News-media roundup: Anniston Star shutters combo weekly; writer in CJR assesses case of the Marion County Record

Wikipedia map adapted by The Rural Blog

In recent years, publishers have consolidated weekly newspapers across county lines to keep the operations profitable, but that hasn't worked for The Anniston Star in three nearby communities in northeast Alabama. The daily Star's parent company announced Wednesday that the News Journal, the five-year-old weekly serving Cleburne County and the towns of Jacksonville and Piedmont, in its home Calhoun County, would publish its last edition Oct. 25.

“The decision to discontinue the News Journal was not an easy one,” Star Managing Editor Timothy Cash wrote. “We know that small newspapers are deeply rooted in their communities, with each supporting the other across the decades. We know readers hate to lose that voice. But the ever-changing newspaper industry — which includes many readers’ preference for getting their news online — along with increased printing and distribution costs made Consolidated Publishing rethink its product lineup.” He said the Star would have “events of unique interest to Jacksonville, Piedmont and Cleburne County readers.”

The News Journal is a consolidation of the Cleburne Journal and the Piedmont Journal, founded in 1906 and 1907, and the Jacksonville News, first published in 1936. Jacksonville is home to about 13,000 people and Jacksonville State University; Piedmont has 4,400 people and Cleburne County has about 15,000. Anniston has about 21,500 and Calhoun County has about 115,000.

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"The police raid of Kansas’s Marion County Record looks increasingly like a clear case of official retaliation against a local newspaper," Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, writes for Columbia Journalism Review. "Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody was allegedly upset that the Record had investigated him. When a local restaurateur accused its journalists of breaking the law, he found a judge willing to approve a search warrant based on a false affidavit, and that was that. But another narrative emerged in the raid’s aftermath: that the Record was asking for trouble through its “aggressive” approach to small-town journalism."

Stein cites stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times, the latter saying the raid had “uncorked a debate” over the question of “What is a newspaper’s role, anyway?” and whether a local paper has a “duty…to be a booster for the places it covers.” He writes, "If that debate is actually happening, it’s not because newspapers like the Record are crossing the line by agitating small-town officials. It’s because those officials have grown unaccustomed to healthy scrutiny. And perhaps some of their constituents have forgotten the benefits of a robust Fourth Estate."