Audience-First Since 1985: Schneps Media’s Long-Time Strategy Brings Success
In 40 years, Schneps Media has launched and acquired some 70-plus magazines and newspapers, a thriving events business and, of course, an array of podcasts.
Recently, it launched a new New York City print edition of its very popular Dan’s Papers—acquired in 2020—which covers and is distributed in the Hamptons. You read that right—a print edition.
That doesn’t mean print is back for everyone, but it works for Schneps, which has made it its business to put audience first since day one when Vicki Schneps-Yunis founded The Queens Courier in 1985. She noticed that all of the apartment buildings in her neighborhood were going co-op.
“That’s really why I started the newspaper in 1985 because I realized that there were so many people who are now owning their apartments rather than renting. If they own their apartment, in many cases, their home is their biggest investment in their lives. They care about what’s happening in their neighborhood,” Vicki told AMO.
The fresh NYC print edition is a way to better serve an audience that divides their time between the city and the beach. The move ties back to Vicki’s founding motto: “We’re all about you.”
It has clearly served them well, and it’s a strategy—being audience-first—that other publishers are increasingly employing in a post-traffic, AI-overview world.
Today, the profitable enterprise gets a healthy 60% to 65% of revenue from print advertising, with events, digital ads and a bit of paid subscriptions representing the remainder. They are also exploring potential new revenue models, such as testing a registration wall on their Long Island Press website to perhaps develop a paywall at some point.
While they want to develop a paid content strategy, they view it as an “uphill battle” and are cautiously approaching the idea through small tests and experiments.
It’s the first test to understand people’s willingness to provide contact information and potentially develop a more sophisticated digital engagement or monetization strategy.
Josh Schneps, who runs the company with his mother Vicki, said:
“We would love to be able to figure out a way where people would pay for content. No question. I think one of the things that we’ll probably do is to test that model with one of our given products or markets and see whether or not it’s viable. But it’s hard. We have people that pay for the print product, but getting people to pay for digital is very difficult. I haven’t seen a local news model yet that’s been successful. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen, right? It’s something that we’ll definitely test and try, but it’s an uphill battle. No question.”
Events
Schneps Media serves the five boroughs of New York City, Long Island and Westchester, as well as Philadelphia and Palm Beach.
They hold events—a critical component for both reaching audience and driving revenue—from the Long Island Press Power List to Power Women of Brooklyn and Gay City News Impact Awards to Chefs of The Hamptons. Podcasts include The Brownstoner Podcast, focused on Brooklyn, and Schneps Connects featuring Josh Schneps in conversation with New Yorkers in the news. They also hold webinars and have a YouTube channel.
“We’ve always, both of us, suffer from attention deficit. We start one thing and we’re ready to go on to do the next—Josh is filled with creative ideas,” Vicki said. “We’re not afraid of taking on new opportunities, and I think that’s really been our entrepreneurial spirit that we both have and have complemented each other.”
One source of inspiration was Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker. Vicki saw him speak at a seminar in Madison Square Garden.
“I walked away with one lesson from him, and that was, you cannot run a business on one diving board,” she said. So, she started “another newspaper and another newspaper, and then the Spanish community was growing so boundlessly, became the second largest demographic in New York City, and I started a Spanish paper.”
And so on and so forth. Today, they have dozens of print products, with about a half million papers published each week. In April, they had 5.3 million page views on their websites and about 9 million monthly unique readers.
Vicki said they get “every demographic, from nine to 90” reading their publications because they cover everything from high school sports to construction on Queens Boulevard to theater reviews.
Schneps has several distribution methods for its different titles. It has the exclusive right of distribution in the New York City subway system with AM New York; paid mail circulation in some neighborhoods; papers in plastic bags that are home-delivered, old-school style; and stacks in high-traffic locations like banks and supermarkets.
“It’s really important to note that print is still very much viable and a large part of our business,” Josh said. “Print is viable. It just has to be run very efficiently, and it has to be produced very well, [it] has to be a great product. And I think that that’s our philosophy across all of our platforms, is not to just do it or say we’re doing it, but to be the best in market at what we do, whether it’s the newspaper, whether it’s a magazine, whether it’s a website, whether it’s an email newsletter…whatever you do, you have to do it really well, because readers have a lot of options, and advertisers have a lot of options.”
The new print product came about as Schneps realized that the business was cyclical, meaning most of it came during the summer months when the population swells in the Hamptons.
“We were trying to think about how to make that business viable year round,” Josh said. “This past year, we launched Dan’s papers NYC, which is catering to people who live in Manhattan, but also own homes in the Hamptons.”
Digital’s Just as Important
Schneps also moved into digital early, even without knowing how they might monetize it. Google is still a major driver of traffic, but like other publishers, the company is working on the direct relationship it has with readers, including through the 550,000 email newsletters that go out every day to different audiences.
With one notable exception, Schneps has kept its papers out of politics. In fact, in an effort to make sure there is balance, Vicki called on Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera to write rival columns for newly acquired papers on the Gold Coast of Long Island.
“We’re not politically oriented. We’re advocates for the community,” she said. The one exception? When her best girlfriend ran for City Council in Jackson Heights some 20 years ago and won. “She was my dearest friend. How can I not endorse that?”
Schneps today has about 250 employees, 25% of which are in editorial, and the focus for now—even if print is still a big deal—is on growing digitally and reaching more people.
“We’re very sensitive to the fact we want to capture you online. We want to capture you through podcasts. We want to capture you through events. We want to capture you through our news,” Vicki said. “It’s all part of the whole, and each part is like spokes of a wheel. It keeps it rolling.”
