Would publishing a newspaper be an efficient way to raise the sanity waterline?

More specifically, I imagine a newspaper freely distributed to people living in a given area, financed by donations and advertising. It would contain interesting topics about science, both for beginners and experts. It would explain how the stuff works. It would avoid mindkilling topics, such as politics and religion. In some situations it could provide uncontroversial background information for some hot topics. It would contains some easy rationality exercises.

Why? It could move people towards rationality, which is a good thing. Not necessarily the top priority (I am not suggesting that CFAR should stop organizing minicamps and do this instead), but a part of our long-term goals. Newspaper seems like a good tool to reach many people... the question is: how strong would be its influence? I don't know, but I think it would be worth trying.

Why paper, instead of internet? Trivial inconveniences. When someone already has a piece of paper in their hand, it is so easy to start reading it. I don't know how many people would actually read the newspaper, but I think it could be 10-25%. Imagine the possible impact of 10% people in your area reading texts about rationality and science. You can make a website a lot cheaper, but it will not make the same concentrated impact. Although it could be a good idea to make a web forum for discussing the articles in the newspaper.

How about costs? Exact numbers depend on your location, but I would say that newspapers are rather cheap. It's the cheapest kind of paper, and the cheapest kind of color. The more you print, the cheaper one piece gets. I suspect the usual costs are mostly editing and distribution. And this could be done by volunteers, plus one coordinator. There is no need to print frequently; once in a month or once in two months could be enough for the beginning.

I don't know how much money could come through the advertising, but if it would cover the costs of printing plus coordinator's salary, there is no need for more. Some people are in this business for money; so if we won't try to make a profit, only to cover our costs, it should be possible. If the experiment starts in the CFAR surroundings, that includes Berkeley university; here one could find the volunteers for distribution, and it could also be an interesting demographics for advertising.

The content for the newspaper could be recycled from Wikipedia, LW, what you learned at school, etc. It does not matter that it was already published online, because most readers did not read it online, even if they easily could. Trivial inconveniences, again. The goal is not to bring readers to LW. (Except for those who are likely to enjoy it. LW is controversial; this newspaper should be acceptable for most people) The goal is to raise the sanity waterline, to pick the lowest hanging fruit.

Open problem: Measuring the impact of the newspaper; at least approximately.

One idea would be to measure improving the sanity waterline in some specific topics. Select topics important for your neighborhood, where the irrational behavior contributes significantly. Make prediction about the most likely future development of this topic (ask external experts to make the prediction). Randomly select one topic, and make it the topic of the month. Compare the outcome of this topic with the predictions, and the outcome of the remaining topics. (Don't do this publicly to avoid negative connotations of experimenting with humans.)