A small town saves its local newspaper with citizen-led fundraising and a 2-year search for a new owner

There's a new paper in town for La Conner, Wash.

When their small-town newspaper closed, the citizens of La Conner, Wash., didn't sit idly by and let their community become another "news desert." Instead, town activists "raised $70,000 and worked for two years to find someone to save it," reports Eric Wilkinson of KING-TV. Last week, the newly revived paper celebrated its "first day of delivery as the La Conner Community News, keeping a journalistic tradition that has connected townspeople for more than a century."

The newspaper's new owner, Kari Mar, said she bought the paper because she "saw an opportunity to make a difference at a time when facts and accuracy are critically important," Wilkinson writes. She told Wilkinson, "The pain of not having a local newspaper was pretty widely felt. There was no place to send an obituary. The town council didn't have a way to get the word out. Firefighters were having a fundraiser. They couldn't tell anybody about it. The need for the paper was palpable."

Small newspaper closures have become almost commonplace. Wilkinson reports, "Over the past 20 years, more than 3,200 newspapers have vanished, nationwide. Since 2004 Washington state has lost 20% of its local papers. . . . The situation is so dire, that a bill is being considered [in Washington] that would tax social media platforms and search engines to help fund the state's struggling newsrooms."

Meanwhile, folks in La Conner are celebrating a special win for local journalism. "The La Conner Community News already has more than 900 subscribers in a community of fewer than 1,000 people," Wilkinson writes. Mar told him, "We have almost everybody. . . .That's pretty good."