A portrait of a rural weekly and its sole employee: the owner, 77, who needs a buyer and wants to keep local coverage

Shirley Dunham (Photo by Nina Baker)

The Daily Yonder has a portrait of an independent rural weekly newspaper in Montezuma, Iowa, kept alive by its last remaining employee: a 77-year-old owner who says she plans to keep going for another decade.

The Montezuma Record has been a fixture in the town of 1,500 since 1924, but declining revenue and readership have slowly whittled it away. Shirley Dunham became the last employee when the previous executive editor, her husband Charles, died in 2018, Nina Baker reports.

The paper was losing money when Dunham took over, and she has only been able to keep it operating because no one who works for it—including her—takes a paycheck. In 2020 the paper confounded the pandemic phenomenon and began making a profit because businesses bought advertising in search of new customers, Baker reports.

The paper, with a circulation 600, alos gets a lot of support from local nonprofits. Montezuma Lions Club member Roger Allen told Baker that they take out ads in the Record because "We think it's important that our community still has a newspaper ... We try to support it just on that principle." That's not the only local support the Record enjoys, Baker reports:. "Dunham’s subscriber base expanded as well. She said she thinks that with more residents staying at home, some began to gravitate towards the Record to stay up-to-date with local news, but she can’t be certain."

Montezuma in Poweshiek County
(Wikipedia map)

Dunham said she won't retire for at least another decade, and when the time comes, she'll likely sell to a chain since no one local is interested. Gannett Co. bought the other Montezuma newspaper, The Montezuma Republican, and its neighbor, The Brooklyn Chronicle, in 2000, Baker reports: "Gannett merged both papers in 2009 due to declining circulation. The new paper, called The Poweshiek County Chronicle-Republican, does not circulate widely in Montezuma."

Dunham acknowledges that any new owner will probably combine the Record with another paper, a common move these days, but she has one condition for would-be buyers: "If the newspaper is merged, at least one full page must always be allocated to coverage of Montezuma." But buyers may be scarce. Many small papers owned by families or individuals have closed because they can't find buyers.