When rural Kansas daily cut to thrice weekly, staffers started their own daily paper

With newspapers scaling back operations, employees of one rural Kansas paper fought back, starting their own competing daily in a town of 20,000. After the Alabama-based owners of the Southwest Times in Liberal cut its publication schedule to three days a week, raised fees, cut staff and features, the paper's publisher and 15 other employees quit last May to form their own paper, the High Plains Daily Leader. "We may be in front of a trend: communities taking their newspaper back," publisher Earl Watt told Roxana Hegeman of The Associated Press. "Just as communities don't want to lose their schools and grocery store ... they don't want to see their newspaper gone either." (Encarta map)

Hegeman writes, "While the advent of the Internet has spurred a flurry of online news ventures, the birth of a traditional daily newspaper remains a rare event, particularly when dailies are cutting back print editions and bolstering their Web presence." Watt told her starting the paper was made easier by falling prices for presses, a symptom of newspapers' troubles, and the need for smaller profit margins than papers or chains with larger debts. However, the startup has many challenges. The Times recently sued Watt, his wife and four other Ledger employees last month, alleging computer fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, and breach of fiduciary duty. They say their contracts has no non-competition provisions and their work is protected by the First Amendment.

The Times has restored and added some features, and says it has become a better paper because of the competition. Its managing editor, James Gutzmer, told Hegeman, "That is the thing we learned more than anything: This community needs a community newspaper." The Times is owned by Lancaster Management Inc. of Gadsden, Ala., a low-profile company with 18 small newspapers in nine states. (Read more)