Moves to Print-Only Service for Twenty-First Century

Exclusive from Editor and Publisher:

Bucking current trends in newspaper publishing, Green Mountain Daily announced that today's posts will be the final Internet edition of the decades-old publication.

GMD Editor in Chief John Odum announced the move at a packed press conference in Montpelier. “I've always had printer's ink in my veins,” Odum said. “Now, with such national publications as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain Daily ceasing publication, we sense an opportunity for a change in our business model. With our daily readership approaching eight hundred, we think the best way to expand our coverage is to open things up to people who don't have an Internet machine in their house.”

Under the new arrangement, Green Mountain Daily will continue to be a daily newspaper, but will be delivered to readers' homes and sold at news stands  across Vermont and in other population centers, such as Washington, D.C., Boston, and Bratislava, where GMD readers are found.

GMD Chief Financial Officer Julie Waters explained that the new arrangement will immediately be more profitable than the outmoded online version. “The Internet has posed significant problems for our revenue stream,” Waters explained. “Although our advertising and subscription rates should theoretically be sufficient to support the operation, our revenues have never been able to keep pace with the expense of sending out technicians to disconnect the GMD service of nonpaying subscribers.”

Green Mountain Daily maintains its commitment to staying on top of the latest technology. For instance, through an innovative partnership with Western Union, the new GMD Twitter edition will now be delivered to subscribers by telegram at the standard rate of 140 characters per Tweet.