20 Under 40 - 1996 Profile: Dave Price

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 1996

When asked what he likes to do when he isn't working, Dave Price chokes.

"I'm a ski fanatic," he finally reveals—a certified risk-taker. But a year-old newspaper doesn't allow much time for its parents to play, so Editor Price and his two partners work into the nights, bringing up their infant Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News. The slopes will have to wait.

Beginning last December with an unaudited circulation of 3,000, Price and veteran Colorado publishers Jim Pavelich and Dave Danforth now distribute 9,900 copies of the 32-page free tabloid in 200 locations and 130 outdoor racks. Ad linage grows apace amid the affluent city's thriving economy.

Price, whose savings help finance the venture, has some experience in newspaper births. As a college student, he "went up to Aspen on vacation with a girlfriend and stayed eight years," first employed by a free paper and then a radio station. He eventually co-founded Aspen's second free daily.

John G. Cole, editor of The Morning Journal in Lorain, Ohio, and then-City Editor Price's 1990-95 supervisor, says, "What better testimony to power, creativity and vitality than to start a daily?"

The Palo Alto operation employs 19 people, none bearing titles. They sit at desks A, B, or C—or operate from their cars.

Make no mistake, however: There's nothing alternative here. "We want to be a solid hometown paper," Price says. "People want breaking news about their community, stories larger papers miss. When the local softball team makes it to state playoffs, it won't merit much in a larger newspaper; in ours, it had better be prominent."