About The Hippo

The Hippo is New Hampshire’s largest circulation weekday publication with a net circulation exceeding 34,000. It is tab sized and distributed throughout southern New Hampshire at more than 1,000 locations. The paper averages 52 to 88 pages each week and is available each Thursday.

Management

Jody Reese
Publisher (Day-to-day Business)
(603) 625-1855, Ext. 121

Charlene Nichols
Advertising Manager (Sales and Marketing)
(603) 625-1855, Ext.126

Amy Diaz
Editor (News and Information)
(603) 625-1855, Ext. 129

Doug Ladd
Circulation Manager (Distribution)
(603) 625-1855, Ext. 135

Our Editorial Mission

We want our readers to get the most out of living in southern New Hampshire and to do that readers need to know what’s going on around them, from great restaurants to places to take the kids to hikes to live music. We named the company that owns Hippo Quality of Life Publications because we feel so strongly that our newspaper should reflect the quality of life in this region.

Our editorial department (at some places called a news department) is completely independent of our advertising department. Our editorial department gives absolutely no weight to whether or not a business or group advertisers when they decide what to cover.

Our Advertising Mission

We want to help people grow their businesses. To do that we sell access to New Hampshire’s best audience (ours of course) and help business owners and their staff craft a message that will resonate with our readers. It’s not enough to simply reach our audience. Our advertisers need to clearly articulate a compelling reason why our readers should buy their products. We deal in an honest and forthright manner with all of our advertisers.

Here are three great reasons to advertise with The Hippo
3. Quality content
2. Large Audience
1. Desirable demographics

Our Owners

Jody Reese
Background: Founder of the Hippo and 25-year veteran of newspapers. He started his career as a reporter for a weekly newspaper in Eastern Kentucky before moving to New Hampshire to work as a reporter for the Keene Sentinel.

Jeff Rapsis 
Background: N.H. native whose 30-year journalism career has included jobs at the Keene Sentinel, Union Leader, Concord Monitor, and management of several prize-winning weekly papers. Earned MBA in 2003; moonlights as one of the nation’s leading silent film musicians.

Dan Szczesny 
Background: An avid New England hiker and member of the AMC’s 4,000 Club, Dan is also a veteran newspaper man. He has worked for the news departments of Packet Publications in Priceton, N.J., as well as The Union Leader. He edited the Hippo before spending years as the Hippo’s Sales Manager.

Our History

Jody Reese founded the Hippo as a Web site, www.hippopress.com, in 2000 in his living room in Nashua, N.H. He soon enlisted the help of Dan Szczesny, a fellow journalist who became a partner in the venture. At the time, the two were regular guests on a Nashua radio station, where they met Jeff Rapsis, another local journalist. The three began discussing how to turn the Web site into a business venture, and that fall agreed to begin publishing a free weekly newspaper, HippoPress, in Manchester, N.H. The original business plan was actually sketched on a napkin at a local restaurant. The city’s mayor welcomed the venture, but urged the founders to consider a different name. The three, however, decided that HippoPress Manchester (since shortened to ‘the Hippo’) would help set the venture apart from the area’s daily newspapers. It did. Today, the Hippo is the largest paper in the state.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the paper called Hippo?
Founder Jody Reese wanted to name the paper (then a website) something that would set it apart from other local papers in the area. Why did it have to have a traditional name? Why are newspapers called Sun, Telegraph, Tribune or Eagle anyway? In the age of the Internet, it didn’t reason reasonable to be still calling newspaper what they were called 100 years ago. So after a search of more unusual newspaper names, such as The Other Paper and the Sacramento Bee, Jody fell upon Hippo. It wasn’t an unusual name for him anyway. His mother ran an African art and craft store, called Giraffe the African Store, and Jody had been around rhinos, hippos and giraffes for most of his life, though in carved wood form only.

Where can I find a copy of the paper?
We have 400 street boxes spread throughout central southern New Hampshire. Boxes can be found through the downtown areas of Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Milford and Derry. In addition the Hippo is available at most of the Hannaford, Shaws and Market Baskets supermarkets in central southern New Hampshire as well as 600 additional retail and food service businesses (some of these locations have been suspended during the pandemic). Here is a temporary list of locations to find Hippo.

How can I place an ad?
There are two kinds of ads we run, display and classifieds. The display ads are the ones most businesses run advertising their product and services. These ads appear throughout the paper and are sold in modular sizes. Please see our Advertising page for more information. To place an ad just give us a call at (603) 625-1855 and hit extension 126 to reach our sales manager Charlene Nichols. We can design and build your ad for free.

Why are there no papers in the box near my work?
We print and distribute 34,000 copies. When they’re out, they’re out. We frequently run out at most locations by Saturday. We do add more papers to the supermarket locations on Mondays.

Why is the paper free?
Free works for our business model. We operate a bit like radio, broadcasting our papers out to people who want to pick it up for free and selling ads to advertisers that want to reach the people reading the paper. The purely ad supported model has come under some pressure in recent years as the number of small businesses has declined and mega platforms like Google and Facebook have gobbled up local ad dollars so we have asked readers to support our mission and become members. Thank you for your support!

How can I reach someone is the editorial or news department at the paper?
Please see contact us for a complete list of how to reach our editor and reporters.

Will you cover our event?
Generally we will not. Because the paper is focused on what will happen, so people can make use of the paper to find thing to do we put our resources into finding out and reporting on upcoming events. Send event information to listings@hippopress.com.

Will you write about our business opening or our anniversary?
Generally we will not. Hippo covers food, arts, pop culture and other event related topics. We don’t do business profiles unless that business is involved in one of our core coverage subjects, such as a cheese maker.

I advertise, will you write about my business?
No. We don’t barter ad sales for writing stories. We separate advertising from editorial for two important reasons.

The first is that the singular job of the editorial department is to build a large and attractive audience (our readers) and to do that they need complete freedom to write about what they feel will get more people to read the paper. This benefits all advertisers because the larger the audience, the more people advertisers ads reach. We feel strongly that editorial must be completely independent from advertising to build a large and attractive audience.

The second is that to be fair to all of our advertisers, large and small, we can’t give special treatment in editorial to any of them. For us it’s very important that all advertisers from our largest to our smallest are treated with respect and dignity.

We feel strongly that to give our advertisers the most value we can, we need to build the largest audience and treat all advertisers the same. This way everyone wins.

You left me out of your listing for my kind of business, event or place.
Many times to publish lists of things to do or places to go and while we do the best we can we always forget something or some place. Many times we forget places that advertise with us. That’s because our editorial department gives no preference to advertisers and forgets to mention them as often as they forget to mention a place that doesn’t advertise. Please know it’s not on purpose. It takes a huge team to put together the paper each week and though we strive to be perfect, we are not. If we do leave you out of a list please contact us and let us know. Usually in stories where we list a lot of thing or places we give a contact email address in case you were missed. Send an email to that address (if the story does not include one, email news@hippopress.com. We can’t undo the mistake, but we can make sure we don’t miss you in the future and depending on the subject, time of year and circumstances, publish an update to the list in the next issue.

What is the Hippo’s political point of view?
Our editorial staff is prohibited from displaying any political affiliations, such as putting political bumper stickers on their vehicles or political lawn signs in their yards.

Our editorial staff is headed by an editor who has complete discretion over specific editorial content. The publisher is not a member of the editorial department and does not pick and choose specific things to cover. The publisher, however, is involved in shaping general editorial policies, including what subjects and geographic areas to write about.

We have no editorial board and do not – and never have – take political positions on candidates or community issues. The publisher does write a weekly “Publisher’s Note” and this column reflects his views and not necessarily those of the rest of the ownership group or the editorial staff.

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