BY ANGELA JOSSY for WEEKLY VOLCANO 4/17/26 |
Almost one year ago, I set a goal to try to make Weekly Volcano the newspaper of record for Tacoma. It was a high bar, but one I believed we could achieve if we could gather enough support. Why does this matter? Something many people never pay attention to, but that could change your life: legal notices.
As an official newspaper of record, Weekly Volcano could begin printing legal notices, which, as it turns out, is a pretty big deal and would bring in enough steady cash to stabilize the paper and level up our game considerably. I want Weekly Volcano to outlive me and become a unifying force for good in our community for decades to come. I believe it is really important and can help us solve a lot of our problems through communication, activation, and community building.
So we really went for it full bore. Right away, we switched from printing monthly to printing weekly, a lot sooner than we had planned, because the RCW says we must to qualify. Thankfully, sponsors showed up to help us do that. Community Healthcare sponsored the Wellness section. Ted Brown sponsored the Music section. McMenamins sponsored the Calendar section. BBR Academy sponsored the News Briefs section. Hunt’s Services sponsored the Feature section. Because of them and our advertisers, we have been printing weekly for almost a year now.
Next, we need to get a periodicals permit from the United States Postal Service because state law demands this as well.
So we read the requirements and then we started trying to get the 1,000 paid home-mailing subscribers that it said we needed. This really felt like an uphill battle; it is a free paper. We tried promoting this for a few months, but we never got above 105 subscribers, even when we lowered the price to below our cost to mail it. But before giving up, we found out there is another option. If we can prove that 1,000 people request our free newspaper, then we do not need have to have 1,000 paid mailing subscribers. This was a eureka moment. I thought we could list the delivery locations as requesters along with the number of papers they requested, but sadly that was rejected. They said they needed a name for every single paper. They need 1,000 actual names. You might be asking, why 1,000? Because the permit requires 50 percent of our circulation be accounted for. We print 2,000 papers every week. I mathed it.
In a moment of divine intervention (or an act of sheer desperation, you decide), on my birthday (April 4), I exploited the facebook algorithm set up for birthdays and put out a request for people to fill out a quick online form stating that they are a requester of Weekly Volcano. A lot of people did it, and many shared it too! It was very exciting! Within a week, we were 75 percent to the goal. Now it has been 12 days, and we have 800 requesters. We only need 200 more. So I decided to put the call out on the cover of this week’s paper, where it is guaranteed to be seen by the people who read the printed paper and pick it up at local venues. This issue of the paper is being distributed throughout Tacoma and Pierce County as we speak. I wonder how many days it will take to get those last 200 requesters. It will be fun to watch those numbers go up over the weekend.
Here is the link if you have not done it yet: https://form.jotform.com/260935952231054
BTW – It takes about 10 seconds, it is free, and it does not obligate you to anything.
PS. This is not the last hurdle. There is one more. We need to convince the City of Tacoma to change its RFP for newspaper of record before publishing the new one. I have a copy of the one from two years ago, and it says it has to be a daily newspaper. I asked about this and was told that state law requires this, but I think they are mistaken about that. I looked it up, and state law says it can be weekly. I think it is only fair that they change this, because there is only one paper that prints daily, and it is not the one you are probably thinking of. It is Tacoma Daily Index. They print only 300 copies at a time. It is providing one news story on the cover, and the rest is legal notices that only 0.13 percent of the public ever gets to see. Tacoma Daily Index is owned by an out-of-state corporation, so all this funding that could be helping us provide even more local, authentic content is leaving our city and never recirculating here in Tacoma to the people whose taxpayer money funds it. You and I cannot do anything about the RFP except encourage city government to make a good decision about this daily vs. weekly wording. I just wanted you to know that even when we get the USPS permit, there is still more work to be done to meet this goal. Thank you all for your help.
