Looks like the owners of the Wee County News are doing well enough.
I'm glad that some people out there are making a go of local newspapers. I've only seen the Wee County once - when I was in Alloa during the last Westminster elections for the Politics Show - and it was a good read.
I've not seen their Eastwood paper yet. In fact I didn't know it existed, which is pretty bad because it's on the border of the patch that Southside Media covered and it's where I went to high school.
Elsewhere however, things are not looking so rosy for local newspaper owners. The NUJ has launched its own plan to inject a bit of fiscal stimulus.
It's been met with some scepticism though.
For me, the case against the existing newspaper owners - smaller players like the Wee County maybe excepted - is open and shut. They should not get a penny of government support. If you're a Plc, forget it.
For years, these companies have racked up incredible profit margins. Instead of investing in the papers they owned, they distributed dividends to shareholders and used some of their profits as leverage to take on huge debts in order to acquire more papers.
The communities they served - the people who bought their papers, the advertisers who stuck with them - saw very little improvement in their local newspapers for the investment they were putting in.
And at the first sign of a downturn, these behemoths were left with less income and huge interest repayments. So what's their answer? Sack journalists. Close offices. Close newspapers.
There's short-term pain here for journalists in the UK, but long-term gain. Medium-term gain even. We've got an opportunity to take back local journalism. As an NUJ briefing paper makes clear There's Still Money In The Media. If journalists and others in the newspaper industry can start anew - like the Wee County News did - then they could wipe the slate clean;
Journalists, advertising staff, production staff, readers, local businesses, local bloggers - coming together to create something sustainable, worthwhile and good for society.
And if these new local journalism enterprises were created on a not-for-profit basis - I'd be writing to everyone I knew calling for massive government support.
For me, the criteria for public sector investment doesn't have to be based on a vague idea of quality. It can be based on a simple, measurable premise: is this government cash going to support local jobs and promote investment in local journalism and local advertising through a model where we know surpluses are re-invested back into the communities; or is it going to prop up outdated media companies that have starved local journalism and local advertising of investment in the light of the biggest media revolution since Gutenberg?
It's the future folks. Step up. You can do it. If an eejit like me can start a local journalism enterprise, then you certainly can.
BTW - I'm working on my first Google Maps mashup. It's political in nature and is using a dataset from the Guardian Data Store. It's bloody hard work!