Ryan mining for publishing gold in southwest suburbs

Ryan mining for publishing gold in southwest suburbs

With declining circulation and plunging revenues, Chicago’s big daily newspapers have hit hard times, but Jack Ryan—former investment banker, inner city school teacher and U.S. Senate candidate—is proving there’s still plenty of opportunity in the suburbs.

Just three years after launching his 22nd Century Media LLC, Ryan has weekly papers in six growing southwest suburban communities. Total circulation stands at an impressive 96,000, and Ryan says that advertisers are becoming believers. The rookie publisher expects his fledgling operation to finish 2008 in the black.

“We think we are on the right track,” he said.

Ryan contends the key to success in print media these days is being hyper-local. His Orland Park Prairie not only does not run stories about Iraq or Washington—or Chicago, for that matter. It also does not carry news from Frankfort, New Lenox, Homer Glen, Tinley Park or Mokena, the five neighboring suburbs where his company has its other papers.

“If you don’t have unique content, you will not be long for the media world. The Web has made information ubiqitous. What happened in Iraq yesterday—there are 50 providers of that,” Ryan said. “If you do have unique content, there are people who want access to that...and you can resell those eyeballs.”

Ryan is able to guarantee his advertisers 100 percent circulation in his six markets. That’s because the newspapers are provided to all residents free of charge.

That approach is part of a trend, said Nancy Lane, president of the Suburban Newspapers of America, a trade group whose members produce nearly 2,400 publications across the United States with total circulation of about 22 million.

“We see major growth with free circulation papers as long as they have quality editorial,” Lane said. “That is a very, very successful model in many U.S. cities. They are able to offer penetration in a market that gets the advertiser’s attention. They are able to reach massive amounts of people in target zip codes,” far more than the 17 to 25 percent that a paid publication might get, she said.

And though it costs about 16 cents a week per home, more than double the cost of the traditional kid-on-the-bike delivery model, Ryan makes sure his papers don’t get ignored on the driveway or lost in the bushes by putting them in the U.S. mail.

“We had to prove we had the content people would want to read and, second, we had to prove they actually had access to it,” Ryan said. “We thought our advertisers would feel more comfortable if they knew it actually was getting into the home...coming in with the personal mail and the bills.”

The free-by-mail approach also means there is no need for subscription, billing and other circulation operations and the expense that goes with them. Printing is done under an agreement with the Kankakee Daily Journal.

Ryan’s path to southwest suburban media entrepreneur was an unlikely one. Raised on the North Shore with five siblings, he graduated from New Trier High School in 1977. He won high academic honors at Dartmouth College as an undergraduate, and later earned his MBA and law degrees from Harvard University.

Ryan went to work for Goldman Sachs as an investment banker, first in New York and later in Chicago. He became a partner and, after 15 years, retired from the firm in 2000 with enough money to allow him never to work again. But, with a strong bent for service, he ended up in front of a classroom at Chicago’s Hales Franciscan High School, where he taught inner city students.

Ryan later decided to run for the Illinois U.S. Senate seat that was being vacated by Peter Fitzgerald. He won the Republican primary in March 2004 and was preparing to face off against Democrat Barack Obama before dropping out of the race when the Chicago Tribune and WLS-TV won release of politically damaging divorce case documents.

In his mid 40s and looking for the next opportunity, Ryan somewhat ironically hit on the idea of starting a newspaper chain.

“I tried to find a business that I would be able to do good with,” he said. “I could be a great widget manfucturer but I wouldn’t feel there was meaning. In the media industry you can do a lot of good by highlighting things that you think are important and meanful and are of value.”

And the southwest suburbs were attractive for two reasons.

“The demographics are so favorable out there because these towns are growing so fast,”Ryan said. “Homer Glen wasn’t even a town five years ago. Now, there are almost 25,000 people who live there.”

And, he said, “Frankly, part of it was that the local competition didn’t seem to me particularly intense.”

Ryan’s company, which started with two employees, now has more than 30 and he expects to have 40 on board by year-end. Everybody works in an open office with about 4,000 square-feet in a business park in Orland Park. Ryan, whose own desk is among those of his editors, reporters and other workers, plans to move the growing operation to new quarters with at least double the space later this year.

Each of 22nd Century Media’s six papers has a Web site carrying news as it happens, and the company offers an e-mail alert service to readers who want to be notified immediately when a hot story breaks. Ryan hopes to attract enough advertisers for both operations to add to the company’s bottom line.

The shrinkage in the number of big-city dailies notwithstanding, suburban newspaper start-ups are not unusual according to Lane.

“I would say suburban and community newspapers are starting up in markets all over the country,” she said. “Most (of our) members have added titles in the last two years. I think for a company to start from scratch may be unusual, but certainly not unprecedented.”

Three years in, Ryan is happy with his position. And though he has no plans for further expansion in the southwest suburbs, he sees potential in other outlying areas that also are marked by growth and affluence.

The “Kendall Counties of this world” could hold opportunity down the road, he said.

Gary Washburn, Contributing Writer

Posted on Monday, June 09, 2008 (Archive on Monday, June 16, 2008)
Posted by jstoltz Contributed by jstoltz

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