I interviewed Anderson Mayor Kris Ockomon again yesterday. Went really well. Questions came from readers of the website. Still haven't merged it with print, but think I will with this one. In the beginning I was able to present a gift from a reader in Oklahoma. It was a B&W photo of Chief Anderson. Gentleman who sent it called and thanked me. Felt good.

B-Roll:

I have to admit that I only just recently discovered this show. Thanks to the magic of Hulu.com I've been watching it. Pretty cool stuff. I wonder when the next newspaper/website/news television show will come out.

Here's a cool story for you. The local newspaper was ordered by a local judge recently to give up the name of one of their anonymous posters or at least the name of the company the plaintiff needs to go after for the information. The forums for the CNHI run newspaper are handled by a third party - Groupee's HeyMartha forums.

Made a small breakthrough today. Someone in the car vertical jumped on board with the next print edition. It's the smallest ad (they seem to be testing waters), but the fact we got them to sign a check is good, I think. Other bigger advertisers are being courted. Again, it's going slower than I thought, but I have the fact that my product is brand new against me.

Ok, here you go, a PDF of the first copy of AFP Print. Selling of the second issue is going. Could be worse and could be better, but it's positive overall. Takes time to build relationships with local businesses.

By Mark Choate
Orig. Posted to Online-News

There is a fundamental economic law at work here: more competition means lower profits. Less competition means higher profits. For many years, newspapers operated in what economists would call an environment of monopolistic competition. Monopolistic competition is defined as a market in which there are only a few providers of a particular good or service, and these providers offer highly differentiated versions of these products. This contrasts with pure competition, in which there are numerous providers of a good or service, all of whom offer more or less the very same thing. Like corn farmers, for example. If you have a lot of competitors all of whom offer the very same product or service as you do, then you are working in an industry that has been commoditized. Corn is a commodity. So are classified ads.

I have two pieces of content from members of the AFP website (members of the AFP community...) that I'm working on adjusting for print. This process is going to need to be streamlined a lot over the next few weeks, but for now it's great working with people in the community to get information about topics they're interested in ou there.

Was at Mondo Times today finally getting around to getting a listing for Anderson Free Press when I noticed their most recent poll - "The free daily newspaper is the future of the industry."

I'd say another week is beginning, but the previous ones haven't ended yet. I take small breaks here and there, but there's a lot to be done. I'm going on week 3 of sales, three days with a second person. I have 3 sales so far, with a lot of interest from some interesting segments - namely real estate and autos. Ruh row.

Well, I'm nearing the end of my first week out selling the second printed issue of Anderson Free Press. To be honest, I'm kinda shocked no one has blogged or picked up on this yet. (I did hear congrats from one other grassroots journalist...) Maybe I expect too much? Like it's not a big thing?