The Metro Weekly

The Valley Midweek Marketplace is a free weekly shopper published in affiliation with the Fargo Forum.

Ancestry

The Valley Midweek Marketplace directly originated from the Midweek Eagle, a tabloid-sized free shopper published by Pioneer Press in West Fargo, North Dakota. The Midweek went through several incarnations through the 80s and 90s, printing from once a week to twice a week, adding columnists and syndicated content, dropping back to once a week, and moving towards the end of the week invalidating its 'mid-week' naming.

Affiliation with Forum Communications

In 2005 the Midweek was purchased, along with other Pioneer Press assets, by Forum Communications. After the purchase, the Midweek Eagle continued to be published and distributed without much change until the summer of 2006.

Integration with the Fargo Forum

In May or June 2006 the Midweek was revised from a tabloid to a broadsheet size, included the same Classified categories as the Fargo Forum, and the advertisements had cross-over possibility from the Forum's classifieds.

Editor

The editor of the Valley Midweek Marketplace is Alicia Strnad, who both posts original content and mirrors her Marketplace column at her blog, the Blog Concierge. She is also the editor of AreaVoices.com, a blogging framework created by Forum Communications.

Opinion: Poor Internet Integration

While Strnad's columns once appeared as blog articles on AreaVoices.com, her column was apparently pulled sometime in April, 2007. Unlike most free shoppers -- which depend on the community's support and knowledge to survive -- the Valley Midweek Marketplace has no internet presence whatsoever. This Infomercantile page, and an article I wrote a year ago, are the only results in Google directly related to the VMM. Other original content, such as the front-page 'splash' articles, do not appear on the Forum's website or elsewhere within the company's sites. The Fargo Forum's classified rate page does not include any documentation on the Valley Midweek Marketplace. This poor show of support would indicate that the Fargo Forum provides little financial support to the free shopper beyond what the advertising brings in.

Strnad's connection with both AreaVoices.com and the Valley Midweek Marketplace would indicate an ideal source of free content to republish under the guise of amateur journalism; in rare cases, such as another article I wrote last spring, AreaVoices.com blog content has been republished in the Valley Midweek Marketplace, but much of the paper's content appears to be purchased from outside content sources. While it would seem counterintuitive to publish an article available today online in next week's Marketplace, the audience that picks up and reads a free shopper is somewhat different than those who read blogs, exposing a wider variety of content to a larger audience than either shopper or blogging site can reach on its own.

In summary:

• Free content pulled from a pool of local writers, the majority of whom address local issues;
• Self-supporting advertising revenue that makes up the majority of the paper's content;
• The work of one or two editors, and a small number of advertising sales representatives;
• Integration of both newspaper readers and internet readers, who will use each part as it fits their needs;
• Backed by the resources of a large regional newspaper (printing, distribution, etc.);

Holds significant potential for a profitable combination of website and newspaper. It's too bad that Forum Communications ignores all of the above.

Disclaimer

I delivered the Midweek Eagle in the mid-1980s.