Two really smart brothers have announced plans to start a newspaper — like, an actual paper newspaper — in Detroit. The brothers, Mark and Gary Stern, are 63 and 67 years old, and apparently they think it’s still the 1940s. Their paper’s chances of success? The same as the Lion’s Super Bowl prospects this season.
Baby brother Mark Stern tells the AP that the new daily “should appeal to older readers who prefer a print copy of the paper,” and, y’know, are afraid of the internet, with all its tubes and googlies and yahoozles and twits and whatnot. Sounds like a growing market. At least “the newspaper also will have a Web site with a brief summary of the news for nonsubscribers.” Alert the server farms.
Detroit already has two struggling dailies that have been so rocked by the End Times newspaper market that they now only offer home delivery three days a week. And therein these Stern youngsters see an opportunity. The AP reports:
“There is a definite need here,” Mark Stern said at a news conference in the Detroit suburb of Southfield. “People are used to having a newspaper in their hand. … That’s what we’re going to do — provide a newspaper.”
Don’t worry about the industry’s catastrophic ad sales. Or that Detroit’s population is half of what it was in 1950. Or that the biggest employers in town are bankrupt. Clearly, what this town needs is a newspaper. Go get ‘em, boys.
(Photo: Librarian Avenger / Flickr)