Interior decorator Marcia Feeney says the company she works for, Interiors by Decorating Den on Sanibel Island, needs to advertise specifically to the island. "We deal with locals. Ninety-five percent of our clientele are island people."

If the company placed ads in the large daily newspapers or on television and radio stations in Southwest Florida, it would be paying to reach people who live as far away as Lehigh Acres, Bonita Springs and Naples. Chances are those people aren’t going to be Interiors by Decorating Den customers.

Instead, the company runs regular ads in three weekly papers on Sanibel: The Sanibel-Captiva Islander, The Island Sun and the Island Reporter.

Many of the weeklies in Southwest Florida have a geographic niche, focusing tightly on a single community that may be covered only nominally by larger media outlets. With publications such as the Captiva Current, the Gasparilla Gazette and the North Fort Myers Neighbor, the Breeze Newspapers based in Cape Coral is one of the big players in local weekly papers. These papers all specialize in what’s referred to in the industry as hyper-local content—your son hitting a Little League homerun at the park down the street rather than Barry Bonds hitting a major league homerun across the country.

"These days you can get international, national and state information pretty much at the push of a button," says Jack Glarrow, publisher of the Breeze, which offers more than a dozen newspapers. "Weekly newspapers gather, print and distribute local information that isn’t offered anywhere else. [The content] is closer to their front door, so it’s extremely important to the readers who receive it."

Editors of the recently launched Fort Myers Florida Weekly say they are targeting affluent readers in Fort Myers and surrounding communities with articles that interest this demographic, including real estate, business, arts, entertainment and fine dining.

Renée Beck is the marketing director for McWilliams Buckley & Associates, a real estate agency that regularly takes out full-page color ads in Florida Weekly.

"We have actually gotten quite a few calls [from those ads]," Beck says. "I don’t know if it’s just because it’s something new or if they’re just doing a great job and getting a good response."
If it seems there is an ever-increasing number of free weekly papers being peddled, that’s because there is.

One reason is the ease of desktop publishing, says Glarrow. "People in their homes, with a relatively small investment in hardware and software, can create a newspaper page on their computer," he says. "With that technology, it becomes feasible for independent publishers to spring into the market."

The other factor is that the major dailies in our area, which in turn are owned by big, national media corporations, have seen the success of weeklies and the hyper-local concept. They’re getting in on the action—and changing the dynamic of the market.

In the past few years, The News-Press has launched a weekly Spanish-language newspaper as well as weeklies in Cape Coral, south Fort Myers, Estero and Bonita Springs. The paper also bought the weekly Marco Island Sun Times to extend its reach into Collier County, where the Naples Daily News holds sway.

The Daily News publishes community papers that include the Marco Eagle, Naples Sun Times and its own Spanish-language weekly, Vista Semanal.

The weeklies also help act as a bulwark against the dwindling readership rates experienced by many large daily newspapers. Adding community publications to their portfolio allows them to offer new advertising vehicles to their clients. Because rates to advertise in weekly papers are usually much lower than in a big paper or a broadcast outlet, there are opportunities for more mom-and-pop businesses to run ads.

Despite the popularity of TV and the Internet for news, it seems weekly newspapers across Southwest Florida will continue to reel in new readers, along with new customers for area businesses—if the sprinklers don’t soak the papers first.

Journalist Chris Wadsworth is married to a managing editor at The News-Press who is involved in the management of weekly newspapers.