INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.– Spend a decent amount of time in downtown Indy, or on the city’s east side, and chances are you’ll be able to spot a bright green newspaper box. Inside those boxes are what some call one of the city’s best-hidden gems.
“The Weekly View” is an east-side-focused newspaper which highlights “everything positive” happening in the community. The paper is a passion project Judy Crawford, Ethel Winslow and Paula Nicewanger started 10 years ago.
“We started a newspaper in the middle of the Great Recession when everyone was telling us newspapers were a dying industry, here we are 10 years later,” Winslow said.
Crawford, Winslow, and Nicewanger are all lifelong east-siders. Crawdord and Winslow worked for The East Side Herald before the paper was shuttered. That’s when they connected with Nicewanger and set out on the mission to make sure the east side still had a voice.
“We never really thought we couldn’t do it, I guess which is why we succeeded,” Crawford said.
“They still call us the herald sometimes, sometimes they call us the Weekly View Herald, they don’t know what to call us– we answer to anything,” Nicewanger added.
The women say the paper has 25,000 readers, and prints more than 11,000 hard copies each week. Using more than a half dozen columnists, they’ve adopted “positive news only” approach for the paper’s content.
“The east side has a bad reputation, let’s face it, but what many people don’t hear are the positive stories coming out of here,” Winslow said.
A decade later, the “positive approach” formula still works.
“That’s just uplifting and lets people know this is not such a crazy world after all,” Nicewanger said.
The ladies say they know they’ll never be the biggest paper in town, but that “big” has never been their goal. They say they simply want to spread good news, about the good community they all love.
“There is a lot of value in putting your heart and soul into something. Something you believe in,” Winslow said.
The Weekly View is available every Friday, and is free to all readers. The ladies say they rely on advertisers, and donations to keep the paper going.
