Rheostatics guitarist debuts the West End Phoenix, an old-fashioned newspaper

A crime down the street involving deli meat. How Airbnb is "ruining" your neighbourhood. A pet of the month feature. Comic strips and short stories written by your neighbours.

If the only way to get that kind of focus on the stories in your community was to spend $50 a year to subscribe to an old-fashioned newspaper delivered to your doorstep, would you do it?

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Author and musician Dave Bidini is betting you'd say yes. So he ignored the doomsayers who point to the brutal layoffs and plummeting revenues of the newspaper industry to launch the West End Phoenix, a new 20-page broadsheet in Toronto.

"The beautiful thing is no one told me, 'You're out of your mind,'" the paper's founder and editor-in-chief recently announced from the stage at a well-attended kick-off party inside Toronto's hipster-friendly Gladstone Hotel. It was at this point that a voice from the crowd shouted, "You're out of your mind!"

Telling the stories of a community

Bidini is best known for his 30 years playing guitar for The Rheostatics, a Canadian indie band with a loyal cult following. He's also published 12 books, most of them either about hockey or music.

He caught the newspaper bug in the Northwest Territories, while he was working on his next book.

"I discovered The Yellowknifer there, and it's one of the few places where a city newspaper is totally thriving as opposed to contracting — because it's the only thing that the people of the North really have," he explained. "I mean, the internet is still pretty crappy up there, and also the way The Yellowknifer goes about its business is that it engages the city and the community by telling the stories of the city and community."

Back in Toronto, he found himself wondering if that type of hyper-focus on community would work in his own neighbourhood.

Before proceeding, he consulted Ali Rahnema, the former VP of marketing and strategy at the Globe and Mail. Rahnema gave Bidini the thumbs-up, believing that a good, old-fashioned newspaper still had appeal for readers.

"I'm not sure that the platform is necessarily the issue," Rahnema told CBC News, standing inside a magazine shop on Toronto's Bloor Street. "It's the kind of content that goes on it."

As Rahnema sees it, newspapers can still be successful if they have the right strategy. Instead of cutting staff and costs, he believes struggling papers could win back readers by shifting away from standard news coverage and investing more in quality investigative work, original stories and analysis.

"Do I really want the headlines the next day of the stories that I've already seen in a variety of other places?" Rahnema asked, putting himself in a reader's shoes. "I'd like to develop a deeper understanding. Or if I have an hour to kick back, really get at the kind of relaxed mindset of consuming media in a different way. Print is amazing for that. I don't really want to do that on my smartphone."

Door to door sales

Bidini heard a similar sentiment this summer, when he went door to door to promote the paper, trying to line up potential subscribers for the West End Phoenix. CBC News followed Bidini during part of his subscription drive.

"We're really interested in current events and also editorial work, like opinion," a woman named Jane told Bidini on her front porch. "What you really need is people to help you interpret the news."

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Another recommendation from Rahnema was to follow the PBS business model, which is to find sponsors instead of advertisers. Bidini jumped on that idea.

"We're boiled in ads these days," he said with disgust. "It's a scourge of media in a lot of cases, and I think digitally, too, it's a scourge. We hunt for the X's to close down the ads on every web site we visit."

Going ad-free raised the level of challenge, though. Bidini had to work hard to charm patrons into supporting the venture, which is set up as a non-profit. Penguin Random House Canada, Margaret Atwood and a printing firm all made "significant" contributions, Bidini said.

Money still matters

Even at the kick-off party, the Phoenix was still in fundraising mode, with branded T-shirts and tote bags for sale, as well as silent auction of donated art.

"We won't sell advertising, but we'll sell art," said Bidini with a smile.

Most of the people in attendance were enthusiastic about the venture, although not everyone is convinced the business model will work. Michael Hollett, the founder of Toronto's long-running weekly NOW Magazine, praised Bidini's initiative, but when asked about the no-advertising policy, he laughed.

"I'd have advertising," he said simply.

The first issue appeared just over a week ago, and a second issue is scheduled for December. The paper currently has about 1,500 subscribers. Bidini said the aim is to see circulation grow month by month, with a target of 5,000 subscribers by next June. 

But the biggest goal is to expand the sense of community in the neighbourhood, while offering decent pay to writers and artists.

Bidini said he likes to quote his wife on this philosophy: "She says we're starting out where every other newspaper has ended up — as a nonprofit."