Opinion: When a community newspaper closes, it's no longer a community, it's just another town

The alarming rate of U.S. newspaper closings or the fact that many remaining news organizations are struggling might be due to digital competition, corporate buyouts, inflation and staffing shortages. But beyond the sobering stats, there's a deeper price to losing a local paper. Scott McIntosh of the Idaho Statesman asks, "So what does the community lose when it loses its newspaper?"

The Steele and Caribou County Sun staff were recognized for
their work. (Photo by Mark Steele via the Idaho Statesman)

Mark and Wendy Steele, who owned the Caribou County Sun in Soda Springs, Idaho, pop. 3, 200, provided McIntosh with the story of their paper's life and closure on Oct. 26. McIntosh writes, "Mark and Wendy Steele were a young couple in their 20s when they bought the paper in their hometown 48 years ago. . . . Steele, 74, told me revenues dropped 40% from 2019 to 2022, mostly from advertising, a combination of businesses closing during the Covid pandemic or cutting back on their advertising. Add in inflation, retiring staff, and no buyers for the paper, and the time had come to close up shop."

Commenting on what the paper's closing means for Soda Springs, Steele told McIntosh: "I think you become a town and not a community anymore. I think that the print newspaper in a small town was this historical record. It was a place to go to find out the events of what was going on. And with that gone and not replaced, I think the community is not near as close, and then you become just another town. . . . I think a good newspaper is a community talking to itself, whether it’s letters to the editor, or the guy next door to you doesn’t like your editorial and comes over and tells you so."

While local newspapers often fill the role of community organizers and information hubs, their role as watchdogs might be the most sorely missed. "A 2018 study from the University of Illinois and the University of Notre Dame found that municipal borrowing costs increased by as much as a tenth of a percent after a newspaper shuttered, translating to millions of dollars in additional costs between 1996 and 2015," McIntosh reports. "Other research has shown that communities that lose their newspaper have lower voter turnout, a greater spread of misinformation and lower trust in democratic institutions, according to the Local News Initiative at Northwestern’s Medill School."

Is there a solution? The Local News Initiative "points to the rise in digital-only outlets providing local news, and there are success stories out there," McIntosh adds. "Steele and I reminisced about the culture and work ethic of putting out a weekly newspaper, having our kids in the next room while we worked on that week’s edition." Steele told McIntosh, "I’ve been a man of ink-on-paper all my life, and I don’t know what the hell you do now. . . . It’s very, very sad. . . . My hope is that if I’m out of the way, maybe something will come in and fill that void."