As a part of our goal to operate for the public benefit, Civic Spark Media and the Western Wayne News will provide regular updates to the community on our operations, health and future plans. This is our latest community report, reflecting activities for both the Western Wayne News newspaper and the WayneCounty.info news aggregator in the first quarter of 2025.
See also: 2024, 2023Q4, 2023Q3, 2023Q2, 2023Q1, 2022Q4.
—Chris Hardie, Owner and Publisher
By the Numbers
Q1 2025 Finances
These financial reports are unaudited and unofficial, but we believe them to be complete and accurate as of this publishing. Rounded to the nearest hundred.
- Income
- Advertising sales: $86,600
- Newspaper subscriptions & individual sales: $59,800
- Miscellaneous income: $500
- Donations: $0
- Expenses
- Employee payroll & contractors: $71,300
- Newspaper printing: $18,000
- Rent, office expenses & utilities: $12,600
- Postage & delivery: $9,000
- Software and online services: $5,900
- Legal and accounting service fees: $3,100
- Credit card processing & bank fees: $2,200
- Advertising & marketing: $700
- Travel: $300
- Insurance: $100
- Depreciation & amortization: $0
- Other expenses: $0
Other Metrics of Interest
As of April 16, 2025
- Western Wayne News subscriber households
- Print: 3,300
- Online: 820
- Western Wayne News retail location copies distributed weekly: 600
- WayneCounty.info daily newsletter subscribers: 750
- Civic Spark Media team
- Full-Time Employees: 4
- Part-Time Employees: 2
- Contractors: 16
Notes
I’m writing this report to the community shortly on the heels of sharing the 2024 full-year report, which has a longer list of milestones and some notes about ongoing challenges. In addition to those, some notable milestones from Q1 2025 include:
- We began leasing an office in downtown Richmond as an additional work space for our team. Since we cover news, sports and other happenings from across Wayne County, and since many of our subscribers and advertisers are in Richmond, we’re pleased to be able to expand our community presence in this way. Our Cambridge City office on Church Street remains open and where we continue to maintain public lobby hours for subscribers and advertisers seeking assistance in person.
- Welcomed our client services specialist Sonya Reed, who is helping our advertisers have an even better experience getting the word out with WWN.
- Paid online subscriptions surpassed 800, nearly doubling from two years ago.
- Conducted a team retreat to focus on strategy and priorities for the months and years ahead.
- Beginning to send email reminders to print subscribers about expiring subscriptions, which has helped a number of folks avoid missing a week of the paper when our mailed reminder postcards don’t get through in time.
- Adjusted our postal delivery procedures to continue addressing and bypassing USPS delivery issues for subscribers.
- Began planning to resume insert advertising offerings in the print edition of the paper.
Here’s a short video we made that gives a glimpse of our amazing team’s hard work producing Wayne County’s local newspaper – enjoy!
Do you want to be a part of keeping the community informed and connected? We’re hiring.