Editor & Publisher looks at 10 alternative news weeklies that actually increased revenue in 2008. The Mountain Xpress made the list, as did the Athens News, the Boulder Weekly and seven others. Here’s the set-up and the Xpress blurb:
In the space below, we’ve written about 10 AAN papers that increased revenue last year. Most of the increases were in the single digits, and for a few of these papers the growth was less than they had grown accustomed to. However, in the final year of the disastrous Bush presidency, when the economy reached depths unseen since FDR was in office, any growth at all must be considered an accomplishment.
4. North Carolina’s Mountain Xpress was up 3 percent last year, due to growth in display advertising and two new standalone publications — a green-building directory and a dining guide, publisher Jeff Fobes says. “It helps [the Xpress] to be in a small market and to depend almost entirely on local advertising,” he notes.
Fobes also notes that the Xpress may have been boosted by other factors unique to its market that have allowed the paper to expand its role: “Whatever success Xpress has had might … be tied in part to our historic effort to approximate a paper of record, which has given our daily, increasingly, a run for its money.”