Community newspaper group elects officers, says 'Real newspapers are not dead,' just changing

The leading organization for U.S. community newspapers announced today that it would create "a marketing council of newspaper executives" to spread the word that "real newspapers are not dead." The National Newspaper Association, a lobby for weeklies and small dailies, formulated the plan at its 125th anniversary convention in Omaha, which concluded Saturday.

While NNA didn't say so, available data and anecdotal evidence show that community papers have suffered much less from the Great Recession and the Internet than their metropolitan counterparts. Its new president, Liz Parker of Recorder Newspapers Inc. in Stirling, N.J., acknowledged the lingering effects of the recesssion and the changes being wrought by the exponential expansion of digital media.

"We are not blogs, but we have blogs. We are not websites, but we have websites. We are whole, real newspapers in print and other media and we continue to serve,” Parker said in a press release. "Readers are changing. Markets are changing. But local journalism is as much needed as ever. We are the ones who provide the glue that holds our communities together. We are the trusted voice."

Parker, right, is a second-generation community publisher who said she met her husband “covering meetings and murders against each other” while working for competing dailies on the Jersey Shore. She succeeds Cheryl Kaechele, at left in photo, a Michigan publisher on whose watch NNA decided to put its staff at the University of Missouri under the supervision of Washington lawyer-lobbyist Tonda Rush, a longtime attorney and employee of the association. The other national officers are Vice President Reed Anfinson, publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, Minn., who had been treasurer, and Treasurer Merle Baranczyk, publisher of the Salida Mountain Mail in Colorado. For a list of regional directors, other officers and other NNA news, click here.