George Zens
In comparing his former and current homes, Zens says that Dane County residents are 'more conscious of the need to use more sustainable practices in all areas of society than people in Luxembourg.'
George Zens is finally breaking even. It only took three years, but that's not too bad. The newspaper industry has seen massive consolidation on the national level in recent years. Regional news sources, those going "local, local, local," have actually been doing all right. Some, like the Sustainable Times, are even growing. This past October, George Zens' personal media creation generated enough ad revenue to put a little extra in the bank. It is finally sustainable.
Zens, 45, is a career journalist and a native of Luxembourg, a small country in central Western Europe. But, as an exchange student, he graduated from Madison's West High School in 1980. Tammy Baldwin was the valedictorian of his graduating class. After living and working in Europe through the 1980s and '90s, he moved to Wisconsin in 2000 with his wife, a Middleton native, and their two oldest children. In spring 2004, prompted by a trip to the busy Dane County Farmers' Market, a light bulb suddenly flickered inside the editor's head. No doubt it was a compact fluorescent.
"It occurred to me," Zens recalls of his epiphany, "there was no publication in the area that consistently covered anything that had to do with sustainability." So he did some research. His idea struck a favorable chord with the chorus of vendors at the farmers' market so, he adds with a wry smile, "I drew up a business plan on a coaster, and that was it."
The first issue of the Sustainable Times was 16 pages and had only a couple dozen advertisers. The most recent issue has over 150 advertisers and fills 36 pages. With a circulation of 12,000 copies a month, it will break 40 pages by next spring, the publisher predicts.
Even though his main challenges have been economic, Zens is determined to keep the paper free. "The point of my newspaper is to get it out there and to get the information out there that I want people to have," he says with emphasis, and a clear Germanic accent. "That is why it is free, and that is why I make it available as much as I can. I don't publish a newspaper to keep it secret."
And of course, it is intensely local: local foods, retail, beer, and plenty of local people. Zens has little interest in covering big-box stores or chain restaurants, nor does he generally accept their advertising dollars. One notable exception is Whole Foods.
"That is the exception confirming the rule," he says. Whole Foods also happens to be one of his paper's top distribution points. Patrons there pick up about 2,000 copies a month. Willy St. Co-op and the Middleton Public Library are other sustainability hot spots. Distribution has grown into Jefferson County and several small towns outside of the Madison/Middleton nexus, including Mount Horeb and Roxbury.
"Right now I'm trying to balance my print runs with those businesses and institutions that want to be pick-up locations," says Zens of growing demand. "I actually have a backlog of places that want to get the paper, but I can't give them as many as they want because I don't have them." He and his distribution manager closely manage the numbers in an effort to reach as broad a geographic range as possible.