With newspaper subscriptions and readers down, both newspapers and the folks who market to them are scrambling. Some months ago I posted a blog on the predicted surge in localized, freebie papers and sure enough. The surge is here. Local (freebie) newspapers are becoming a huge asset to anyone looking to market themselves to a particular region. They’re often hard to find if you’re not living in the town you’re promoting to but see if someone locally (perhaps from the local bookstore if you have an event booked there) can help you gather some names from freebie papers. Community papers have thrived while their paid counterparts are suffering. In fact the number of daily newspapers has shrunk by more than 200 while the number of nondaily papers has increased by around 8,000.