Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper
Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper
Weekly Newspaper for Sale
The La Conner Weekly News is for sale. After seven years of running an award-winning, vibrant, financially successful 1,100 print run, community-focused subscription newspaper in the beautiful Pacific Northwest Washington, I am ready to retire. It is your turn now. Buy yourself your next job and expand your career until you retire.
I am inordinately proud of what I created. The La Conner Weekly News is the community's independent, hometown, award-winning newspaper, a success in every way and one that is still growing into its revenue potential. The Weekly News proves that small town journalism can thrive.
The business plan I created worked for me and included this exit strategy:
• On the News side: Weekly publishing an award-winning newspaper: all local content with a variety of stories, photos and locally focused editorials.
• On the Business side: Doubling revenues in four years, adding subscribers, and generating increasing net income.
• In the Community: Advocating for citizen involvement in government and a sustainable future.
• As the Publisher: Taking a leadership role championing the building of a new library and support of activist residents.
Each of these strategies and goals are present-day successes. The newspaper has blossomed beyond initial hopes in all regards. Recognition in the annual Washington Newspapers Publishers Association’s annual Best Newspaper Contest increased to 34 awards in 2022 up from 23 in 2021. Revenue was over $258,000 in 2021 up from $131,000 the last year of the previous owners. Weekly, 1,100 copies are printed and circulation is close to 900 paying mail subscribers, up over 10 percent from 2016. Subscriptions are up! I doubled sales in four years. It is a realistic revenue goal to reach $400,000 in another four years.
This paper has earned the respect of the community. It is known for its strong editorial voice focusing on local issues with an occasional pivot to national and international topics. It regularly attracts contributors, both professionals and passionate activists. It encourages engagement and participation in the community.
The next owners will gain a strong newspaper. They will find an extremely diverse community, with a thriving farming and a thriving art scene, and vital downtown core. Local and area merchants know they gain value by placing their advertising here. It is like Oz. The new owners will rub their eyes: Have they have stepped into a town straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting? There are no street lights and I walk half-a-mile to work every day.
And then there is the natural setting: My side of the Swinomish Channel is the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean. The San Juan Islands beckon in Puget Sound while the Cascade Mountains loom 25 miles eastward. And yes, you are 75 miles north of Seattle and 90 miles south of Vancouver.
The Weekly News awaits mid-career journalists who love their work, believe in community and want to advance their careers in a small, idyllic community. Come to La Conner, not to retire, but for the next phase of growing your career, stabilizing and, indeed, enhancing your professional and personal life.
Call me: 360-202-4660.
And please, browse the website. See for yourself what the Weekly News is about.
About La Conner Weekly News
The La Conner Weekly News has the unique legacy of continuing the tradition of publishing weekly in La Conner since 1879 - the longest continuous weekly publishing in Washington state.
Every issue today “Covers La Conner and its Rich Agricultural Region,” as the Puget Sound Mail, the first La Conner weekly newspaper proclaimed at the top of its page 1 for decades.
La Connerites and the over 4,000 residents in the local school district take their newspaper seriously. Not many towns of 900 people (along with neighboring communities) support a weekly printed newspaper anymore. La Conner does.
The Weekly News cover events and activities on both sides of the Swinomish Channel and extending out to Bayview, Conway, Anacortes and Mount Vernon. Community, schools, sports, fire districts and local government meetings and decisions are reported.
The paper proudly lists on its front page the tag line “Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper.” It is each of those: As a 2017 editorial heralding new ownership put it: “We are rightfully proud of each of those descriptions: This paper is autonomous; without strings attached, or pulled by anyone, locally owned, of consistently good quality and recognized by professional journalists. Call us ornery, local, proud and smart.”
Besides the important ongoing featuring of local happenings, the paper emphasizes the local food economy, arts and culture, moving into a sustainable future, and the necessary ongoing participation required by citizens in a democracy. The paper is proud of its active editorial voice emphasizing local issues, primarily.
Citizens are invited to write and share their views on any topic of interest to them. Letters up to 350 words are welcome. A contribution of 500 words is printed as a guest column on page 2. Reflections, reminiscences and poems are all published.
The Weekly News prints 1,100 copies for Wednesday distribution. Annual print and online subscriptions are available, or purchase papers at red news boxes, stores, and coffee shops in La Conner and Rexville.
The Weekly News connects you to the goods and services our advertisers offer.
Subscribe, read us online, or stop by the office for a paper and to share what is on your mind.
Publisher and Editor Ken Stern
Ken Stern moved to La Conner to purchase the Weekly News in June 2017 and started his publishing career that July. The Weekly News was his first newspaper job since his 1980 college graduation when he minored in journalism. Still, over the next 40 years, he freelanced and contributed to several newspapers and websites, publishing over a hundred articles, editorials and book and theatre reviews.
Ken jumped enthusiastically into all aspects of editing, from assigning stories, through covering events and local governments, editing articles, issue layout, and taking photographs. He takes publishing seriously, championing a sustainable future for La Conner, and challenging its residents. He is proud of his role in advocating for a new library building throughout 2018 and 2019.
Interns are welcome and their growth through their time at the Weekly News welcome.
He is thrilled to have work that fits him like a glove and offers him the opportunity to be himself each and every day.
