Fire Island News put up for sale

Long Island Business News, Jul 19, 2002 by Claude Solnik

A piece of prime beachfront publishing property is up for sale.

Five years after it was acquired by its current owners, The Fire Island News, the barrier reef community's oldest publication and the only weekly based there, is being shopped around to potential buyers.

The publication was launched in 1957 by Jay Trien and Walcott Gibbs, the drama critic for The New Yorker, as a seasonal weekly.

In 1997, Shawn Beqaj and Nicole Pressly acquired it and the Fire Island Guide, an annual travel publication, from the Trien family. They run both under the corporate name of Five Islands Publishing.

But Beqaj this week said that Five Islands Publishing is in talks with at least one possible buyer, though he added it's too early to disclose the details of the deal or the company. He said he hopes to close a deal with them or another would-be owner this year.

The publication is published 15 times a year, during the summer. The Fire Island Guide, he said, also might be included in a sale.

"We're selling for personal reasons," said Beqaj, a lifelong Fire Island resident and journalist. "Both publishers are choosing to do other things with their lives."

Beqaj said the publication has a pass-along readership of about 35,000. Issues range from 45 to 85 pages.

The seasonal nature and ebb and flow of population on Fire Island, Beqaj said, make it difficult to run the publication without the infrastructure of a larger company.

Fire Island has about 5,000 homes and 1,000 year-round residents, he said. But there are between 30,000 to 50,000 people on weekends during the summer, he added.

Over the years, numerous Fire Island publications have launched amid high hopes, only to go by the wayside, such as the Press and the Express. A bi-weekly newsmagazine called The Fire Island Tide has been around for more than a decade.

The Fire Island News has stayed in business by providing primarily news coverage, ranging from boating accidents to festivals and events.

But while most news publications print year round, The Fire Island News each year shuts down at summer's end. It then essentially starts from scratch the following year with many new staff, a ritual that Beqaj said made it difficult to keep the publication going as a stand- alone business.

"Every year we have to ramp up the entire organization," Beqaj said. "If it's a 52- week weekly organization, it's not that much of an effort to load one or two editors on to get through the season. It would dovetail nicely into a news group."

The Fire Island News' advertising slipped recently after several good years, he said, although he denied that decline prompted an effort to sell. He also noted that advertising was picking up again.

"In the last 12 months, we've seen a pretty precipitous drop," said Beqaj. "For the last four years, we saw an increase. But it's starting to look good for next year."

After Seagram's sold Absolute Vodka last year, The Fire Island News lost that account, hurting revenues. But Beqaj said he believes Absolut, which provided 5 percent of the publication's overall income, will sign on next year.

"It's time to sell," Beqaj said. "I'd rather see the publication in someone's hands who could dedicate their time to it."