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BUSINESS
seattletimes.com
JUNE 20, 2005 | MONDAY
Interface
Company
profiles and personalities
Putting
small-town news online
BY KIM PETERSON
Seattle Times business
reporter
What:
SmallTownPapers, based in West Seattle
Who:
Paul Jeffko, founder
Employees:
Seven
What
it does: Publishes online dozens of weekly small-town newspapers (www.smalltownpapers.com).
The company also digitizes the archives of those papers and makes them
searchable.
A
slice of America: Small-town papers capture a piece of America not
easily accessible if you don’t live in those places, Jeffko said. He makes
them available free on the Web, and the site has become popular with
genealogists. “We are amassing a record of American history as it actually
happened, as told through these small community newspapers,” he said.
Printing
to digitizing: Jeffko, 44, owned a printing and imaging business in the
1990s when a client requested digitized e-books. That’s where he started
learning about the software required to scan a book’s pages and turn them
into computer text.
A
firsthand look: Jeffko had helped the Quad City Herald in Brewster,
Okanogan County, make the transition from typesetting to desktop publishing.
Its method of archiving: bundling copies with twine and storing them in the
attic. “It got me thinking, “I wonder how many small-town papers there
are?’ ” Jeffko said.
Building
a business: Jeffko began asking publishers five years ago for permission
to put their newspapers online. He paid to have archives shipped to his
office to be scanned. He put the scans online so that users can see the
paper the way it was printed. In return, he promised the newspapers a
portion of any revenue his company receives for the content.
One
paper at a time: SmallTownPapers now offers 43 papers. Jeffko said
he’s recruiting 300 more.
Now
for the business part: So far, the company runs on a $2 million
commitment from an angel investor. Jeffko is talking with search engines and
other content distribution companies about ways to partner. “We are very
interesting to a lot of people,” Jeffko said.
Quote:
“The content that we’re bringing, both the historic and the current, is
filled with unique information that you can’t easily find anywhere
else.”
Copyright
2005 Seattle Times Co.
Web
reproduction with permission from publisher.
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National Newspaper Association
Washington Newspaper Publishers Association