{"id":2457098,"date":"2020-04-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=324257"},"modified":"2020-04-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T06:00:00","slug":"ask-the-publisher-when-the-ink-dries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/ask-the-publisher-when-the-ink-dries\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask the Publisher: When the ink dries"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image p402_hide\">\n<div class=\"caption-container\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-1-683x1024.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-1-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-1-1366x2048.jpg 1366w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-1.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\"><figcaption><strong>Samantha Johnston<\/strong><br \/><em>Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText DropCap\">About two weeks ago, I asked The Aspen Times audiences to support local journalism by making a donation. I had every expectation that responses would run the gamut from large donations to \u201chow dare you, ya money grubbing for-profit pocket liners.\u201d I wasn\u2019t wrong, though I should point out that the latter was few and far between, for which I am grateful.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">What I didn\u2019t expect was more than a handful of readers to suggest that I spend some words explaining how the sausage is made in this business, and we even had a couple of readers provide a list of possible topics I should explore to explain why people should donate, but more importantly, how this business even works. And here I thought you\u2019d never ask.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Each week until we\u2019re all out of home jail or I run out of words, I\u2019ll explain a different piece of our business model.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Subhead\">Where does the money come from?<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\">\n<div class=\"row at-donation at-donation-mobile p-0\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-4 p-2\">\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/AT-logo-white.png)\" class=\"p-0 mt-2 mb-2 h-75 text-center rocket-lazyload\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/AT-logo-white.png\" class=\"logo m-0 p-0 invisible\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/at-banner-paypal.jpg)\" class=\"col-xl-8 p-3 text-center rocket-lazyload\">\n<h3 class=\"d-inline mr-3\">Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n<p><button class=\"btn d-inline\" type=\"button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/donate\/?utm_source=article&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_campaign=donation&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_content=mid-article\">Donate<\/a><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText ListBullet\">Print and digital advertising<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">More than 90% of our annual revenue comes from businesses who advertise their products and services in our print (The Aspen Times, Snowmass Sun, Aspen Times Weekly, special publications and magazines) or digital platforms. These are the everyday advertisements for restaurant specials, event tickets, pet supplies, real estate, etc.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText ListBullet\">Commercial printing\/pre-prints\/inserts<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">We have several commercial printing customers who pay us to print their products such as real estate magazines, event programs, in-store sales materials and other custom printing jobs \u2014 some of which appears in the pages of our papers and some that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">We also get revenue from what we call \u201cpre-prints,\u201d which are pre-printed materials from large retailers such as Target or Home Depot who print hundreds of thousands of sales materials and ship them to papers all over the country for distribution to readers in key markets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText ListBullet\">Google surveys<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">These are those pesky questions that appear on stories you read in The Aspen Times. We know it can be annoying, but we feel like a small inconvenience for the price of \u201cfree\u201d is juice that\u2019s worth the squeeze. Google places those surveys on our websites for their clients and they pay us based on the number of legitimate (they determine the parameters for that) responses they receive. While the revenue isn\u2019t a huge dollar value, it represents more than a part-time position for The Aspen Times annually.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText ListBullet\">Subscriptions<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">We sell a few mailed subscriptions of The Aspen Times Weekly and Snowmass Sun that generates a couple thousand dollars a month, but mostly covers postage and our other hard costs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText ListBullet\">Events<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Before COVID-19, we also were beginning to host some events in conjunction with longstanding traditions such as Best Of and some newer projects such as Longevity. These events represent less than 1% of our annual revenue, but every dollar counts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText ListBullet\">Merchandise<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">We occasionally sell our photos, but this amounts to less than $500 annually. Typically, we sell them when people purchase them from our website and we also get requests from marketing companies to use a photo in their marketing materials. We always provide photos at no cost to nonprofits or businesses who are promoting goods and services offered by others in the community, but occasionally charge when our work will be used to generate profit for a for-profit business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Sounds like an incredible business model, right? And we sound like a regular for-profit, right? Except for that little part where we give our proprietary work away for free every single day. Anyone in the world who wants to read the content in our newspaper can do so at no cost anytime, from anywhere. And while it\u2019s easy to suggest that perhaps we just charge for the paper like other markets do, we recognize that in a town driven largely by visitors and tourism, our advertisers have less eyeballs on their ads if we lock them behind a subscription.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">If there\u2019s a topic you\u2019d like to know more about, let me know. Email <a href=\"mailto:sjohnston@aspentimes.com\">sjohnston@aspentimes.com<\/a> or call 720-412-4240.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Tagline\">Samantha Johnston is the publisher of The Aspen Times.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/ask-the-publisher-when-the-ink-dries\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Samantha JohnstonKelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times About two weeks ago, I asked The Aspen Times audiences to support local journalism by making a donation. I had every expectation that responses would run the gamut from large donations to \u201chow dare you, ya money grubbing for-profit pocket liners.\u201d I wasn\u2019t wrong, though I should point out that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2457098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 04:27:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2457098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2457098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2457098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2457098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}