Valley provides haven for small newspapers.

The turbulent advertising market the past few years has failed to keep smaller newspapers down -- at least in the Valley.

A raft of tiny, free publications is filling coffee house and convenience store racks these days as advertisers look for cheaper, more targeted ways to spend their money.

Being a publisher of a small local newspape** seems more popular than ever.

As free papers, these publications rely on ad revenue for their survival. But let the big guys go after Macy's and Microsoft, the publishers say. There is a real need for ad outlets for small businesses that can't afford the rate cards at the larger dailies. They add that smaller companies are increasingly interested in targeting readers in the neighborhoods close to where they operate, and papers serving a specific community or geographic area provide a perfect opportunity to realize that goal.

"The truth of the matter is, none of these smaller papers are ever going to take that significant of a bite out of ad revenues from the larger papers," said Mort Goldstrom, vice president, advertising issues, for the Newspaper Association of America. "But, as larger dailies have grown even bigger and more national in coverage over the years, the need for very small marketing targets has also grown. National advertisers will return to their normal sources, but smaller companies are increasingly looking to localize their market targets."

The proliferation of these smaller papers is primarily taking root on the east and west ends of the Valley.

Consider a partial list of the contenders now doing business here: The Tolucan Times; The Burbank Times; NoHo LA, formerly NoHo News; The Valley Vantage; Warner Center News; The Las Virgenes Enterprise; Valley Scene and Entertainment Today.

The newest kid on the block is the Studio City Sun, launched in December by veteran advertising executive and former classified ad manager for the LA Weekly, Jim Kaplan.

Kaplan bankrolled the launch of the first issue by pre-selling the ads before determining a publication date, which is why he says he managed to get it off the ground by spending only about $200 of his own money.

"That was the only way I was going to be able to do it," said Kaplan, who serves as publisher alongside editor Judith Kaplan, a former LA Weekly publisher.

Unlike most of the other free papers in the Valley, Kaplan bags and delivers about 18,000 of the 20,000 Suns he prints every other Friday directly to businesses and most of the roughly 13,500 households across Studio City. It's a much more costly form of delivery, says Kaplan, but it's the best model for longevity.

"I knew going into this that home distribution was going to be the only way to propel revenues quickly and that is the model I sold the paper on to my advertisers," said Kaplan.

He said month-over-month advertising revenue has increased 20 percent consecutively since the first issue came out Dec. 6, and that he intends to launch a second community paper in Sherman Oaks sometime this year.

"The community has really embraced the paper and I would expect that 20 percent figure to ramp up over the next few months," said Kaplan. "I'm getting calls from readers telling me about stories I ought to be out there covering. What that tells me is that there is a real need for community oriented news. Advertisers want smaller outlets, but readers also want to see listings of community events, pictures of their local charity functions and stories that fall below the radar of the larger papers."

Local impact

Jason Cohen owns Studio City based California Nutrition & Juice Bar and has been running ads in the Sun for the past few issues. He said he can't afford the rates at the Daily News and frankly doesn't need to market to an area much wider than his own backyard.

"It's a local paper (the Sun) and it's inexpensive," said Cohen. "It also targets the community where we do business."

A full page color ad in the Sun, depending on frequency, runs between $600 and $900, compared to the Los Angeles Times at $6,900 during the week and $8,400 on Sunday, depending on frequency.

When Kathleen Sterling and her husband launched the Warner Center News in 1982, there was only one building at Warner Center and the Marriott hotel was a corn and strawberry field. Today, Sterling's company, The Valley News Group, publishes that paper along with the Vantage and the Enterprise -- all free weeklies -- with a combined circulation of roughly 20,000.

Sterling said she sees a lot of growth potential for her papers and others like them because of what many perceive as a shrinking news hole for Valley business and community news in The Times and Daily News.

"When the Daily News began it was a true community newspaper," said Sterling. "It was the paper you read to see what was going up on the corner. They had a reporter who went to every society event and you knew what was going on. But in recent years it has become a huge daily and it's competing with the Times and just lost the edge.

"People still want to know what's going on down on the comer," said Sterling. "They want to know that a McDonald's is being torn down for a Wendy's, or what's going on for the kids, or what type of seminars are coming to their area."

Editorial weaknesses

Cynthia Rawitch, associate dean of the College of Arts, Media and Communication at Cal State Northridge said while the smaller newspapers attempt to serve the community and usually do so well, they are often weakened by the fact that they run on such tight budgets they usually can't afford experienced writers or editors. As a result, the papers suffer editorially.

"They typically will hire one low-paid, usually inexperienced reporter to do all the editing and writing and that often shows up editorially because you can get some silly stuff on the pages," said Rawitch.

And, despite the need and apparent interest in smaller, community papers, the road to getting one up and running can be difficult and costly.

In the five years since she launched The NoHo News, now NoHo LA, Anna McWillie figures she's spent roughly $270,000. She's maxed out credit cards and taken out loans to purchase equipment and cover distribution costs. She lost money trying to use an outside advertising representative and then lost even more after hiring an in-house bookkeeper.

But another thing about these community papers, McWillie and others will attest to, is that the rewards outweigh the risks and costs. "This is a labor of love for me," said McWillie, who launched the weekly in 1998 to create a link between the NoHo and Los Angeles arts districts.

The paper started at 12 pages and is now up to 24 with a steady stream of regular advertisers.

"I'm not out of debt yet, but I'm earning a living," said McWillie.

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