Zionsville residents will find a new newspaper covering their town in their mailboxes starting next week.

The owners of Current Publishing LLC, a Carmel-based company with holdings including Current in Carmel, Current in Fishers, Current in Noblesville and Current in Westfield, this week announced it will debut Current in Zionsville on March 20.

Current in Zionsville, as is the case with its predecessors, will be delivered by U.S. Mail to each household in the town every Tuesday at no charge. Its circulation will be 9,566. The addition of Current in Zionsville will bring to 104,339 the number of households Current Publishing newspapers reach each week.
The new Current’s main competition will be the Zionsville Times Sentinel, a paid circulation weekly owned by Alabama-based Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.

Current officials decided to launch a publication in Zionsville after completing a round of market research last fall, said co-owner Brian Kelly.

Originally not a focal point on Current’s growth timeline, Zionsville became the topic of discussion after Kelly and co-owner Steve Greenberg were approached by advertisers about launching the model in the Boone County town.

Current in Zionsville has sold out ads on the bottom of the front page and the full back page for the entire first year—and likely beyond, said Greenberg, also executive vice president and general manager. IU Health will buy ads on the front and back pages “in perpetuity,” Greenberg said.

“All of our publications have been profitable from the start, and this new one will be, too,” Greenberg said.

Given that the Current already had four publications in place, startup costs for the Zionsville issue were minimal, the owners said. The company has just three full-time employees and uses contract workers instead of hiring news staff.

“When we looked at the research results and the commonalities Zionsville shares with our other markets, Steve and I quickly agreed that it made for an exceptional fit with what we do,” Kelly said, adding that all expansion costs have come from company profits.

Their recent research also led Kelly, the company’s president, and Greenberg to re-tool existing publication’s content.

Kelly called the partial redesign “a freshening.” The papers have made room for additional community and entertainment news, Kelly said.

All the Current publications—including the one in Zionsville—will maintain a local focus, Kelly said.