Going for broke, and getting there

After just 19 issues, Cambridge's newest newspaper broke some hard news -- about itself.

It was delivered in a short note to readers: ''It was an awfully short run . . . the money set aside for the experiment is gone," publisher Marc Levy wrote on his editorial page.

The avowed goal of Cambridge Day, an eight-page daily broadsheet, was to offer a mix of local news, comprehensive listings of goings-on about town, and a venue for residents to vent or share ideas.

''I felt like Cambridge just deserved more," says Levy, 36, a former Boston Herald copy editor who sank $40,000 of his own money into the paper. ''If we just had a little more money, we would have gotten there."

For nearly a month, the man with salt-and-pepper hair, trendy glasses, and a fondness for black T-shirts did it all. He was the paper's publisher, editor, graphic designer, and one of its main reporters.

Levy ran the operation from his one-bedroom apartment in Porter Square, where he had a few desks, bookshelves, one full-time paid staffer (whom he had to let go), and a stable of volunteers who popped in and out.

Beginning on Halloween and ending Nov. 28, one of the three people Levy hired via Craigslist would drive to the presses in Charlestown, pick up some 15,000 copies of the paper, and distribute them to local retailers, eateries, and coffee shops.

The paper cost $5,000 a week to print. Other start-up costs included money for his employees, computers, software, scanners, an office camera, fax machine, and a police scanner.

The money didn't add up: Levy says he earned about $2,500 in ads, though he had about $7,500 pledged before he stopped publishing. He never found any investors.

He may have run through much of his savings, but he doesn't regret the effort. The paper was a labor of love, nine years in the making.

Levy discovered Cambridge in 1989, he says, while visiting from California to attend his brother's graduation from MIT. He went on to study journalism at Emerson College and work at the Herald for five years.

''I think there's a romance to journalism," says Levy, who wanted to be a journalist since at least junior high. ''There was something that certainly appealed to us from an early age."

Levy moved to Cambridge in 1994. After reading Robert D. Putnam's 2000 book, ''Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community," he thought he saw the beginning of a ''social capital revolution."

Levy wanted to do something to build community. So after years of mulling how to do it, seeking investors, finding a printing press, and buying equipment, he took the plunge.

''In terms of running a newspaper, I think that it's actually fairly simple," he says. ''I think people tend to over complicate things."

Residents were just becoming familiar with the paper when it went under.

''I just thought it was really nice to pick up something every day that was about my own locality," says Ron Newman, 48, a computer scientist who lives on the border of Cambridge and Somerville. ''I am disappointed . . . I really feel like 19 issues was not enough time, for either the readers or the advertisers to get used to the idea that the paper even existed."

The key problem, Levy says, was ''lasting long enough for people to find us, and for people to become comfortable with us."

Some local businesses took a gamble on Levy. ''Cambridge businesses still need a small advertising medium that we can afford to advertise in," says Gus Rancatore, owner of Toscanini's, one of the paper's advertisers.

In the end, Levy says, the ultimate decision to go it alone -- without any investors -- was what did him in. ''Part of a business plan is that they want you to project revenue," he says. ''It felt like a game. . . . It's my fault that I got impatient and decided to do it myself and essentially gamble and lose the gamble."

Levy still holds out hope that someone may help revive the paper. He has spent recent weeks sending information to potential investors. ''It would be crazy to walk away after such a short period," he says. But time is running out. ''I very quickly am going to have to."