In Princeton, a town already too small to support two weekly newspapers, he planned to add a third, that would be given away free. Its editorial mission was to cover local business and entertainment, and, Lanny noted, it “most implausibly would be called U.S. 1. Rich was going to try to forge a reading community out of a local highway best known for filling stations, fast food and traffic jams.”
During the digital revolution when just about every newspaper faces severe cutbacks and pressures, Mr. Rein has not only survived but owns and operates a thriving U.S. 1 newspaper, with 19,000 weekly circulation, Lanny said. In 2000 he launched a sister publication, the biweekly West Windsor-Plainsboro News, delivered to 12,000 homes. Mr. Rein maintains an online presence (PrincetonInfo.com and wwpinfo.com), a social media presence on Twitter and Facebook and a blog, PrincetonDeals.biz.
Lanny said, “You’ll be happy to know that I have negotiated with Rich and he has offered to make available to the membership here, at the special Old Guard rate, his current issue absolutely free of charge."
Mr. Rein is a 1969 graduate of Princeton, where he was chairman of The Daily Princetonian. He began his professional writing career with his hometown newspaper The Binghamton Evening Press. He served as a correspondent on Time magazine, among other posts. When he is not editing, reporting or writing and rewriting he rides herd on his two boys, one in college, one a senior at Princeton High School.
Speaking the morning after the Princetons cast their vote to become Princeton, Mr. Rein played official greeter, saying: “If anyone here is from the township, I would like to pay you a special welcome from Princeton Borough. We’re glad you’re with us, we hope you can pick up part of our property taxes and help us negotiate with the university now and then.”
The election in Princeton and in West Windsor, reminded him of his genesis in journalism and stepped back into the twilight of 1965 and his time at the Binghamton Evening Press, where he covered the local sports scene before transferring to the news side the next year.
He noted the many changes he’s seen over the course of his career and cited as an example the aggregation of news boxes that haunted various corners of Princeton a few years ago, particularly those in front of the United Methodist church on Nassau Street. There were so many there, in fact, that passengers in cars parking in front of the church found it difficult to reach the curb. Today, Mr. Rein pointed out, only two boxes remain there--The Packet and U.S. 1.
One hopeful change in journalism is the hardware involved. A mentor in Mr. Rein’s earliest years, Pete Dobinsky, a Binghamton Press correspondent in Oneonta known by the speaker as the “mad Russian,” gave him an old Underwood typewriter in the back of the room. “I’m typing away,” he said, “and then you hit the carriage return like this [pushing both hands in front of him] …this typewriter was so creaky and so old it took two hands for every carriage return.
“Lanny’s introduction was too nice,” he said. “This is a modest enterprise. U.S. 1 at its peak probably had $1.6 million in revenue, after four or five years of slight decline, it’s down to about $1.3. It seems to have plateaued there, hopefully bottomed out and will come back. We’re not The New York Times, we’re not even Town Topics.”
Mr. Rein said. “I may be the only newspaper owner who is also an editor. And I’m one of the few editors who’s also a reporter.” And he said he could assure us that he was the only editor who was out on Election Night covering events in West Windsor. “In fact there were no reporters from anywhere covering West Windsor,” he said.
He then explained that there were just two rules of publishing. The first, Rule No. 1, he called the Rule of Reason. “A paper might survive,” he said, “if it has reasonable content delivered to a reasonable audience that would appreciate that content--and that it is delivered in a reasonable way.”
In his early career, he freelanced at Town Topics and came up with an idea for a story that he called the Battle of the Hotels. The Hyatt and Scanticon had just started and were fighting for corporate business.
Mr. Rein said that the hotels had huge parties with free food and drinks and that “every single guy in Princeton had managed to find out about it and show up at them.” Why? “Because all the travel planners, people who are trying to book the business, they’re all young ladies,” he said. “So all of us were over there. Huge parties, 200, 300 people would show up.”
He said he thought that would be a fabulous business story for Town Topics.
Barbara Johnson, then a Town Topics reporter, said, no, Scanticon is in Plainsboro; the Hyatt is in West Windsor. That’s not a Princeton story, that’s a Route 1 story.
“She was right,” Mr. Rein said. “That was literally where the light bulb first went off. And then within two months I had a prototype out, and we were off and running.
Mr. Rein said the desktop publishing revolution at that time was loaded with possibility. “You didn’t need to go to a Linotype machine, you could do it on your kitchen table. One fellow, who broke Rule No. 1, decided to turn a fancy advertising brochure for a store into a newspaper, saying, “We will address the Yardley-Newtown-Princeton Triangle,” as if it were a known geographical entity. “So he went out of business,” Mr. Rein noted.
Now he gave us Rule No. 2, noting that we were halfway through his rulebook. “I brought out U.S. 1, and it did seem like a stupid idea, except to a few people who said you’ve just become the first publication in a reasonable and workable niche.
He was advised to come up with a regular, predictable frequency of publication. Frequency, Mr. Rein said, “meant deadlines, and deadlines as you soon discover in this business, are your friends. They really help you get it done, and without them you’d be lost.
Mr. Rein said all one has to do is look at the “feeds” on his computer’s “favorites” folder to get a glance into the changed landscape of local online journalism. His feeds include AllPrinceton, Planet Princeton, The Daily Princetonian, Central Jersey.com and The Packet, The Trentonian, Central Jersey Patch, Princeton Patch, PrincetonScoop, Princeton Tour, Town Topics and WWPToday.
“It’s beginning to look a little like that line of news boxes at the Methodist church,” he said.
“From a publisher’s point of view,” he said, “think of the incredible opportunities here: no printing cost, no delivery, no rainy days, no digging snow out of the parking lot…and the best part of all, the customer can create a lot of the content…just let them post the events, their comments, let them submit articles.
“So the product that is being sold is being created by the people who are buying it. It’s terrific, it almost sounds too good to be true.
During the Q&A period, Mr. Rein was asked how much time and expense goes into putting out a paper as opposed to his online operations. He said that “almost all the budget we have goes into the physical production of the paper.”
But, he added, online operations have a hidden cost--the time it takes to update them, and offered an example.
“You might have an online Old Guard Web site,” he said, “and wouldn’t it be great to put all of this stuff online and the guy who volunteers for that--just say a prayer for him and wish him well. We see many, many Web sites, and sometimes even our own, just languish because other things come up. That’s the hidden cost online.”
Let it be known that many of our members took advantage of the Old Guard discount. There were no copies of U.S. 1 remaining by the podium only moments after Mr. Rein finished his presentation.
Respectfully submitted,
Roland Foster Miller