Capitol Hill Seattle is still offering a selection of their weekly stories for download in a “print version“, something I noticed a couple of months ago. I thought it was brilliant back then, and still is. And it’s even better now because they’re improving the weird formatting issues that some of those early editions had, and making it look more like what you’d expect a “newspaper” to look like.

The idea of this print version is that it’s a PDF you download and print out, then when you’re done reading it you leave it behind in your favorite deli or coffeehouse for someone else to pick up. It’s an innovative way to advertise the website, for one thing, but it also makes concrete the idea that news and stories are things to be shared, to pass on to others. Plus towns across America have been full of these weird little weekly papers and newsletters for decades, so it’s not like the concept will be completely foreign to somebody picking up one of them.

It’s also a good example of standing the old news cycle on its head, which is another drum I’ve been beating for a few years. For so long newspapers have treated their morning print run as the only thing that matters to them, and the website is just a second-class object. My local paper in Carson City updates their website at 4am every day, with the stories that are in the paper that’s simultaneously being loaded into delivery vehicles. It’s like they’re afraid of the website scooping the paper, afraid of them scooping themselves. Instead these stories should go online as they’re finalized in the system. As soon as a story is “done” it goes online, then appears in the paper 12 hours later. There may be some old school news outlets doing things this way, but they’re surely in the minority.

It’s different for net-native sources like Capitol Hill Seattle. They live on the web, and that’s their main product. But they also realize that sometimes people do like to hold news in their hand, a physical object that you can roll up under your arm, or drop in the gutter, or read in the rain. So they put out this print edition, and instead of spending untold dollars on printing it themselves they ask their enthusiastic readers to do it for them. I’m sure if I lived on Capitol Hill and had some regular haunts I visited, I probably would print off a few copies every week and leave them behind. Why not?

And it also helps that the stories you find online are ones that you’d never see in a “real” paper, like the UFO chase that ended with finding a well-used kite or the varied opinions on the new white LED streetlights that have been appearing on the hill. Stuff that reminds you this is a real neighborhood where people live and play, and that makes it more personal than any newspaper. Get some of the local business to put ads in that PDF, and suddenly you’ve got a business.

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