Later this month The Norfolk Boomerang will cease publishing a newspaper on newsprint and move to a web site.

The new version of the web site — www.norfolkboo­merang. com — should be up by the time you’re read­ing this. It’ll be free to all until early February, at which point the content will be available to subscribers at the same subscription rate as the current version of the newspaper: $36 per year.

In the meantime, you can check out the web site free of charge. We hope you like what you see and that you’ll support us by subscribing.

The newspaper subscriptions of most of our cur­rent subscribers have expired. (If you are a subscriber, your expiration date should appear in the mailing la­bel on the front page of this issue of the newspaper. If it doesn’t, send an email message to NorfolkBoomer­ang@ gmail.com to find out your expiration date.)

If your subscription is current, you have two op­tions: Continue your current subscription using the web site instead of receiving a hard copy of the news­paper; or we’ll refund the remaining value of your sub­scription on a pro rated basis. (Send an email message to NorfolkBoomerang@gmail.com to inquire about ei­ther option.)

But I hope you’ll keep going with us. We need you.

Frequently Imagined Questions

You haven’t asked them (yet), but we have.

1. Why are you doing this? Our ad revenue isn’t keeping up with expenses. In the last year or so, since an already-shaky economy nosedived during the financial crisis in September 2008, we have seen some of our advertisers go out of business. Others have cut back on expenses, including advertising with us.

As a result, we need to cut our expenses.

Our subscriptions have remained solid. To our sub­scribers: Thank you for sticking with us. The message we take from your continuing support is that a lot of Norfolk residents like having a local newspaper, like our newspaper in particular, and want to see us keep going.

We can’t keep going the way we have been going, though. Specifically, we can’t afford the expenses of printing the newspaper, mailing the newspaper, and distributing the newspaper. Our options are to go to the web or cease publishing altogether.

2. I like reading a newspaper on paper.

So do we. A newspaper on paper is the best medi­um. We’re not moving to the Internet because we think a computer screen is superior to paper. We’re moving to the Internet because we have to cut expenses or else go out of business.

We can’t keep going the way we’re going indefi­nitely, because we aren’t getting enough advertising to make money. But here’s the good news: Going to a web-only product decreases our expenses so much that we should return to viability quickly — If you come with us!

3. I don’t have a computer. How can I read your newspaper if it’s not on paper?

Norfolk Public Library and the Norfolk Senior Cen­ter have computers available to the public. At the library you need a library card to log on. But using the comput­ers

is free. If you have a user name and a password for our web site — which you’ll get when you subscribe — you can read The Norfolk Boomerang from any com­puter in the world that is hooked up to the Internet.

That said, we know that some of you aren’t hooked up to the Internet and never will be. To you we must say goodbye, with regret. We’d prefer to keep printing on paper, but we can’t.

Thank you for sticking with us over these part four years. You made this venture possible.

And go get a computer!

4. Isn’t going online just another way of go­ing out of business?

No. The expenses drop so dramatically by replacing printing and mailing with a web site that our business model that doesn’t work currently can work in the near future. We hope to move from unprofitability to profit­ability within a few weeks.

5. How can you make money with an Inter­net newspaper?

By going to the web, our business model changes dramatically. We still need and want advertisers, but we will rely less on them and more on subscribers. In short, we’ll rely less on where we have been coming up short — advertising — and more on what has remained strong through thick and thin — subscriptions. Our expenses will drop so much that we don’t need nearly as much revenue as we need now.

5. Will the web product be as good as the current newspaper? Our content will be at least as good as it is now in all facets and should be better in some, since we will be devoting less time to the nuts and bolts of putting out a newspaper on paper. In short: We plan to have all the content we have now plus more. The minus is that the newspaper (as we will still call it) won’t be on paper. That’s a drawback, and we won’t claim otherwise.

But the pluses are considerable. For one thing, on­line archives will be available to subscribers who want to see past stories. We plan to update the web site more frequently than just once a week, so subscribers can fol­low

development of stories and get late-breaking news. Some aspects of the Boomerang will resemble a daily newspaper more than a weekly newspaper. (Though there will still be a weekly publication.)

With a web site we can not only inform you, but in­form you on a continuing basis.

6. Why can’t your web site just be free like most others?

Free web sites come in three varieties: a) Web sites that generate so many readers that they can make money solely from advertising, like Google b) Web sites that are hobbies and don’t need to make money

c) Web sites that are funded by foundations or do­nors with deep pockets and don’t need to make money.

We aren’t any of those. This venture needs to make money — at least enough money to support the time our staff spends on the newspaper. To do that, we need paid subscriptions.

7. Can’t I get all the news I need on the web free of charge?

Not if it’s Norfolk news. The larger newspapers in the area cover Norfolk rarely. While their stories about Norfolk are generally available online, there aren’t many of them, and they don’t go into much depth.

We don’t mean to knock our colleagues — they’re regional news outlets and they need to ration their re­sources accordingly. As readers of The Norfolk Boo­merang know, we’re intensely local. When something’s important to Norfolk, we tell you as much about it as we can.

7. What about NorfolkNet?

NorfolkNet is a free online forum for Norfolk resi­dents. It does an outstanding job of allowing residents to air their opinions and it provides snippets of life in Norfolk. But it’s not a news outlet. It’s a community forum. A news outlet requires a reporter. The Norfolk Boomer­ang is the only entity that has a reporter actually paying attention to the town of Norfolk. If you want to know what town government is doing, what’s going in the schools, what crimes Norfolk police are investigating and what emergencies Norfolk firefightersare tending to, The Norfolk Boomerang is your best source.

8. What happens if I subscribe and you go out of business? We don’t expect to go out of business. Frankly, our initial venture back in the fall of 2005 was a lot harder — starting a newspaper from scratch and needing near­ly 1,000 subscribers in eight weeks to keep going plus advertising. The people of Norfolk came through for us and took our venture from nothing to viable in only a couple of months. It still stuns us when we think of it.

In our new web version, the expenses are so low that we only need a portion of our current subscribers and a fraction of our current advertisers to come with us. (The more the merrier, of course, and we appreciate each one of you!) But as in the past, we guarantee our subscriptions on a pro rated basis.

9. What if I’m not sure? Go to our web site — www.norfolkboomerang.com — and see if you like it. We think you’ll find it easy to access, easy to read, and informative.

Access to the web site is free for another couple of weeks. Our first paid-access-only edition of the news­paper online is scheduled to come out Friday, February 5.

10. If I want to subscribe, what do I do? Go online to the web site and click on “Subscribe” on the lower left side. Then enter your credit card in­formation.

Alternatively, send us a check for $36 to The Nor­folk Boomerang, P.O. Box 620, Norfolk, Massachusetts 02056. If you send us a check, though, please send an email message to NorfolkBoomerang@gmail.com, too, to let us know it’s on the way.

11. What if I live outside of Norfolk? The new subscription rate is $36 for all subscribers, no matter where in the world you happen to be.

The newsprint version of the newspaper has a high­er subscription fee ($48) than the in-town rate ($36), because it costs us more to mail the newspaper to out-of-Norfolk addresses. But the Internet doesn’t have roaming charges.

12. How do I advertise with you if you’re a web site?

Ads will appear on the right side of web pages bear­ing content. If a reader sees a news story, the reader will also see the ads.

Our advertising rates, which were low to begin with, are about to decrease. We’re planning to start with introductory lower rates during the transition to the web.

We’ll also be able to provide advertisers with de­tailed reports about how many times their ads are be­ing viewed.