Local Athens Newspaper’s Owner Finds Ways to Survive in Hard Times

The editor of the local Athens newspaper Flagpole, Pete McCommons, stopped by a University of Georgia journalism class Monday to talk about how Flagpole's free circulation will enable it to survive in the slowly dying industry of print newspaper.

Unlike conventional print newspapers who depend on subscriptions as a huge source of revenue, the editor explained that Flagpole releases its weekly issue for free, depending solely on revenue generated from advertising.
And as more readers are using the internet for their news, McCommons explained, "We are in a better position than daily papers in the sense that we are free circulation and when we put Flagpole online, we aren’t taking money out of our own pocket.”
Despite a struggling economy, the 72-year-old UGA graduate said that Flagpole is printing around 14,000 copies a week, and is confident the paper will be able to survive for the long haul.
McCommons, the creator of the former newspaper The Athens Observer, believes that advertisers will still be attracted to Flagpole stating, “When we first started The Athens Observer way back in 1974, we were presented with the question what if we wrote something that made advertisers mad. And we decided at that point if we write the truth about stuff, and people read Flagpole, then advertisers will want to be in there.”

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