I looked around on the site as well as wikipedia to see if I could find the answers to these questions, but alas no joy (I apologize in advance if I overlooked them somewhere).

1. Is JFP for-profit or non-profit? I had assumed most alt weeklies, etc., were non-profit, and only made money off advertisements. Of course, I could be totally wrong.

2. What is the privacy policy for posts on the forum/blog comments? I am assuming the IP addresses, ids of folks (unless they obviously use their real names, etc) is confidential except for subpoenaed law enforcement purposes, correct?

btw, to the powers that be, thank you for changing the post timing from 300 to 200 secs. Of course 120 secs would be even better, but thanks for changing it nonetheless.

ugh, lo and behold, just after posting, I see the link for the user agreement that partially answers my 2nd question (up to, but not including the subpoena part).

http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/useragreement.html

Is JFP for-profit or non-profit? I had assumed most alt weeklies, etc., were non-profit, and only made money off advertisements. Of course, I could be totally wrong.

Jackson Free Press is a for-profit entity, as are most alt-weeklies. You seem to imply that not charging $.50 for a newspaper makes you "non-profit," so maybe I'm not understanding the question. :-) The subscription model really doesn't have much bearing on whether you're a for-profit company; witness radio and television, which make all of their money from advertising. Indeed, the newspaper industry may be moving to free distribution for dailies, as well, judging from the apparent success of free commuter dailies in Chicago, New York and elsewhere.

2. What is the privacy policy for posts on the forum/blog comments? I am assuming the IP addresses, ids of folks (unless they obviously use their real names, etc) is confidential except for subpoenaed law enforcement purposes, correct?

Good point...I need to formalize that.

btw, to the powers that be, thank you for changing the post timing from 300 to 200 secs. Of course 120 secs would be even better, but thanks for changing it nonetheless.

Do you mean for comments or forum entries?

Todd -

A friend of mine long ago who freelanced apparently gave me misinformation when he implied that many alt weeklies were non-profits. I guess I never bothered to verify (or perhaps I just misunderstood). I just correspondingly assumed that they weren't "businesses", which apparently the JFP is. I would not have based it on the "free" distribution versus subscription model.

As far as parts in the user agreement, thanks for looking in to that. Some entities (Yahoo and AOL I believe) just hand over stuff at authorities request whereas others, such as Google, wouldn't acknowledge without a subpoena. As an extension of a journalistic endeavour, I would guess that the JFP Fora would go with the latter approach [hopefully].

And as far as the post times go, I was referring to time between successive comments from the same poster on the forum entries.

It's a common misconception that "paid" circulation is how newspapers make their money. It's not. Traditionally, it's been more a way to prove circulation numbers, but today's various types of readership audits are so sophisticated that the paid numbers are no longer necessary. Which is good, because younger generations refuse to pay for their news (especially when it's boring and biased against them, but I digress).

That's why the paid daily model is on its way out. All newspapers will soon be consumed as other media is—without charging consumers for it. Just advertisers.

Somebody be sure to tell the Mississippi Press Association how far behind the times they are, by the way.

And I have no intention of handing over information to authorities unless subpoenaed without some kind of extenuating circumstances—like someone is posting serious threats or such. That's not an official policy; I'll leave that to Todd.

That's why the paid daily model is on its way out. All newspapers will soon be consumed as other media is—without charging consumers for it. Just advertisers.

A little off topic, but I'd like to put in a plug for my favorite local paper in Nashville...The City Paper. It's a free daily paper that is so much better than the Gannett paper here. It has hard-hitting news stories and the best food, wine and entertainment columns in the city. Papers like it and the JFP are the future of newspapers in this country.

Are all new threads now checked by moderators first before actually being "posted"?

Yes. Too much abuse to date, and we can't watch the site every second. A few bad apples ...