Another rural newspaper has recently shut down– the Del Norte Triplicate, after 146 years of serving the community of Crescent City.
It’s another case of an American newspaper biting the dust in a disturbing trend. Over the past two decades, more than a third of the nation’s newspapers have disappeared.
A new book chronicles this trend, as well as explaining why rural newspapers are still important in America and providing hope for them in the future.
“Reviving Rural News,” published earlier this year, is the collaborative work of three authors: Terri Finneman, Nick Mathew and Patrick Ferucci. I found out about the book when I happened to watch a broadcast of the PBS News Hour and heard Finneman, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas, being interviewed.
The PBS News Hour featured Finneman after reporting that recently 23 newspapers in five states had been closed down by a corporation, News Media Corp.
The six-minute interview was so compelling that I encourage my readers to listen to it themselves by going to this link: https://www.pbs.org/video/rural-newspapers-close-in-latest-blow-to-local-journalism-1755299510/.
After listening to Finneman, I decided to order the book and read it. The authors present a trend that is very depressing (“news deserts” are increasing rapidly), while providing some hope (there may be new business models to sustain rural newspapers).
After the authors spent a lot of time doing considerable research into small-town newspapers, they made a number of important points in their book.
Despite big city newspapers dominating headlines, they wrote, “the majority of journalism in the United States is produced by community newspapers” and “weeklies are frequently overlooked in broader discussions of journalism.”
The authors also point out that, “Rural populations tend to have no one but their weekly newspaper to provide them with local information.”
They noted that newspapers have experienced stiff competition for decades, and in the last half of the 20th century “consolidations and mergers killed dozens of newspapers each year.”
From their research they concluded that “local newspapers are the catalyst for civic engagement, as other forms of news organizations simply do not have the same impact.” And “when a newspaper is lost, there are impacts on everything from engagement with politics to access to public health information.”
“Even in a digital environment,” they added, local news in a print newspaper “plays an important part in constructing the idea of ‘community.’” News weeklies, they concluded, “are often part of the fabric of a community showcasing the cultural ideas” of the area they serve.
A community newspaper, the authors observed, “strengthens the overall ties of a community, which is a fundamental tenet of a strong democracy.”
In their research, they examined surveys of small-town residents. The results of the surveys were instructive.
“Print is still a mainstay in rural America,” the authors concluded, as shown by more readers being willing to subscribe to print subscriptions than to digital subscriptions.
When the surveys asked rural readers what they care about most in a newspaper, the respondents as whole said the following, in priority order: obituaries, features, things to do, crime, sports, local government, education and opinion.
An important point for rural populations is that a community newspaper “needs to be truly a local paper, not a few articles mixed in with articles from a town 60 miles away.”
All of this reinforces the values and principles that The Westside Express has followed since its first issue more than three years ago. This newspaper has tried to have a wide variety of local news, a mix of news and features, local government and education, crime, and many stories about young people, especially student athletes in the four high schools within its coverage area.
And The Westside Express is determined to be and stay local, with every story having some bearing on one or all of the four communities it serves: Los Banos, Dos Palos, Firebaugh and Santa Nella.
Towards the end of the book, the authors of “Reviving Rural News” state that today’s community newspapers need to follow a different business model of operation than what was typical of newspapers in the past.
The Westside Express certainly follows a different model, utilizing not two or three reporters, but dozens of reporters and other writers each contributing a story a week.
I’m particularly pleased to say that as of today The Westside Express has at least one student reporter from all four of the main high schools in our area: Firebaugh, Dos Palos, Los Banos and Pacheco.
This newspaper is also fortunate to have exceptional collegiate reporters and editors from CSU Stanislaus and the Los Banos Campus of Merced College, as well as one reporter who graduated from CSU Bakersfield and another who graduated from UC Santa Barbara.
All of that youth gives me and The Westside Express hope. Newspapers, including print newspapers, are appreciated not only by older adults, but also by young people, who see the value of a community newspaper that reports news in print, as well as digitally.
But the atypical operational model of The Westside Express is fragile. Thankfully, many local businesses have chosen to advertise in this newspaper, and many residents have subscribed.
But The Westside Express still needs more subscribers, to assure advertisers that their ads are being seen by a large number of people. I hope that more people who buy their papers in stores become subscribers. After all it’s cheaper per newspaper by subscription than buying papers individually — only a dollar an issue, delivered to a subscriber’s mailbox each week.
There is one downside to the current TWE’s unusual operational model. It depends a lot on one person, who sells ads, takes photos and, oh yes, publishes the paper. And it also depends on a 79-year-old volunteer editor. If these two gentlemen were traveling in an auto and had a head-on crash and met their maker, it would be big challenge for the paper to continue.
But “Reviving Rural News” provides hope for the future of newspapers like The Westside Express. The authors have shown that small-town newspapers can succeed and have succeeded by using funds only from advertising and subscriptions, but from other innovative sources.
These include newspapers sponsoring community events where residents attend, have fun and make donations to the newspaper. Small-town newspapers can also utilize revenue generation strategies like memberships and e-newsletters.
That could be the future for The Westside Express, even if Gene and John were to disappear. One of my hopes is that –after more than 150 issues — this newspaper has shown it is important and valuable to the communities it serves, and it will continue to be edited and published by people younger than Gene and John down the road using these other revenue models.
Only time will tell.
John Spevak’s email is John.spevak@gmail.com
