Iowa publisher says '60 Minutes' brush was too broad: 'Many local community newspapers are flourishing'

"60 Minutes" correspondent Jon Wertheim said on the CBS program nine days ago, “A dramatic drop in readership, loss of ad revenue and the emergence of other forms of media have posed major challenges for many legacy print media publications.”

Peter Wagner, publisher

That's true "in almost all major markets and in some smaller communities," but "The story did not, however, fairly reflect the state of many locally owned newspaper alive and well in many of America’s smaller communities," Publisher Peter Wagner writes in his N'West Iowa Review.

"Even for the best and most committed of us, some circulation numbers have dropped and selling print advertising has become more difficult. But the same can be said of the big three traditional television networks, although they never find reason to report it on their news-magazine programs."

Wagner gives a basic barometer that many don't know: "For years, the mark of a good newspaper was how many homes it reached compared to the census figure of the community in which it was published. If the circulation was equal to at least half the population number the paper was healthy and doing its job as a community watch dog and cheerleader."

Sheldon, in O'Brien County, Iowa (Wikipedia map)

He says his paper still reaches more than half of the 5,000 people living in his Iowa Information headquarters town of Sheldon and 25 percent of the homes in its four-county region, and "Many local community newspapers are flourishing. The reason is there is still a passion on the part of many for local, community news. Most smaller hometown newspapers are still publishing a good amount of fresh, local information."

Wagner says he wrote the column "to make sure our readers – and more importantly our advertising customers – understand that our Iowa Information papers should not be judged by what is happening to papers owned by the hedge-fund groups. . . . We, as the Wagner family, pledge ourselves to strive to make The N’West Iowa REVIEW the finest regional paper possible. Our family believes in the future of N’West Iowa and the need for good papers in all communities. Don’t let general comments from television commentators, on the internet or local gossips misdirect your ideas of the value of the local newspaper."