A successful, innovative rural newspaper publisher offers advice for meeting the digital challenge

Peter Wagner

The “good old days,” when the hometown newspaper was often the only game in town, are gone forever. New digital platforms are arriving, and sometimes disappearing, quicker than an editor can shout “stop the press.”

Those words were written by Peter Wagner, one of the most innovative and successful publishers of weekly newspapers, to start his latest column for state newspaper associations. Wagner, of Sheldon, Iowa, has long been a defender of print papers and a highly regarded adviser of how to promote them. Now, like other small-town publishers, he faces a digital challenge, and has some ideas for how to face it.

Here are excerpts from his latest column:

Newspapers and shoppers have one exceptional advantage over Google, Facebook, streaming channels and commercial television operations: a variety and abundance of important and valuable local news. Still, there are some key considerations that publishers, editors and investors need to consider to stay vital and profitable this year and the years ahead.

GREATER UNIFICATION: Fifty years ago, the newspaper industry was energized by the establishment of central printing plants. Many were cooperatives, but almost all reached out to print smaller publications, relieving those publishers of stressful financial and employment issues. In the future, the same approach to multi-paper centralization could be applied to other essential services: accounting, billing, ad design, editing, page design, circulation management and postal paperwork, for example. The time could come when smaller publication editors and publishers choose to outsource areas difficult for them and concentrate on reporting, writing, sales or other disciplines they enjoy most. As with the introduction of central printing, these additional centralized services could result in reduced expenses and greater efficiency for all size publications.

IMPROVED CONTENT: Being an excellent source of “all that’s’ local” will no longer be enough. Readers are going to demand more top-quality content. Newspapers and shoppers will never “save themselves into success.” Content alone will drive change and growth. But change takes talent and fresh ideas. Thankfully, for community papers, there are many excellent reporters and editors looking to move from some corporate daily to a weekly where they can feel secure and can excel. Finally, paid and free distribution publications will need to be more nimble in 2021 if they are going to survive. From expanding their news coverage to responding to an advertising sales opportunity, publishers will need to learn to innovate faster. . . . 

READER SATISFACTION: Too many papers have forgotten that they exist primarily to report the news, support the community, lift the afflicted and afflict the self-serving. Gone are the opinion pages, heartwarming stories of social interaction, under-the-microscope investigations of local government, coverage of non-scholastic sports and in-depth reporting on health, business and education. In their place are far too many canned news releases.

Readers grew up expecting their hometown paper would always have all the details about all that is happening in their community. They can get headlines, rumors and tidbits from the internet and broadcast media; but they expect to get the details and the facts from their local paper.

There are many more ways hometown papers can reestablish themselves with community. Newspaper websites are going to have to expand the variety of what they offer while actually going live, for example. Shoppers are going to find new opportunities in areas where the local newspaper ceases publication. They’ll supplement their weekly advertising paper by producing, with freelance writers, lucrative bonus sections honoring that year’s graduates or promoting the community’s annual celebration.

Yes, there will be many changes in 2021. Some will seem disastrous, but many will be create exciting new revenue opportunities and lead to new heights of community involvement.