Business Q&A: Elizabeth Wayland-Seal, Founder of The Johnston Insider

With the release of its May 16 edition, the nonprofit organization reached the two-year mark of publishing its weekly newspaper.

During a recent interview in her office on Atwood Avenue, founder and Executive Director Elizabeth Wayland-Seal spoke about starting a paper in Johnston and the challenges of keeping it running.

How long did it take to get the Insider started?

I honestly wish that I could give you a response that sounded more like 'We did studies' and that kind of thing — honestly, I started thinking seriously about the idea the January before we launched.

Around January, I started thinking about 'What if I started a newspaper Johnston?' Johnston loves newspapers — they love pulp with ink on it. It's probably one of the last places on the planet that really loves the paper and will actually choose newspapers based on what size is more convenient to carry into the bathroom — I literally had a guy call me up and tell me that.

The first thing I did was start calling up everybody I knew who had ever done anything kind of like it. I went and visited Jeff Potter who's been running the Commons up in Brattleboro, VT, for seven or eight years now, and find out what that was like.

I said, 'If you could do it from scratch, how would you have done it?' And so we sat down and we walked through the whole thing — I have pages and pages and pages of notes on what he would have done if he had been there since day one.

And it sounded like something that was possible, and then I called Geoff Shoos [founder of RICLAP]... and he knew what it was like to start up a nonprofit by himself.

It started with an idea, and then worked toward 'Is this idea feasible, is it possible, and is it something that I really want to take on right now?'

Was there one moment when you decided you were ready to go?

The thing is that, since I got started in newspapers, everybody wants to be the boss and everybody wants to rule the world.

It looked like a really good opportunity, all of the pieces were there. I had been getting a lot of feedback about what had been going on with news in Johnston after I'd left [Beacon Communications], and there was a lot of dissatisfaction with local coverage, so there was obviously an opportunity for a competing newspaper to get started.

There was no one 'aha' moment — there had to be that one moment of decision, but that was between me and my husband, [Tom], whether or not this was something that was wanted to take a quite substantial risk on.

Once you made the decision, how important was it to have your husband supporting you?

Everybody talks about all the things that they have to do to be in business, but the truth is, it's the not-in-business spouse that carries the biggest burden, because it's not their dream, it's not their passion, and they're the ones that wind up playing sweep-up crew to the parade of elephants.

If he was not on board, it was not happening — period.

How did you arrive at some of the other decisions, like when to launch the paper?

Some of the decisions were self-evident. The decision to launch in May was due to the timing of the season, the start of the adversiting season [and] before the schools graduated so we could cover the graduations; 2010 was an election year [and a May launch] was before the declaration period — basically, positioning ourselves to start a newspaper when people were thinking about news.

This was always visualized as a very photo-centric newspaper. That is what people in Johnston have always connected with — they want to see their faces, their family's faces, their friends' faces, their neighbors' faces — so you can launch in January, but what are you going to run, 4,000 snow photos? Not so much.

We wanted to be able to launch an issue and have good content in that issue, and that meant spring.

What was is like being able to hire Beth Hurd?

If there was a tipping point, that was it. Beth is Johnston news — she has been forever. She has been covering news in Johnston since time out of mind.

When her car broke down, half of the town council and all of the school committee offered to drive her around to her photo assignments — I am not kidding you.

'Round about February, I called Beth up and said 'I'm thinking about doing this [and] I think it'll work great if you're with me. I know it's a risk, it's a start-up newspaper. I promise I'll pay you — I promise I will pay you on-time.'

She'd worked for me for three years, she knew what kind of boss I was. You'd have to ask her, but I think the selling point was: 'I want to fill the paper with your photos.'

Talk about the work your organization in reaching out to the business community, now that you've hired Julie Fox.

Who's better positioned than us to help community businesses grow?

The turnover rate in the business world is staggering — six months to a year, tops. People open their businesses, they have no idea how to market them, they have no idea how to get people in the door. There are way too many people who think that unlocking the door and hanging a sign is enough.

That's why so many businesses fail — not because they don't have a fantastic product or that they don't have services or a product that the community needs, but because they completely lack the ability to connect with the people who are going to be their customers.

Julie has a gift for it, and it's in keeping with our mission statement of trying to encourage community awareness, community involvement, community investment.

How has your circulation grown since you started?

Realistically, there's this sweet spot that we're going to. You can throw 10,000 papers on the street, and 5,000 of them will wind up in the landfill, but what good is that?

We started at 4,000 and now we're at 6,000+, and we're looking for minimal returns [and] we've had to make adjustments. We just did an audit in the winter and there were some places where we were dropping off 10 and getting back 9, and I'm like, 'Why are we even doing that?'

At the same time, Millie Santilli over at the called me on Wednesday at 9 and said 'We're out of papers.'

I see circulation as a statement of how many people are reading your paper, not how many you can throw out on the street — I care about people actually reading the paper.