Abstract:
Ray Barnes is seventy-six years old, and although he claims to be semi-retired, he continues to spend much of his time every year visiting his six daily and three weekly newspapers. He is continually on the look-out for new ideas that will improve these newspapers.This paper will concern itself primarily with a study of Barnes, who purchased a bankrupt Indiana daily newspaper in 1940, and how he has managed to work it into more than a million dollars worth of small newspaper properties within a period of thirty years.Briefly, the paper will cover Barnes' early life and his newspaper background prior to his first purchase which came after he was forty years old. The paper will discuss how and where he found the newspapers he bought, and will also discuss the managerial personnel acquired to operate these newspapers.The main problem to be answered by this paper is: What did this man do when he acquired a newspaper that usually turned that property into a profitable business?A large number of persons have bought or started newspapers in the past thirty years, and many of them have succeeded. Since it would be impossible to research every newspaper purchased or started and whether it failed or prospered, this paper is aimed at what one man did to make a success of his newspapers.