Newspaper Innovation

The Starkville Dispatch, the first Mississippi free daily, was launched on July 8. A pdf of the first issue (right, click for bigger picture), is available on the website.

The paper is in fact the Starkville edition of The Dispatch, which serves Columbus, the rest of “The Golden Triangle” and western Alabama. According to the publisher the markets of Starkville and Columbus became more distinct, which led to the decision to make a separate, and free, edition.

The paper serves Starkville (Bulldog Country or Oktibbeha County) and the Mississippi State University. Readers can also subscribe for home delivery for $12 per month – which was also possible for the ‘old’ Dispatch.

The paper is published by The Commercial Dispatch Publishing Company, and is published in the afternoon, from Monday to Friday and on Sunday.

Publisher Birney Imes says in the first issue:

In a time when most news about newspapers is doom and gloom, we hope this expansion will show that our industry is not only viable but essential to the Golden Triangle.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 9:19 am and is filed under Launches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.