By Henry Bryant
While The Porch Press is sponsored by the three neighborhood groups in Neighborhood Planning Unit-W (NPU-W), we are supported financially only by advertisers. Most newspapers depend on advertising even though they may have subscriptions and many charge something for their papers as well. We do not have subscriptions, but our paper is mailed for free to every household of record within the geographic boundaries of NPU-W. We are a Georgia non-profit corporation governed by a Board of Directors made up of members from our all-volunteer staff who are nominated by the neighborhood organizations in Grant Park, East Atlanta, and SAND. But we are not a 501(c)(3) tax deductible group because we sell advertising.
The digital age is upon us, and while we have moved to beef up our online presence, many in our community still do not have reliable and consistent access to neighborhood news via computer. Many more still enjoy receiving the news on a printed page. The Porch Press is a community service so we want as many as possible to have easy access to it.
From the beginning, we have been lucky with advertising support. We also have had great volunteer support and because of our volunteer staff, we are a very lean organization and our rates have been very affordable. We also offer area advertisers a very dynamic intown niche market in their own backyard. For those reasons, advertisers have come to us.
The Porch Press advertising has relied on real estate companies in our area to a great extent. With the Great Recession and the bursting of the real estate bubble, many of the area agents and companies went out of business and real estate advertising all but dried up. We have still enjoyed and appreciated continued support from several stalwart real estate advertisers and other community businesses. Fortunately, we have also had reserve funds from years when having many ads was not a problem. That is how the Porch Press has survived through the recent lean times.
The size of our paper (and most others) is determined by the number of ads that are sold for a given issue. When the quantity of advertising diminishes, the number of pages is reduced. Printing costs go down for fewer pages, but not by much. There are also the fixed costs of postage and handling that do not go down with reduced pages. We have cut expenses, but if the Porch Press is to survive past this year, we will need more advertising or other financial support.
If you are reading this and care about this community, you can help. If you are a potential advertiser, it is very easy to place an ad. We recommend placing more small ads rather than one large one helping us even out the flow of advertising and stabilizing the size of the paper month to month. If you would like to volunteer, we could use a person or two to regularly call on potential advertisers and to reach out to current advertisers when their multiple run reaches an end. Our advertisers tell us that their ads work, but being mostly small businesses and busy people, they often do not realize when their time is up on their ad. Finally, if you are a customer at an area business that advertises, mention that you saw them here. If they are not an advertiser, mention that you read us and that they should advertise.
To advertise, call Fred Smith at (404) 627-3126 or email advertising@theporchpress.com. To volunteer to help sell ads, call me at (404) 377-6148 or email production@theporchpress.com. The Porch Press and the community service and news it provides may not be around at this time next year without your help.
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