New Newspaper To Bring Sunday Tradition Overseas
For many Americans, Sunday just wouldn’t be complete without a tall pot of coffee, a lineup of morning talk shows and a newspaper to thumb through as the day wears on.
Hesh Kestin, a former European correspondent for Forbes magazine, wants to bring that tradition - part of it, anyway - to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Toward that end, readers this Sunday will be able to turn their eyes to a spanking new newspaper, The American.
As its name suggests, The American is targeted to the tastes of U.S. travelers and expatriates. It will be published once a week and include political news, sports and lifestyle issues.
“I lived abroad for 20 years, and it became clear after a while that there was an opportunity on Sunday,” Kestin said in a phone interview from the paper’s headquarters in Westhampton Beach, N.Y.
Aside from the British press, he explains, Europe is essentially devoid of English language newspapers that publish on Sundays.
So with the help of 12 Macintosh computers and high-speed ISDN phone lines to transmit the paper’s 40 pages to printing plants in London and Frankfurt, Germany, publisher Kestin and his staff plan to bring their particular view of Americana to the Continent.
The American’s first print run will be 50,000 and Kestin expects to sell about half. He says the break-even point is 17,000, making it possible The American will defy the historically long odds for success.
Few new papers have made it in recent years.
“You’ve got huge barriers to entry in this business,” said Peter Appert, a media analyst at the brokerage firm Alex. Brown & Sons Inc. “One is just the cost of the creating the editorial product and getting it printed. Two is the cost of getting it distributed.”
The American is holding down production costs by limiting expenses. Besides the high-tech nature of its production process, Kestin’s staff totals just 15 employees.
Original stories will be supplemented by news services, including The Associated Press. Columns by humorist Dave Barry and others will be included, as will as cartoons and a crossword puzzle.
The American’s stories, Kestin says, will exhibit a certain intangible - attitude. A prototype of the newspaper shows a bright, white front page with red, white, blue and black print. Some inside headlines are in a somewhat informal, lowercase type. Despite its end-of-the-week focus, The American will not be entirely alone in appealing to overseas readers seeking news in English.
The International Herald Tribune, a joint venture of The New York Times and The Washington Post, publishes Monday through Saturday. USA Today’s international edition is offered Monday through Friday. The Wall Street Journal Europe is available weekdays.
But with a price of about $4 a copy, which changes slightly from country to country, Kestin hopes The American will dominate the Sunday gap.
“The idea,” he said, “is to provide readers with something to read on the one day they have time to read.”