280 Living celebrates 10 years

Over the course of 10 years, a lot has changed along U.S. 280.

Hoover has had three mayors; Chelsea has had two. ALDOT has made numerous changes to traffic flow and traffic signals in the corridor, and countless new businesses have opened. Through it all, 280 Living was there.

The paper might have gotten thicker in the last decade and some of the bylines have changed, but its core purpose has remained the same, founder Patti Henderson said.

“To me, we’re still just one big community out there, with no borders,” said Henderson, who lives in Inverness. “And the whole area has grown in the last 10 years, obviously, and to see the businesses that are coming in and the restaurants that are coming in — that’s been exciting to watch.”

Henderson started 280 Living in 2007 with the goal of focusing on community-centric news from The Summit down to Chelsea. And at the start, it was just her.

“The writing, the selling, the delivering, the everything else; getting advertisers and designing their ads, all of that, I did,” Henderson said.

She brought on columnists to write about everything from landscaping to business and encouraged community members to reach out with their own stories.

“That paper resonated, even early on, with people in that area because it was about them,” said Rick Watson, who has written his “My South” column for all 10 years. “It didn’t have filler or things they could get on their phones or get somewhere else.”

A few months after the paper launched — with Henderson and her sons tossing the papers in driveways each month — Dan Starnes came on as a sales person.

At the time, he was taking classes at Jefferson State Community College and working as a golf caddy at Shoal Creek. Starnes admits he took the job because he figured it would be something he could leave if another opportunity arose.

“I thought it was a job I could quit in three days or three weeks if I found something I wanted to do more,” said Starnes, who is now the publisher of Starnes Publishing and founder of Starnes Media. “And that’s how I started. Patti, at the time, was really a one-person operation.”

Henderson managed the paper for 10 months, paying for printing costs through ad revenue, but she eventually had to move onto something else.

“I just wasn’t making any money,” she said. “It was supporting itself, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. I just told Dan if he wanted to buy it and move on, he could. … He took it to the next level, and here we are today.”

Starnes took over as publisher in July 2008, after he had been working for 280 Living for three months. Before Henderson approached him, Starnes said he had not considered buying the paper, but he thought it was the right choice.

“It was pretty exciting. It was overwhelming and exciting,” he said. “I thought I could handle it, but I really didn’t know. But my philosophy was there are people who know how to do everything that needs to be done, so I just have to find those people.”

The first step was to cut costs a bit to be able to reinvest elsewhere, Starnes said. He found a new graphic designer to work a few hours putting together the paper each month, and he sought out more industry advice.

A few individuals — including Intermark Group’s Wayne Gillis and David McMath — helped shape the look of the paper. Starnes said he approached both of them after meeting at Shoal Creek and asked them to look overthe paper.

“I told them, ‘If I wanted praise, I’d be at my mom’s house.’ … They introduced me to some real far-out concepts, like maybe the headlines should be bigger fonts than the body copy,’” Starnes said.

Starnes’ brother, who had journalism experience, also gave him advice.

“He pushed me really hard, that you need original, local content,” Starnes said. “Once we started doing that, we really started seeing a lot more reaction, a lot more feedback and people starting to get a lot more excited about the stories.”

Since taking over 280 Living, Starnes has launched six more community-oriented newspapers in the Birmingham area — Village Living, The Homewood Star, Hoover Sun, Vestavia Voice, Cahaba Sun and Iron City Ink — as well as a new digital marketing agency, Starnes Digital. 

“We’ve replicated 280 Living six more times, in a way, with six different publications, and we’ll want to continue to do that. We’ve also gotten into the magazine business a little bit this year,” said Starnes, referring to specialty publications the company has created, including a 20th anniversary magazine for the city of Chelsea, a 50th anniversary magazine for the city of Hoover, a 75th anniversary magazine for the city of Mountain Brook and an annual high school football magazine.

In the future, Starnes said he sees everything continuing to improve. Part of the papers’ success, he said, is because of reinvestment in the company.

“We really decided we really cared about quality. What we’re able to do now is a lot higher quality of what we were able to do eight years ago, nine years ago, 10 years ago, but it’s because we continually reinvested and raised the bar for ourselves,” he said. “We want to continue to improve the quality of journalism and continue to be more entrenched in the communities.”

To Watson, the papers resonate with residents. It’s news about them, he said, and brings something to the table that isn’t provided by bigger papers.

“I think the reason it resonates is because there are so many communities that are underserved,” Watson said. “To get something about what went on at city hall or what’s going on in the park, or about someone who’s doing something in their community … the papers that are succeeding these days are the ones that are serving that market.”

Starting Starnes Digital in 2016 has also allowed the publishing company to venture into more projects, including increased video content and more services for advertisers. 

“We’ll just keep looking for more things to do and more ways to grow, in size and quality, but also capability,” Starnes said.

Looking back on the decision to sell 280 Living, Henderson said she wonders what could have been if she held onto it, but she is glad to see the company “lived on and grown like it has.”

And while the 280 corridor has grown, Henderson said the paper has remained true to its roots. 

“It’s personal, and people see their own pictures and stories in there,” she said. “It’s local advertisers, and people just like reading about themselves. It gives a sense of community. … It still holds a special spot in my heart. I’dlike to see it continue thriving.”