Some 'ghost' newspapers owned by large companies no longer have even one local reporter

The Gleaner in Henderson, Ky., used to have a newsroom
staff of about 20. (Photo by Donna Stinnett via WSJ)

With the severe cutbacks at some news organizations, your local newspaper may not have any reporters, writes Alexandra Bruell of The Wall Street Journal. "The Gleaner, the local newspaper in Henderson, Ky., has sections focused on features, sports, news and opinion. What it doesn't have: a single reporter on staff."

How could a once-bustling, energetic community newspaper like The Gleaner, which employed about 20 staffers, now have zero reporters? "The publication is one of the 'ghost newsrooms' that increasingly dot the American media landscape — newspapers that have little to no on-the-ground presence in the localities whose name they bear," Bruell writes. "It is a sobering development in an industry that has been brought to its knees by the rise of digital media and large technology companies."

Penny Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern University and lead author of a recent report on the state of local news in the United States, told Bruell: [Many newspapers] "are so depleted in staff, or maybe have no staff, that they're not able to provide the sort of communication the residents in that community need to make wise decisions."

The surge of free internet news alongside online advertising behemoths such as Google and Facebook have continued to "hollow out local newsrooms as waves of consolidation and layoffs significantly changed the country's news landscape," Bruell reports. "Smaller outlets were hit particularly hard by sharp declines in circulation and incursions into their online advertising businesses."

Northwestern's study about "the state of local news cited research showing that about half of the 70 smallest papers owned by Gannett and Lee Enterprises — two of the nation's largest local news publishers — had no listing of any local journalists on staff," Bruell writes. "Abernathy said the study only looked at extremely small publications and that there are likely to be ghost newsrooms among larger local papers."

Roughly 2½ newspapers close each week, according to the study, and "the country has lost almost two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005," Bruell reports. "The decline of local news is having an outsize impact on the entire media industry because the study said that until recently, as much as 85% of the news that ultimately made national headlines was first published in a local newspaper."

Democracy depends on newspapers, and the big threat is outside metro areas, newspaper chain executive warns

Bill Ketter with his Wells Key award from SPJ and fellow CNHI
executives Matt Gray, left, and Jim Zachary (Photo by Al Cross)

By Al Cross

Director emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – The future of democracy depends on newspapers, and “The greatest threat to democracy is in the small towns and cities of America,” the top news executive of one of the country's largest newspaper chains said Saturday in accepting the Society of Professional Journalists’ top award.

William Ketter, CNHI’s senior vice president for news, was awarded the Wells Key for service to SPJ, of which he has been a member for 62 years, since he was a student at the University of North Dakota.

“Newspapers and democracy go hand in glove,” said Ketter, who guided the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune of Massachusetts to the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting and was president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1995.

“Democracy is dying. It is absolutely dying,” Ketter declared, saying that school boards and local governments are being taken over by “far right” activists, largely unchallenged. He said many local newspapers, weakened by the loss of advertising and circulation, can’t handle “some of the anti-press attitudes that are being fostered in America.”

Ketter decried the efforts of local governments to get state legislatures to weaken laws that require local governments and other entities to run paid public-notice advertisements in local papers. “Those notices are what help small-town newspapers, and in small cities, survive,” because they can no longer depend on retail advertising, Ketter said, noting that in some places, governments have stopped placing the ads in newspapers whose coverage they don’t like.

“It’s not just about newspapers, it’s about democracy,” Ketter said. “The two are tied together.”

Ketter said he was glad to see the SPJ Foundation exploring an effort to see how it might funnel contributions to community news media or otherwise help them. He is on the foundation's board.

Like other speakers at SPJ’s annual awards banquet, Ketter said he was inspired by others who were recognized, including the late Jeff German, a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter who was murdered – allegedly by a public official he was investigating. The official is now on trial. Outgoing SPJ President Claire Regan said it was “the first time in modern American history that a sitting public official was charged with the murder of a journalist over news coverage.”

Pulitzer winner Dana Priest of the University of Maryland and The Washington Post, one of the newest SPJ fellows, said “I can’t tell you how inspired I have been to be here,” away from “the East Coast media bubble. . . . You guys are heroes because you keep government on their toes.”

News-media roundup: AL.com keeps winning prizes for police probe and commentary; latest on Aspen paper war ...

The winners of this year's Frank A. Blethen Award for Local Accountability Reporting from the News Leaders Association are John Archibald, Ashley Remkus and Ramsey Archibald of AL.com, for “The Rise and Fall of a Predatory Police Force” in an Alabama town, and Michael Stavola of the Wichita Eagle for “Secret Messages,” an expose about racist messages openly shared among law-enforcement officers. The judges said AL.com "took what everyone in a community knew to be true about a local police department and brought reporting depth and a clarity of writing that is too often hard to come by." It said Stavola "local newsroom had widespread impact that tremendously benefited the community and shocked even its highest-ranking officials." Kyle Whitmire of AL.com won the Mike Royko Award for Commentary and Column Writing, for “State of Denial: How 150 years of whitewashed history poisons Alabama today.” Whitmire's work and the police series also won Pulitzer Prizes this year. AL.com is owned by the Newhouse family's Advance Publications, which stopped printing its newspapers in Birmigham, Mobile and Huntsville this year. Those are the NLA winners with rural resonance; the rest are here.

FEDERAL ADS: The Senate bill to fund health and human services would direct agencies to prioritize advertising in "local media in small or rural markets." The provison was added by Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, and Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., after lobbying by the National Newspaper Association.

LOCAL LEGALS: The city council in Aspen, Colo., has moved its public-notice advertising from the Aspen Times to the Aspen Daily News, reports Corey Hutchins of Inside the News in Colorado. The Daily News became Pitkin County's paper of record a year ago "to punish the Aspen Times over how the newspaper handled a lawsuit from a billionaire developer," Hutchins writes, but "deliberation among city leaders was prosaic. Staff and council members kept their reasoning limited to a 'clear set of criteria' between the two rival papers including experience, efficiencies, and cost." The Daily News is locally owned and has the motto “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen;” the Times is owned by Ogden Newspapers. Hutchins notes, "Aspen is one of the few cities left in the United States with two daily newspapers." It has 7,000 people; the county has about 17,500.

Google map, adapted; click to enlarge

PRINT SITES: Hutchins also reports that the shuttering of the press at The Pueblo Chieftain "has put at least one newspaper out of business," the Eastern Colorado Plainsman in Hugo. It's the paper of record for Lincoln County; that status is likely to go to its sister paper, the Limon Leader, which says it is increasing prices and moving its printing to CherryRoad Media in Hutchinson, Kansas. That's a five-hour drive from Limon, but such hauls are becoming more common as newspaper chains consolidate their printing locations.

More from National Summit on Journalism in Rural America: News startups, for-profit and not-for-profit, tell how they do it

By Al Cross

Professor and director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

"People want local news." That's what I said after moderating one of the most interesting sessions at the National Summit on Journalism in Rural America, a panel of four women who started newsrooms and are finding success in markets no longer well served by chain-owned daily newspapers.

Two have for-profit papers: Lynne Campbell of The Community News in Macomb, Ill., and Debra Tobin of the Logan-Hocking Times in Logan, Ohio. Two have non-profit, digital-only news outlets: Jennifer P. Brown of the Hoptown Chronicle in Hopkinsville, Ky., and Nicole DeCriscio Bowe of The Owen News in Spencer, Ind., which is just getting started but has key community support.

The for-profits are in purely rural areas, and the nonprofits are in counties that lie within metropolitan areas (Bloomington, Ind., and Clarksville, Tenn.) but are still rural in character; Hopkinsville has 31,000 people and Spencer has 2,200 in a county of 21,000.

Nicole DeCriscio Bowe

DeCriscio Bowe started working at the Spencer Evening World soon before its employee owners sold it to Schurz Communications, which sold it to GateHouse Media in 2019. She was laid off but continued as a freelancer for what was “becoming a ghost newspaper,” which went from three full-time reporters and an editor to no local office and “no unique staff covering local events. It is at this point simply a reprint, almost, of the Bloomington newspaper,” the Herald-Times.

The main local information source became Facebook pages that stole or plagiarized content, and the local Chamber of Commerce reached out to DeCriscio Bowe to see what it would cost to start an online newspaper. She had already been talking with some other locals about a nonprofit publication, and the local community foundation committed $10,000 to the project “before we were even a nonprofit entity.” The foundation then secured a $10,000 matching grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

So far, The Owen News is posting news only on Facebook, but its website has a survey to test readers' willingness to support it. “My board has been very specific, that they don't want to charge our subscribers. We want to have it strictly donation-based, and based in advertising,” DeCriscio Bowe said. “We have a separate journalism Advisory Board, consisting of journalists across the nation, to help guide us in editorial policy and style guides and all of the nitty, gritty journalism tasks. . . . We want mandatory training for our correspondents, so that we never fall into a position where our content can't be trusted.”

Jennifer P. Brown

Brown, next to speak, said “I really respect Nicole, and what she's doing, because it's pretty much the exact opposite of how I started out.” She left the daily Kentucky New Era, weher she had been editor, in 2016 without a plan. Two years later, she attended an auction of some downtown buildings, which she found very intriguing, especially because “there were only two people in the room that I didn't know.” She took notes, wrote a story, posted it on Facebook, started a group and asked, “Would you all be interested in more stories like this?”

“Immediately the response was very positive,” she said. “People wanted more local stories, and . . . within six months. We had our 501(c)(3) approved, we had a website, had a launch party at the brewery in downtown Hopkinsville. and we got going. Our vision was to advance the public good, promote a respectful dialogue among citizens, and raise awareness of business, arts, culture, and history that is unique to Hopkinsville. What I really wanted to do was give people stories where I could sort of flex my institutional knowledge of the community and provide context and background that maybe they felt like they weren't getting in other places.”

Brown said she worked for two years without a salary “while we focused on the journalism, improving what we could do before we got really serious about raising money. We were raising money, but not enough to pay anyone a salary.” Now she does pay herself, and a part-time helper. She participates in the NewsMatch program of the Institute for Nonprofit News, and says “being a member of INN is crucial for us. We wouldn't have much financing without INN.”

Brown said she has 25,000 average monthly unique visitors, up 40 percent from last year; 1,550 daily newsletter subscribers, up 47% from last year, with an open rate of 55% to 60%; and about 4,700 Facebook followers, up 41%; and we 256 donors, up 24%. “Our daily newsletters are really important,” she said. “A newsletter comes out late, I usually hear from people. They want to know what happened. Where is it? And I take that as a good sign.”

The New Era, bought a few years ago by Paxton Media Group, has no office open to the public but still has local coverage. Brown said, “I think it's important to know that I've learned that it really doesn't work for me to try to compete against the other local media. It's a lot of wasted energy. We do have the local newspaper still. unfortunately, they have reduced their publication days, and the newsroom is very small. It doesn't look anything like the newspaper that I worked in. We also, though, have two commercial radio stations that have news operations,” and the Chronicle partners with WKMS at Murray State University, which “got most of the other public radio stations in Kentucky to sign on to that agreement. It gave us an immediate sort of wire service, so that we could help Hopkinsville readers know more about what was going on with the state government. . . . People in Hopkinsville quite often know more about what's going on with Tennessee state government than they do Kentucky state government because we're in their media market.”

Lynne Campbell

The for-profit startups are owned by women who spent most of their careers working for chains. Campbell said she last worked for GateHouse as regional publisher in Southern Illinois: “I took the opportunity because I thought I was going to save the 26 small community papers. Or that is what Gatehouse sold me; and in six months later they started to lay off people and asked me to close or merge, and what was 26 papers in a year's time was less than 12. . . . So I made it my mission in life to save community newspapers.”

After buying and improving a paper in a bedroom community of Peoria, then starting one for a town just outside Galesburg, home of another GateHouse paper that was no longer covering it, people in Macomb kept asking when she was going to start a paper there against another Gatehouse (now Gannett) ghost. She sold her interests in her other papers to her partner, and “went all in on the Community News,” she said.

It started on a copy machine, distributed free three times a week at 40 locations, and “was full of brief bits of local news,” such as events, police logs and death notices, but not full obituaries. “It was a quick read, and we had it out before lunch hour, so people would grab them at the restaurants and read them while they're waiting on their food.”

When the pandemic hit, Campbell said, “We didn't have events to write about. So we turned to partnering with the health department, the hospital, all of the government agencies, the mayors in all the cities, and we formed a great relationship between everybody, and we became the source for information during the shutdown . . . and our advertisers stayed with us, except for the ones that were shut down. All the advertisers stayed with us because they knew people were going there to read everything, and they won. And so we didn't lose that much revenue.”

The paper kept growing, and Campbell turned the Friday edition into subscription-only in May 2022. By that fall, she had almost 1,000 subscribers, and this year she made the Monday edition part of the subscription paper, shifted it to Tuesdays, and kept one free edition, called the Midweek, “so that everybody could get a little bit of the local news.”

Campbell said the Community News is billing $40,000 a month, much of it in legal advertising, since the Gannett paper, now called the McDonald County Voice, “is down to less than a hundred subscribers” and no longer has a storefront. The county has 27,000 residents, most in Macomb.

Debra Tobin

Logan, Ohio, is a town of 7,200 in a county of 46,000. Tobin worked for Adams Publishing Group for many years, last at the Logan Daily News: “About 20 of us that walked out one by one over the course of three months,” and eventually she and six of them “got together and started the Logan-Hocking Times,” charging $7.99 a month for digital subscriptions. “Within six months we had 700. We're over a thousand. That wasn't good enough for me, though, because I wanted to do something else, because a lot of people don't have computers in my hometown. It's a very small, not good access to broadband or anything. So I decided to do a print newspaper,” distributed free on Fridays, the day after the digital edition, and is funded by advertisers who sponsor pages.

Tobin has a part-time reporter, a part-time sports reporter, a full-time paginator and full-time graphics person, and two advertising staffers who work on commission. She’s on Social Security and takes no salary. “We were told that we were nothing but a pipe dream. And here we are almost three years later . . .and we're growing so.” Earlier, she said, We all decided to do this because the company that we worked for did not care about the community. . . . We all grew up in Logan. We all went to school in Logan. We love that we're vested in that county.”

Tobin said her experience can be replicated: “I encourage people to try it . . . if you have a background in journalism, and you are thinking about starting a paper. It may seem scary at first, but if I can do it, I know anybody can do it.”

For video of the session (it's the last one on this video), click here; for audio, here.

New to the trade, Jeremy Gulban has more former Gannett papers than anyone; he says success is up to communities

By Al Cross

Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

The owner of dozens of "ghost newspapers" bought from Gannett Co. says he is trying to revive them by returning editorial decision-making to local people while still taking advantage of the economies of scale that have led to consolidation of newspaper ownership. But he says his new chain's fate is not in its own hands.

"The success or failure of these rural newspapers is on the local people," CherryRoad Media CEO Jeremy Gulban said Friday at the National Summit on Journalism in Rural America, sponsored by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog. His remark fit the Summit's research question: "How do rural communities sustain local journalism that supports democracy?"

One example of a community sustaining rural journalism was the first paper Gulban started, the Rainy Lake Gazette in International Falls, where the paper had closed, and he reached out to the local Chamber of Commerce because he had recently bought his first paper in Grand Marais, also in northern Minnesota. "They got a whole bunch of different stakeholders in town, and we all met, and it was really kind of an amazing meeting for me, because I had never seen that kind of enthusiasm, that kind of spirit, to solve a problem," Gulban said. Three weeks later, they had a paper. "People really embraced it," he said. "We quickly got to more subscribers than, you know, the old paper had."

CherryRoad Media map, adapted by The Rural Blog

That brought the information-technology entrepreneur to the attention of the nation's biggest newspaper company, which is trying to unload small papers that add little, if anything, to its bottom line. "Gannett was looking for an organization that was strong enough technically to be able to do these migrations that would have to happen, and probably blissfully ignorant enough to take on this challenge of selling their worst papers, basically. So we took the leap." Now his company, less than three years old, has 77 papers in 17 states, more than 50 of them former Gannett papers, and many of them "ghost newspapers," he said.

Making the papers substantial and sustainable began with returning control to local people. "When we took over, the editors would say, ‘We send in a few articles, and we don't see the paper until it winds up coming to the office after it's printed.’ . . . I think the biggest thing that that happened is they eliminated all the local publishers, so there is no one ... you can call to talk about the paper. There's literally no one. Everything flows up in these vertical silos, which leads to a lack of integration, a lack of working together. And, as you all know, you can't have your salespeople off doing one thing and editorial people doing another. There's got to be that collaboration which, you know, really doesn't exist. . . . If people want to place an ad. They'll call an 800 number, and they'll go online and do it. And we all know in small towns that won't happen."

The downward spiral of news, ads and circulation has left ghost papers with two kinds of subscribers and regular single-copy buyers, Gulban said: "People who just like the ritual of getting the paper and really don't care what's in it ... and people who hold a position in town where they feel like they need to get the paper. . . . People who were truly looking for news had just given up and kind of moved on."

That caused most retail advertising to vanish, and "dependence on legal [ads] and obituaries," Gulban said. "When we looked at at these financials, the revenue from obits, legal and classified, was nearly double the display advertising in a lot of cases, you know, which is totally upside down. . . . So really, what you have is you got a ghost newspaper, right? It really has no relevance in the community. And you know that's a vicious cycle, right? The the less relevant it is. So. This is kind of the cycle that we found most of these papers to be in."

In addition to returning editorial control, "We tried to take out all of the regional or national content that was being put in there primarily as filler," Gulban said. "We still have some national content in some of the more-than-once-a-week frequencies. But anything weekly really has nothing but local content in it. We invested more in editorial positions. . . . We've actually been able to find someone in every one of those markets which has not been easy."

Jeremy Gulban

On the business side, "We've really tried to make sure we have a local ad rep in every market, with some success," he said. "That's not an easy position to hire for, particularly if you've got a tough product that you're trying to sell into. So we've had a hard time getting people. . . . Our biggest source of talent, believe it or not, is just people who used to work at the paper, and see that it's improved and want to come back." As staffs are rebuilt, Gulban said, "some people are going to step up and be leaders in this. And some people aren't. And so there's a direct correlation between the leadership ability of the local usually editor, sometimes the salesperson."

But local has its limits. Local ad and page designers are "a luxury that we can't afford," Gulban said. "And we've built our own circulation platform. That's entirely web-based so that we can have people in different locations serve circulation needs across markets." All printing is outsourced, but he said the company might build a plant because so many are closing: "We do believe that a printed product has to be part of the long-term solution" to the problems of local papers.

One way to define a ghost newspaper is that it has no local office open to the public, or is open only a few hours a week: "That just leads to no community goodwill efforts, no sponsoring events, no joining the Rotary Club, none of that," Gulban said. "That's so essential in a small-town newspaper." But not so essential that he has offices in some small markets. In Stephenville, Texas, rent was too high, so "We're trying to pioneer like a shared office, you know, with a Chamber of Commerce, maybe even a local restaurant, you know, we're open for lunch. Three days a week we go in there, the editor's there, the circulation person's there, you can go meet with them. We're trying to be as creative as possible just to keep that physical real estate cost down." The Google listing for the Stephenville Empire-Tribune says it's "temporarily closed."

Sites of two of the Texas papers discussed (Google map)

Just east of Stephenville on US 67 south of Fort Worth, the Glen Rose Reporter serves a town of 900 people with 320 print subscribers, "which was under 200 when we took over, and 108 digital subscribers, which was zero because there was no paywall," Gulban said. "This paper was absolutely horrible. It had literally nothing in it. When we took over, two really dedicated freelancers stepped up and said, 'We will make this paper be successful, and so they produce all the content between the two of them. They take it upon themselves to go around town, try to get people to advertise, try to drive additional subscribers. . . . This is so much better of a paper than it was a year ago, and the results show. And while those numbers are small, in percentage-increase terms, they're really huge. . . . Truthfully, if we didn't take this paper over, it wouldn't be there anymore, because the markets, too small for anybody to really be interested in doing anything here."

Gulban's other example was the Hamburg Reporter, in Iowa's southeast corner. Fremont County "had a catastrophic flood in 2019 and basically half the town's population left, so the population is now 890. We have 132 print subscribers and two digital, but we just put the paywall up two weeks ago," Gulban said. But its ad revenue averages $9,200 a month, and "this is the best revenue per population of anything in our whole organization." The paper's mothership is the Nebraska City News-Press, across the Missouri River; the one person "who was basically doing everything" died last month, "so we have to figure out how to handle that. But the model here still holds. . . . We have one person who is about town, knows everybody, is able to do a lot of different things," Gulban said. Our vision, which is a little bit out there, is: If you want to advertise in Hamburg, Iowa, we're the place you should be doing it through, not through Facebook, not through any other technical solution. Because we know Hamburg, Iowa. . . . We want to leverage our local staffs and their credibility to drive revenue in this new digital world."

And America's newest newspaper-chain owner had one broad thing to say about consolidation of newspaper ownership: "I believe strongly in distributed ownership of the news, because I don't think the country is founded on the idea that three or four groups or people would control all the information. The vision was thousands of individual people controlling the flow of information."

Gulban was the concluding speaker at the Summit's morning session. The video is here.

This story has been edited to give the correct genesis of Gulban's paper in International Falls.

Scranton reporter wins another Public Notice Journalism Award, for getting news from the 'legal ads'; he offers tips

By the Public Notice Resource Center

It was bound to happen again.

Jim Lockwood (left), a reporter for the Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pa., is the 2023 winner of PNRC’s Michael Kramer Public Notice Journalism Award, given annually to the best reporting that uses public notice as a primary source of information.

The award was announced Monday as part of the National Newspaper Association Foundation’s 2023 Better Newspaper Editorial Contest. Lockwood won the prize in 2015 and came in second or tied for second every year after that except 2022.

Lockwood’s entries in the contest generally distinguish themselves by focusing on a full body of work instead of a single story. His latest entry was 14 articles based in whole or in part on a notice. None were earth-shattering, but eight were important enough to land on the front page, including those that reported on:

• Expansion of a local VFW post
• Economic development plan to improve downtown gateways
• Scranton’s first solar farm
• First Wawa store in Lackawanna County
• Police department seeking outside accreditation
• City hiring lobbyists to lobby for federal funds

His entry also used a notice published in 1911 to explain how the city acquired a park it was planning to lease to a local nonprofit organization. The entry was further distinguished by the importance it assigned to the notices, which were invariably cited as source material early in his stories — more often than not in the second or third paragraph.

How does he do it? “Jim checks the public notices every day without fail and often finds news within them,” Times-Tribune Metro Editor Jessica Matthews said in the cover letter with Lockwood’s entry. “Jim’s longstanding practice is to read public notices, clip and mark them up, save them for future reference or pass relevant ones along to his colleagues for their beats.”

Second place this year went to Elisabeth Waldon of the Daily News in Greenville, Mich., for her reporting on a series of tardy or otherwise insufficient notices published by a local township. Brad Nygaard of The Journal in Crosby, N.D., took third place for his story about how the city inspected homes that were considered a public nuisance without providing proper notice. Nygaard won the PNRC award in 2020 and tied for second last year.

Public notice reporting tips

Lockwood says public-notice journalism is an art, but he promises that with practice, any reporter can become an expert in ferreting out important news from public-notice advertising and keep readers in the know.

Lockwood’s three Rs of public-notice journalism:

• Read them. They are right under your nose, in your own newspaper, and there is really no excuse not to read them.
• Report on them. You will see something in public notices that will spark your curiosity. When that happens, dig a little deeper and report on what you find.
• Reference them. Don’t be afraid to attribute information in your article to the public notice you are reporting on. Just treat it like any other source and write, “according to a public notice published in this newspaper.” This type of attribution adds transparency to your reporting and helps readers understand the importance of publishing notices in newspapers.

Be an early bird: Lockwood advises daily newspaper reporters to read their paper’s public notices first thing in the morning. Sometimes they announce meetings, hearings and other events and initiatives taking place that same day. “Don’t wait until 5 p.m. or you might miss something important,” he said. Weekly newspaper reporters shouldn’t dally either.

Penetrate the legalese: Often lawyers write public notices using legal terms, and they are hard for readers to comprehend. “The more you read them, the better you’ll get at understanding them,” Lockwood says. “You’ll learn the patterns and you will be able to get to the point quicker.” Sometimes the “nut graph” that tells you what the notice is really about will be the third line from the bottom. “They always bury the lede.”

Exercise your curiosity: Sometimes getting good public notice stories comes from old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting. Lockwood recalls seeing a notice advertising a hearing on condemned and abandoned property, which consisted of two boats and a trailer. It listed the date and time for the sale at the county courthouse and nothing else. His curiosity piqued, he dug a little deeper and discovered the notice was a poorly worded announcement that someone had a tax lien and had been required to liquidate their boat and trailer. “This is an example of bare-bones info in some notices, giving no hint of why or who ran this,” he says. While this public notice did not result in a story, Lockwood found it worth digging into.

Where to look for public notices. If your paper is not the newspaper of record in your town, or if other newspapers in your city or county run notices, then turn to them. Often public notices are required to be posted at the courthouse or town hall. Another resource is the statewide public-notice website operated by your state newspaper association, which you can access from this page.

“When you read public notices, ask yourself ‘what is going on here? What is the real story?’” Lockwood says. “Keep pulling away layers, like an onion, and keep those layers stored away for reference.”

CBS spotlights Charleston newspaper's award-winning collaborations with smaller papers in South Carolina

Owner Pierre Manigault talks with Ted Koppel. (CBS image)

At a time when the nation is losing two newspapers a week, "Some papers are finding a new way forward," host Jane Pauley said in introducing special correspondent Ted Koppel's report on "CBS Sunday Morning" about The Post and Courier's award-winning collaborations with smaller newspapers in South Carolina.

Fourth-generation owner “Pierre Manigault is bucking the trend, hiring more staff, expanding digitally across the state and investing heavily, of all things in a state-of-the-art printing press,” Koppel reports. Manigault acknowledged that he's no longer publishing to make money, but to serve Charleston -- and the rest of South Carolina, where 10 papers stopped in the pandemic year of 2020: “It’s important to have not just a newspaper, but a very good newspaper.”

When The Post and Courier appealed to readers for donations to support its investigative journalism in 2020, it set a goal to get $100,000 in 100 days, but $500,000 came in. The total so far is $1.7 million. Special Projects Editor Glenn Smith and lead project reporter Tony Bartelme thought some of it could be used “to collaborate to everyone’s mutual benefit” around the state, Koppel reports.

Travis Jenkins speaks with Ted Koppel. (CBS image)

The first paper they approached was the Chester News and Reporter, edited by Travis Jenkins, who told Koppel, "We kind of pride ourselves on doing more deep-dig, heavy-lift investigative pieces that a lot of papers our size aren't able to do anymore: when a county supervisor's indicted for trafficking meth, the sheriff is indicted and removed on corruption charges, a councilman is removed from office by a judge for having a past criminal record he didn't disclose." Asked how he and reporter Brian Garner have time to do that, Jenkins replied, "It's difficult."

Enter The Post and Courier, which shared with Jenkins its investigation that led to the sheriff's indictment. The papers began collaborating, and “The pieces we shared were so much better for the collaboration,” Smith told Koppel. "I don't know some of these towns. I don't know anything about them. But these people do. Then why don't you take the best of both worlds, put 'em together? We all get good content, raise the alarm and hopefully make our state a better place." Bartelme said the project has been "a cululative effort that creates that culture of deterrence that prvents future misconduct."

Barbara Ball edits and delivers her newspaper. (CBS image)

The other example in Koppel's report is The Voice of Blythewood, owned by Barbara Ball. When school officials tried to charge her $300 for the superintendent's spending records, The Post and Courier offered to pay, and "They ended up just giving it to us when we got behind her," Smith said. "And got a really good story out of it." Ball said having a story on the Charleston paper's front page "substantitated that we're a good newspaper, that we turn out good work."

And her readers appreciate it. “I will get checks from people; I’ve gotten a thousand dollars,” Ball told Koppel. “I think most people realize that we don’t make a lot of money.”

The Post and Courier received a National Headliner Award for "Undercover," its collaborative series with 18 other papers that exposed government corruption and misconduct, but not everyone likes aggressive local newspapers. Jenkins recalled a note written by a reader who refused to subscribe, saying the News and Reporter was "the most up-in-everybody’s-bleeping-business bleeping newspaper I've ever seen." Jenkins said, "That's the best compliment anybody's ever paid us."

Manigault told Koppel that with advertising largely gone, “You have to go back to what the roots of journalism are, and that's content and information that people can't get anywhere else. . . . I think there’s a second life for newspapers. I think we'll survive this. It's an evolution. Newspapers just need to evolve to the new digital world and I think we're well on the way to doing that.”

N.Y. Times spotlights local officials' use of public-notice ads as weapons, but doesn't explain that state laws differ

At a time when local newspapers rely on advertising revenue from publishing public notices required by law, more local governments are moving the notices from newspapers to punish them for "aggressive coverage of local politics," reports Emily Flitter of The New York Times. Richard Karpel, the executive director of the Public Notice Resource Center, told Flitter “It’s gotten worse over the years in terms of trying to use contracts and laws to lash out at newspapers.”

Flitter cites several examples, primarily The Reporter in Delaware County, New York, but does not make clear that the Empire State is one of many that allow public officials to use public-notice ads as a weapon. Many other states require the notices to be published in the newspaper with the largest proven circulation in the officials' jurisdiction, largely eliminating their discretion.

Lawyers told Flitter that it's unconstitutional for governments to punish anyone for their viewpoints, but "Sometimes, it is hard to prove that a local government is revoking a contract because of its unhappiness about a newspaper’s coverage. But other times, the rationale has been more or less explicit." Flitter cites the case of the Wet Mountain Tribune in Custer County, Colorado, which lost the county's public notices after it reported that its new public-health director had questionable educational credentials.

She doesn't note, as Northwestern University did in reporting on the case last year, that the ads went to "a nine-year-old partisan newspaper called the Sangre de Cristo Sentinel even though the Tribune submitted the low bid." But she has an update: "The paper’s publisher, Jordan Hedberg, sued the county in the fall for violating the paper’s First Amendment rights. A federal judge encouraged the two sides to negotiate. In December, the county agreed to reinstate The Tribune’s contract for four years and to pay the paper $50,000 in damages and lawyers’ fees."

UPDATE, July 11: "New York isn’t the only place where public officials sometimes seek to retaliate against those they perceive as enemies," the Public Notice Resource Center says. But the state’s folkways and traditions, along with its arcane and antiquated public notice statutes, often result in the chaotic administration of the law.

Louisiana is first state with a law that will make online public notices the ones for which newspapers will be paid

The state-by-state battle over public notices, which have become a vital source of income for newspapers, has taken a new twist. "Last week, Louisiana became the first state to pass a law that will eventually make newspaper websites the primary platform for public notice," with local governments paying for online ads but not print ads, the Public Notice Resource Center reports.

Local governments will be required to post their notices on newspaper websites in 2027, and publish in print "notices describing the subject matter and location of the online notices," PNRC reports, but those notices will be free and the online ads will be paid.

The Louisiana Press Association proposed the bill as a compromise to head off "the potential of a worse outcome later," PNRC reports. The bill replaces the "complicated pricing structure" for public notices with a system based on the number of text characters, or by "a price-per-square-inch formula for display ads and other prebuilt notices. That structure, which newspapers and their local government clients can opt to use beginning Jan. 1, 2024, is particularly well-suited to pricing online ads when the transition to digital notice takes place three years later."

LPA Executive Director Jerry Raehal said the new system may "result in a revenue decrease for LPA members but he emphasizes it was part of a compromise designed to secure the future of public notice in the state," PNRC reports. Raehal said it is “a win-win-win,” because “Local governments get some economic relief and a more transparent pricing model. Local newspapers get a path forward to retain public notices in a digital format, and a runway to prepare for the changes. And Louisiana citizens maintain easy access to government notices from a trusted source.”

The bill, which made several other changes in Louisiana's public-notice law, passed both houses unanimously and is expected to be signed by Gov. Jon Bel Edwards when it reaches his desk.

Rural readers in the Great Plains are more willing to support newspapers with alternative revenue than publishers think

As rural newspapers adapt to the digital age and look for more revenue, a new study suggests that their readers are more willing to support them with non-subscription revenue than publishers think.

That's what researchers found in Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas when they asked 106 rural publishers and people in rural areas (without a town of 10,000 or more population) about new ways to finance newspapers. They found "a clear disconnect between what revenue streams publishers are willing to implement and what revenue streams readers are potentially willing to endorse," says the paper, published in Journalism Research.

Teri Finneman

Teri Finneman of the University of Kansas, Patrick Ferrucci of the University of Colorado and Nick Mathews of the University of Missouri-Kansas City asked publishers about the viability of 16 possible revenue sources: print subscriptions, digital subscriptions, legal notices, other advertising, marketing services, graphic-design services, email newsletters, memberships (defined as a perk beyond a subscription), events, government support, grants, donations, foundations and other large donors, commercial printing, and sale of office supplies. The 414 readers (who were not necessarily readers of the surveyed publishers' papers) were asked about 12 sources: print subscriptions, digital subscriptions, advertising, taxpayer support, donations, events, memberships, email newsletters, marketing services, graphic design services, and office supplies and/or commercial printing.

The publishers' top four were advertising, print subscriptions, digital subscriptions and legal notices, all getting at least 70 percent support and the rest with less than 50 percent. Readers' top choice was events. "The popularity of this option is not surprising coming from rural areas where 'there’s nothing to do,' and arguably provides an opportunity for newspapers to fill a central community engagement role in person, not just in print," the researchers wrote. "The second option that rural residents were very likely or somewhat likely to support was print subscriptions, adding further evidence that print is still a mainstay in rural America."

Graph by The Daily Yonder, adapted by The Rural Blog, shows revenue preferences of rural newspaper publishers and rural readers (not necessarily of those publishers' newspapers) in Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

But the next three options — email newsletters, memberships and donations, all in the 40-50% range — were "a striking contrast to the publishers, who ranked e-newsletters and memberships toward the bottom of their choices. . . . the results of the reader survey overwhelmingly illustrate how community members would support their local news organizations in a multitude of manners not available to them currently."

Why didn't digital subscriptions score better with readers? "Many rural news organizations utilize digital subscriptions that are essentially only a PDF version of the print product," the researchers write, noting previous research that found "Readers, historically, find PDFs of newspapers not engaging, not something worth much time and, therefore, not innovative."

The paper is the completion of research discussed by Finneman at the second National Summit on Journalism in Rural America, where she revealed only data for North Dakota. At the third Summit, to be held in Lexington, Ky., July 7, Mathews will discuss the research and another project, looking at experimentation with new revenue sources by a small newspaper group in southeast Kansas.

After regional daily closed 2 satellite papers in N.Y. county, locals pledged to support them, and they have come back

How can rural communities sustain local journalism that supports local democracy? That was the question posed by last year's second National Summit on Journalism in Rural America. The simplest answer, which is often the best answer, seems to be: with their money, spurred by leadership.

Adapted Google map highlights towns involved. Click to enlarge.

In 2019, the Johnson family of Jefferson County, New York, publishers of the Watertown Daily Times, stopped publishing the daily Ogdensburg Journal and one of its two weeklies in adjoining St. Lawrence County, citing economic difficulties. and saying "Readers in those communities had already chosen the Watertown Daily Times as their source for news and information."

But two years later, as the pandemic began to lift, the Journal was revived as a weekly after local businesses in the city of 10,436 pledged their support for it, and the next year the weekly St. Lawrence Plaindealer in the county seat of Canton (town pop. 11,638) was reborn in the same way. The leader of the effort was James D. Reagen, a county legislator and former Journal editor, who “cobbled together a group of civic and business leaders” who pledged to support the paper, Editor & Publisher owner Mike Blinder says in the latest edition of his “E & P Reports.”

Without the Journal, elected officials felt no one was watching them, and “A lot of poor decision-making occurred because there was nobody to help sort through” anonymous allegations on social media and blogs, Reagen told Blinder. “There was no one to sort out the truth from the fiction, there was no one to hold people accountable for what they were saying. . . . That is one of the important roles of a newspaper at any level . . . to be sort of the arbiter of fact, the voice of reason, the community rallying point.”

Reagen rounded up businesses who pledged to advertise in the Journal, said Tom Grazer, Johnson Newspapers’ managing editor for St. Lawrence County. “That was a key component,” he said. People in Canton “saw what was going on in Ogdensburg” and did likewise. “Both newspapers have done well.” The company also piublishes the twice-weekly Courier Observer, which serves the towns of Massena (pop. 12,883) and Potsdam (14,901), more distant from Watertown. St. Lawrence County has 32 towns (in New York almost all places are in a town or a city) and about 110,000 people, and is the state's largest county geographically, at 2,821 square miles.

Laura Pearson, executive director of the Greater Ogdensburg Chamber of Commerce, told Blinder that businesses were willing to support the paper because “They understand the value of promoting locally” and “the Journal takes care of everybody. . . . To lose the Journal really hurt the city a lot.” Now, she said, “Our community understands how important the Ogdensburg Journal is to us.”

A weekly paper had to announce its demise for locals to fully appreciate it; community support encourages quick buyer

Two front pages, superimposed on a aerial view of the town (Citizen Facebook page)

The headline was stark: "Pulaski Citizen to end Feb. 15." There it was in black and white, announcing the end of a weekly newspaper that was founded in 1854 and serves a Tennesssee county of 30,000 people. The story made the familiar points about lack of revenue, but also some points not often made in such cases: "Giles County will have no newspaper or news platform dedicated solely to covering local news, sports, events, government and people."

Then Publisher Scott Stewart got more personal: "Some people will be upset about the loss of the Pulaski Citizen, some won’t. We’ve just arrived at the place in time where the number of those who are upset diminished to the tipping point. As devastating as this is for those of us who cherish what local news is and means to our community, so many people will never realize what they’ve lost until it’s gone. That may be the saddest part of the whole thing."

But Stewart wasn't quite right. His story said owners Sloan and David Lake were willing to sell, and Main Street Media, which has 11 other Middle Tenenssee papers, bought the Citizen in a matter of days. MSM co-owner Dave Gould said, "There was a passion for this newspaper within the community. There was a lot of angst and worry about it closing. So, we felt good about the purchase and have seen overwhelming support from the people of Pulaski."

Gould and Stewart discussed the chain of events on a recorded Zoom call with Mike Blinder of Editor & Publisher magazine, which turned it into its latest "vodcast." The star of the show is Pulaski Mayor J.J. Brindley, who said the announcement scared the town of 8,400 because “The newspaper has been there for everybody. . . .This almost had to happen for people to see how valuable this paper is and how much they did to serve this community. . . . It was a big wake-up call!”

Screenshot of Editor & Publisher "vodcast," online here.

Brindley, who has been mayor for three months, said he knows the paper is supposed to be a check on power, and he doesn't mind that: "They know what's going on, they see what's going on; I encourage that . . . They've always been honest and good people . . . The paper is a huge asset to this community." When Blinder asked if the paper be "put on a pedestal" to get community support, Brindley said yes: "The citizens need to contribute to this. We do need to put it on a pedestal . . . If you don't tell them the news, they're gonna make up their own news . . . We've got to rally behind the paper more than ever . . . I really respect what the paper does and understand more now what it means to the community."

Brindley said he is 36, and "A lot of people my age might not get the paper . . . Sometimes they look at the wrong things," such as social media. "I believe in the newpaper with everything I have."

Giles County (Wikipedia)

Stewart, who started as a reporter at the Citizen in 1995, said, "A lot happened in that one week . . . I wasn't in a good place as far as the community, because I thought they were letting us down, and maybe we were letting them down some too."

Gould, asked why he is in a business that is getting more difficult, said "I do love local community journalism . . . These communities need us," for the government-watchdog function and to "bring the community together."

News-media roundup: As 3 big Ala. papers stop printing, trade group reminds state it has plenty; Gannett has cut almost 1/2 its workers and 127 weekly papers, seeks bids

Screenshot of interview; for video, click here.

Kyle Hopkins of the Anchorage Daily News, who won a Pulitzer Prize with ProPublica for exposing failures of Alaska's criminal-justice system, including lack of attention to disappearance of Native women, inspired "Alaska Daily," ABC's Thursday-night series. Mike Blinder of Editor & Publisher interviews him.

 

When three major newspapers in Alabama (Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile, owned by Advance Publications) stopped publishing print editions recently, it probably made many people in the state wonder about the future of their local papers. Felicia Mason, executive director of the Alabama Press Association, says in a column distributed to members, "Alabama newspapers are alive and printing. . . . Alabama has 109 paid circulation newspapers that have a print edition at least every week." She also cites "a recent market study, conducted by the independent research firm Coda Ventures, reports 3.2 million, or 81%, of Alabama adults rely on newspapers every month for local news and advertising [and] that among consumers who plan to shop for specific products and services, the targeted reach of newspapers is unrivaled." Mason also says community papers have "news you cannot get from any other news source," are focused on making communities "stronger and safer," hold governments accountable, and provide public forums. And she didn't even mention Sunshine Week!

Since GateHouse Media bought Gannett Co. and adopted its name, it has shed nearly half its workforce, report Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn of Axios. They say that "underscores just how much pressure the country's largest newspaper company is facing as it tries to appease stockholders and remain independent. The company "also has pushed to reduce its number of markets. It dropped its number of local-focused websites by 117, and it decreased its number of weekly newspapers by 127, according to regulatory filings." CEO MIke Reed said in a call about last month's earnings report that Gannett "would entertain bids on any of our markets."

NiemanLab table from Alliance for Audited Media data

UPDATE: "The scale of local-news destruction in Gannett's markets is astonishing," reads the NiemanLab headline over a story by Joshua Benton, who reports a higher job-cut figure: "Gannett has eliminated 59% of its jobs in four years. It’s as if, instead of merging America’s two largest newspaper chains, one of them was simply wiped off the face of the earth." And Gannett's big papers have lost substantially more circulation than similar papers, Benton reports, with some tables that show combined print and digital circulation. UPDATE, March 14: Gannett says the Benton misinterpreted the Alliance for Audited Media data and has requested a correction. 

Philanthropically funded States Newsroom, which has 37 state-based nonprofit news outlets, will be the new home for Stateline, the 25-year-old Pew Research Center news service that reports and analyzes trends in state policy. Stateline reporters will continue their work, a press release says.

Ralph Nader has pulled his financial backing for a printed newspaper in his hometown of Winsted, Connecticut, and it's the second time he's done that, Bob Sillick of Editor & Publisher reports.

The International Women's Media Foundation has published A Guide to Protecting Newsrooms and Journalists Against Online Violence, which recommends policies and best practices for newsrooms to protect staff members who are targeted simply for doing their jobs. The IWMF says, "Online violence poses a constant threat to journalists, resulting in serious implications for press freedom, including self-censorship. This abuse disproportionately affects women and diverse journalists who are often reluctant to speak out for fear of jeopardizing their careers." The guide includes case studies from "a wide range of newsrooms," IWMF says.

Newspaper public notices take hit as big Fla. county shifts to online; some papers' mishandling of ads undermine industry

Notices of public hearings in Sarasota County, Florida, will no longer appear as paid advertising in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which could be the canary in the coal mine for newspapers in the state, and perhaps beyond. The county commission acted under a new state law that is "the most significant piece of public-notice legislation in modern history," says the Public Notice Resource Center, an advocate for the "legal ads" that have become a much more important revenue source for local newspapers as their advertising bases have shrunk.

Sarasota County will shift the notices on its own website, just as local governments all over the nation are lobbying their state legislatues to authorize. Newspapers argue that citizens won't go to government sites to look for such notices; governments stress cost. Sarasota County officials say they have averaged spending $200,000 a year on the "legal ads" and have hired a full-time employee to run the legal-ad program at an annual cost of $80,000.

Florida Press Association President Jim Fogler told the commission that newspapwer publication provides third-party verification that state law is being followed, and "that allowing the county to post the notices would create a conflict of interest," the Herald-Tribune reports. “We believe that there’s definitely a transparency issue there,” Fogler said. Most state newspaper associations have websites where papers post public notice free of charge.

The public-notice news wasn't all bad for newspapers in 2022, but some papers are causing trouble for the industry by not running notices when they should be run. "It's an isssue that affects a small but significant cohort of papers, and it appears to be growing worse," the Public Notice Resource Center reports. "The scope of the problem is evident any time a group of press-association directors meet and talk about public notice. During a roundtable discussion at the Newspaper Association Managers convention this summer in Austin, the topic dominated conversation. One director after another complained about member papers that have little connection to the communities they serve and make it more difficult for their press association to protect newspaper notice in the state legislature. . . . The biggest offenders are corporate newspaper chains."

Noting papers' staff cuts, PNRC reports, "There are now multiple papers in every state that don't even employ a publisher, which attenuates local relationships and accountability at those publications. Those factors played a significant factor in the Florida Legislature's passage of HB 7049, and they threaten to torpedo newspaper notice in other states as well. If newspapers hope to continue to serve as the government's official provider of notice, they need to make it as easy as possible for customers to publish their statutorily required notices. It's as simple as that."

GAO report on economic viability of local journalism ignores state-based issue of public-notice advertising in newspapers

Chart from Government Accountability Office report shows some revenue options for local journalism. 

By Al Cross
Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

Thursday's Government Accountability Office report on local journalism is a welcome document. It is a recognition by the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress that threats to the economic viability of local journalism are a collective threat to local democracy in the United States. The 88-page report is a valuable compilation of the issues and potential solutions, such as philanthropy, tax incentives, direct public funding and federal advertising. It should raise the issue on policymakers' radar and help guide their responses.

But the report misses a key point, especially for rural newspapers. Perhaps because it is from one federal agency to another, the Federal Communications Commission, which requested the report, it does not mention an increasingly important revenue source that is under threat in most states: public-notice advertising by local and state governments.

GAO is not unaware of the issue. I mentioned it as one of the 40 participants in a two-day workshop that the agency held last February to explore the threats to the viability of local journalism. I pointed out that as goods-and-services advertising has moved from local newspapers to digital platforms, public notices (which many still call "the legal ads") have become a much more important part of newspaper revenue, especially in rural areas, where retail display advertising has largely disappeared. Some publisher say they account for more than 20 percent of revenue, the difference in profiit and loss.

As newspapers increasingly depend on government advertising that is required by law, that revenue is in jeopardy in most state legislatures, where local officials and their lobbyists argue that public notices would be better placed on government websites. Some states, most notably Florida, have given local governments that option. It saves a very small share of a local budget, but makes for great reduction in the reach of the notices. Surveys have shown that citizens are highly unlikely to look for notices on government websites and would prefer to kepe them in local newspapers. Most states already require papers to post public notices on freely accessible websites, usually run by state newspaper associations.

Beyond newspaper revenue, public notices are increasingly important for public information, because newspapers are less able to cover government activities. Even journalists sometimes forget that public-notice ads are one leg of the three-legged stool of open government, along with open-records and open-meetings laws. "The legals" are often sources for stories; the Public Notice Resource Center gives an annual award for the best story that sprang from a public-notice ad.

In some states, public-notice laws lack objective standards, letting local officials play favorites with their advertising, as writer Susan Chandler reported a few months ago in a story for the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. But state newspaper associations are often reluctant to ask legislators for better standards, for fear that any public-notice legislation would become a vehicle for damaging measures.

This is largely a state-by-state fight, but it has become an existential one for newspapers, especially those in rural America. It needs to be remembered in the national discussion about the sustainability of local journalism.

Iowa GOP bars Cedar Rapids station from election-night event; news director suspects it's payback for fact-checks

This ad, designed to look like "Iowa News" coverage, also accused Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek of failing to prevent vandalism during a campus disturbance. The area wasn't in his primary jurisdiction, KCRG noted, giving it an F.

By Dave Busiek
Iowa Freedom of Information Council, via Substack

In what’s become a trend of Republicans stiff-arming mainstream media outlets, the Iowa Republican Party denied a Cedar Rapids TV station entrance into its election night party in Des Moines.

KCRG-TV is the ABC affiliate in Cedar Rapids. It’s a fine news operation that provides quality coverage in eastern Iowa. On Monday, the day before the election, the station learned it had been denied credentials to the party’s election night event, where all major GOP candidates would appear.

According to KCRG story, an party spokesman claimed the room was at capacity and priority was given to Des Moines outlets. News director Adam Carros said outlets from outside Des Moines got in, and he cried foul. “This is an unprecedented action in my 20+ years in TV news, 17 of it in Iowa,” Carros said. “I cannot recall a single instance a political party has blocked a local TV or newspaper outlet from its election night event in Iowa.”

That makes two of us. In 40 years of TV news experience in Iowa, I’ve never heard of this happening, either. I imagine it won’t be the last time.

Carros suspects it’s payback for fact-check coverage the station did on political ads run by several Republican candidates. One of the stories criticized an ad from state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, son of state GOP chair Jeff Kaufmann. Carros says the party repeatedly criticized KCRG’s coverage and refused to take part in the station’s previews of legislative races. “I have every reason to believe this is political retribution for our fact checks and other reporting the party deemed unfavorable.”

What possible gains can be made by denying a station the right to cover what turned into a huge victory party for the Iowa GOP? Republicans now hold all Iowa seats in Congress, both houses of the Iowa legislature, and they swept to victory in every statewide office including governor, attorney general, treasurer, secretary of state and ag secretary. From Republicans’ perspective, what a great story to tell! Why not shout it as loud as possible through every media outlet imaginable?

With the race for Arizona governor too close to call, Iowa native Kari Lake – a former TV news anchor, for Pete’s sake – told reporters Wednesday she plans to win, and not only serve four years, but eight. With reporters standing around her, Lake said “I’m gonna be your worst freaking nightmare for eight years, and we will reform the media as well. We’re gonna make you guys into journalists again. So get ready. It’s going to be a fun eight years. I can’t wait.”

Let’s get something straight. Reporters are supposed to do tough stories on people in power. Threats from Kari Lake, or stiff-arming from Iowa Republicans, is not going to change that fact. After Tuesday night, everyone in power in Iowa is a Republican. It’s clear they want to intimidate and bully media outlets into becoming lap dogs. To write glowing stories only. But it is not going to happen, and they know that. Their main goal is to score political points with their base. The news media are easy targets.

Local TV news cannot turn into partisan outlets like Fox or MSNBC. It must continue to hit the ball down the middle of the fairway and do tough stories on those in power, regardless of party, regardless of complaints, and regardless of blacklisting.

In the end, KCRG grabbed a Des Moines station’s satellite feed of the Republican victory celebration, so viewers did not miss out. And in the next election cycle, Adam Carros and his team will continue to do fact checks on both Republican and Democratic candidates – with or without their cooperation.