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Few pieces of surprise mail have delighted me quite like the Calvert Street Loop, a print quarterly spearheaded by my D.C. neighbors who had a quirky idea.
Zoom in: We at Axios are fans of local journalism, but this publication is hyperlocal. Its circulation includes the doormats and mailboxes of residences on just three streets in my charming Adams Morgan neighborhood.
Catch up quick: The Calvert Street Loop founders are a bunch of 20-somethings living in group houses who wanted to feel more connected to their community, the Washington Post reported in a recent profile.
- Only one of the publication's creators is a working journalist, whose tweet about the project instantly went viral. In true anti-Zoom spirit, these entrepreneurial Gen Zers threw an in-person party at a park in tandem with the inaugural edition.
The big picture: The quarterly print publication has put out two issues so far.
- They've included a letter from the editor, a news story or two, a recipe, an advice column, recommendations, poems, a crossword, and classifieds (fake and real).
- It required very little money, advertising or marketing — and it's a hit. I can't wait for the next edition.
Zoom in: The latest issue had reporting on the history of our local Walter Pierce Park, which was once an African American and Quaker cemetery.
- There was also a weekend itinerary pointing to coffee shops and restaurants unlikely to be on any trendy list and a convenient schedule showing meeting times and places for local pickleball, tennis, volleyball and running groups.
Try it! Here's how they did it:
- The first edition cost under $500 and was supported by "a donation from a decades-long resident of Calvert Street NW." The DIY website printnewspaper.com delivered 350 copies.
- The global organization Awesome Foundation has committed funding for at least two more editions.
The intrigue: Young people may be keeping the spirit of print media alive.
- Another project, The Ditch Weekly, is run by teens and does seasonal coverage of Montauk in the Hamptons, the New York Times recently reported.
- The paper's staff has grown for its second summer of publishing, with the goal to distribute "2,000 copies of the paper a week through Labor Day, funded entirely by ad sales."
The money quote: "When you're on your phone, it gets boring after a while," Dylan Centalonza, 14, a writer for the paper, told the NYT. "This is something you have to put work into."
