The 2012 American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) Recycling Awards are officially underway! The annual awards recognize outstanding paper recycling efforts of schools, businesses, and communities.Publishers are invited to enter this contest …

Citizens are getting engaged in federal policymaking at record levels. A new report shows that Congressional offices have seen the volume in constituent communications rise between 200 and 1,000 percent since the turn of the century. That’s a pheno…

Free At Last!
Inside the Legals Victory in Ohio
by Jim Haigh

Years of persistence — what some have called blind optimism and others, insanity — paid off when Ohio Governor John Kasich signed the biennial Budget into law on June 30, 2011. Contain…

Volumes are being written about the fiscal state of affairs at the USPS these days. Sadly, much of it is oppositional commentary — and what passes for reporting is increasingly incomplete or inaccurate. Many publishers are members of the Saturatio…

Memo to the Community Papers of Florida (CPF) staff:”I just want to say thank you for all you did last week to make our conference a great experience for all of our members!”As always, you came through in a big way. Thanks so much for y…

The readers of this blog are mostly publishers and advertisers. Our audience already appreciates the importance of advertising, because that’s what we do for a living. The facts and figures that follow are not meant to simply preach to the choir, bu…

PaperChain is excited to share the five most-outstanding entries — selected from a total of 188 outstanding entries from graphic designers at free community papers across the country. Awards for PaperChain’s National Ad Design Contest were presente…

Every free community paper publisher I’ve met has stories about their support for hometown groups. Volunteer service, donations of cash and pulp and ink to projects as diverse as their communities. These partnerships build a better place and reinfor…

Testimonials 2.0 – A Case Study in SuccessHere’s some good news from one of our publishing peers. It serves as an excellent example of both self promotion and the enduring power of print. The short video also illustrates the simplicity of proactivel…

Several storied titles, including the Northeast Times, The Star newspapers and My Community Trend, are now back out from under the shadows of the big city dailies. In total, 55 community publications, many of which were packaged into the turbulent o…