MinnPost, the start-up Internet-based nonprofit newspaper (my post about the launch of MinnPost from last August) in Minneapolis has decided to drop its printable edition:

Beginning today, we're dropping the MinnPost in Print feature. Readers will continue to be able to print stories from the site. But as more and more of you are reading MinnPost online, we found too few readers were using MinnPost in Print to justify continuing putting together a printable summary of the site.

The newspaper had stop physical distribution of MinnPost in Print in February leaving it up to readers to print their own copies.

In January MinnPost's Editor and CEO of MinnPost Joel Kramer contacted me for input on finding a printing (or printer) industry sponsor for MinnPost in Print. At the time they were having a hard time selling ads into the printed edition which had a limited budget for circulation. "Our problem is that its circulation has been too small to attract the interest of advertisers, said Kramer in his email, "but printing more copies is too expensive without advertiser support. The old chicken and egg."

It has been painful to see MinnPost slowly drop its print efforts. If anyone could provide a new model for print media, I thought this group could with their new approach to delivering local news.