Gannett 'pauses' plan to return reporters to ghost papers

Associated Press file photo by Jacquelyn Martin

Most of the ghost newspapers of Gannett Co., with no or hardly any staff members, are likely to remain that way for a while, Rick Edmonds reports for The Poynter Institute.

The nation's largest newspaper company "has promised that it is working to add hundreds of new editorial positions, backfilling the many openings that were lost after a December 2022 hiring freeze, then growing further . . . the company hit the brakes on hiring for that key small newsroom position three months earlier," Edmonds reports. "According to internal communications, the 'pause' has now been rolled over through the second quarter."

Kristin Roberts, the company's chief content officer, declined Edmonds' interview request, and was not asked about the issue in the call that followed publication of the company's quarterly earnings report, which was favorable. Edmonds gives some background on the hiring initiative, which was limited to 30 markets and dubbed "I-30."

"Journalists, well paid at roughly $50,000, are being hired on one-year contracts rather than as full-time employees," Edmonds reports. "They must physically work in the target communities. Their job is to establish a local news presence in cities that have been getting only a thin trickle of hometown content. A particular emphasis . . . is creating newsletters, now a primary way in the industry to get samples of coverage to the target audience and capture email addresses of potential paid digital subscribers."

Edmonds concludes, "I’m hoping, even betting, that the I-30 program and other reinvestments resume. But for right now, the community papers have again taken their position in the back of the line for Gannett."

UPDATE, May 9: Edmonds' source of the "internal communications" has been fired for talking to him, he reports.

Rural Mirages: Shattered newspapers and ‘ghosts’ with little local news, but some communities have spunky startups

This is a condensed version of an article published today in the 2023 State of Local News Report from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. For the full version, click here.

By Al Cross

Director emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky  

The mistaken front page

On Sept. 5, The Hutchinson News in central Kansas greeted readers with a front-page feature about the Hutchinson Senior Center, with a photo of seniors kayaking on a lake with a thickly forested shore. But that’s not the landscape in Hutchinson, pop. 40,000, or the name of its senior center. The story was about the center in Hutchinson, Minnesota, and was written by a confused freelancer who got the assignment from a Gannett Co. editor 140 miles away, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, because the News had no news reporters on its staff.

What Gannett’s public-relations office called an “oversight,” in declining an interview about the flub, reflected the shrinkage of American newspapers, which finally hit non-metropolitan America just before the pandemic. The one-two punch led to many closures and mergers, and to continued declines in the quantity and quality of small-town papers. But in some places, print and online start-ups are succeeding, showing that local residents still want local news and will pay for a good product.

In Hutchinson, a 16-year-old high-school debater, Michael Glenn, started The Hutchinson Tribune on Substack on July 4; is publishing about five times as many local-news articles as The Hutchinson News, which prints twice a week; and says he and his partner, a local librarian, are starting to sell advertising for a growing audience.

Legacy newspapers are slowly adapting to the digital era, but many have not fully faced up to their greatest-ever existential challenge.

About two-thirds of weeklies are owned by chains, and the decline of most weeklies is visible in fewer pages, less news coverage and limited or non-existent office hours. In many towns, gone are the days when local residents could drop into their local newspaper office to place a classified ad or news item, and engage in conversation that could give the paper even more information, because the newspaper no longer has an office that is open to the public without appointment.

That’s the case even at some daily papers, such as the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville and The Paducah Sun, headquarters paper of Paxton Media Group, one of the largest owners of non-metropolitan papers. In these towns of 31,000 and 26,000, respectively, an appointment is needed to enter the newspaper office.

Paxton recently bought five more newspapers from Gannett, which has been shedding smaller papers – largely by selling them to CherryRoad Media, a firm created only three years ago by Jeremy Gulban, an information-technology entrepreneur. He now has more than 80 papers, 60 bought from Gannett, which he says ran them so far into the ground that some are proving hard to stand up.

The downward spiral of news, ads and circulation left most of those papers with two types of subscribers and 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."

Retail advertising largely disappeared, he said, and “revenue from obits, legal and classified, was nearly double the display advertising in a lot of cases . . . 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.”

Gulban said he has invested in editorial and ad staff, most often hiring former employees, and that the fate of the papers will largely depend on their local leadership and the response of their communities. And he says printed newspapers will remain a core element of his business model; to that end, he recently bought the Hutchinson News printing plant from Gannett.

The demand for reliable local news has been demonstrated in Hutchinson and many other places in rural America. In some places with chain-owned dailies that have become ghost newspapers, or in places where chains closed county-seat papers, there are new print and online news outlets. Two examples are The Community News in Macomb, Ill., and the Logan-Hocking Times in Logan, Ohio.

Lynne Campbell, a former regional publisher for GateHouse Media, which bought Gannett and took its name, said at July’s National Summit on Journalism in Rural America that The Community News started on a copy machine, was 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, Campbell said. Now the paper has two paid editions per week and a midweek free edition, “so that everybody could get a little bit of the local news,” and is billing $40,000 a month, much of it in legal ads, since the Gannett paper, now called the McDonald County Voice, “is down to less than a hundred subscribers” and no longer has a storefront, Campbell said. The county has 27,000 residents, most in Macomb.

In southeast Ohio, Logan is home to 7,200 people, in a county of 46,000, and the Logan Daily News, with an office open just nine hours a week, and the Logan-Hocking Times, owned by Debra Tobin, a former editor at the Times. After she and several other staffers quit the Adams Publishing Group paper, she started the Times online, charging $7.99 a month for access. “Within six months we had 700. We're over a thousand,” she said in July. “That wasn't good enough for me, though, because I wanted to do something else, because a lot of people don't have computers” or good internet access. “So I decided to do a print newspaper,” which is distributed free on Fridays, the day after the digital edition, and is funded by advertisers who sponsor pages.

While the demand for local news in non-metropolitan areas is being met in different ways, publishers are still searching for new business models.

Image from PBS NewsHour

There is longstanding resistance among rural newspapers to raising subscription prices and single-copy charges, but The Recorder in Monterey, Virginia, has charged $5 a copy since 2017, and when the pandemic eliminated most of its ad revenue, Publisher Anne Adams appealed to readers for donations and they helped her stay in business. Recently she has expanded her coverage area to a third county in the Alleghenies. Rural Great Plains publishers told University of Kansas professor Teri Finneman that they recoiled from the idea of asking for donations, saying it would be an admission of failure or personal weakness. But other publishers have put donations into their business model, and more are exploring the option of going nonprofit so they can avoid income taxes, qualify for grants and offer their supporters tax deductions for donations. And as the story of Hutchinson shows, the demand for local news is driving different approaches.

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."

A 16-year-old in Hutchinson, Kansas, tries to revive town's strong tradition of local journalism as chain newspaper fades

Part of The Hutchinson News' Sept. 5 front page

Hutchinson, Kansas, became known in the newspaper business two months ago for one of the bigger goofs in the era of "ghost newspapers" edited from afar with no staff reporters. Now it's becoming known as the home of the Hutchinson Tribune, started by a 16-year-old high-school debater who is publishing more local news than The Hutchinson News, owned by Gannett Co.

On Sept. 5, the News offered readers a front-page feature about the Hutchinson Senior Center, with a photo of seniors kayaking on a lake with a thickly forested shore. But that’s not the landscape in Hutchinson, pop. 40,000, or the name of its senior center. The story was about the center in Hutchinson, Minn., and was written by a confused freelancer who got the assignment from an editor 140 miles away, because the News had no news reporters on its staff.

Michael Glenn started the Tribune on Substack on July 4 with a city-council story and is publishing about five times as many local-news articles as the News. He told The Rural Blog that he and his partner, local librarian Gina Long (who formed their limited-liability company (she owns 40%, he has 60%), are about to start selling advertising for a growing audience. Today, the Tribune had 36 local-news articles on its website and the News had six.

Screenshot of Michael Glenn's interview with Mike Blinder of Editor & Publisher

Glenn told Editor & Publisher that he got the idea when he suggested to his debate teacher that they subscribe to the News as well as The New York Times, and she informed them of how the paper had declined from its Pulitzer Prize-winning days. Glenn said he had no journalism training other than the "Earn Your Press Pass" course developed by Lindsey and Joey Young, publishers of Kansas weeklies. Joey Young is a Hutchinsion native and has been a mentor, Glenn said.

The Tribune sells $8 monthly subscriptions and accepts donations, but Glenn told The Rural Blog that he and Long make clear that supporters "have no sway or voice." He told E&P that they tell readers, “The Tribune will become a more quality news source the more subscribers we get.” Asked his motivation, he said “I feel I have a duty to give back to my community . . . Without a quality news source in the community, it allows government to do a lot of things.” The Tribune held three forums for school-board candidates and one for City Council hopefuls.

This newspaper's front page was left blank to show readers how much they would miss local news reports

No news isn't always good news. (The Associated Press photo)

Sometimes, less is more, and other times, saying nothing says a lot. A local paper in Marblehead, Massachusetts, took the latter to heart. "The non-profit published and delivered its weekly free broadsheet . . . with a surprise twist: under the newspaper's masthead, the front page was completely blank," reports the Connecting newsletter, which reports on activities involving The Associated Press and its current and former employees. "The 11/1 edition of the Marblehead Current ran with a blank front page, demonstrating the importance of supporting local non-profit news."

Current founder and co-chairman Ed Bell, who retired as chief of the Boston bureau of the Associated Press after 50 years in print and broadcast news, said, "As a guy who has ink running through my blood, publishing a blank page of newsprint wasn't easy. But it's time to make the point of how urgent it is that we support local journalism."

The blank front page marks the beginning of the newspaper's fundraising effort, which runs through Dec. 31.

This photo is part of the Current's "Cuzner in Nature"
feature. Rick Cuzner is a local photographer.

Should readers zip over to the Current's website, they don't find a blank page. Instead, they find a robust local paper with civic news, vibrant local happenings, and even a local photo of a rare short-eared owl, an endangered species in the state, at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.

Virginia Buckingham, president of the board of the Marblehead News Group, which publishes the Current, supported the blank-page surprise. She said: "Two newspapers close every week in this country on average. It's a tough time for community news, but there's hope. The non-profit model can reverse the negative trend, but only if people support us with donations, much like they do non-profit TV and radio stations."

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: Family owners cry foul as Alden firm buys Scranton-area papers; Gulban buys Delphos group

MediaNews Group, owned by Alden Global Capital, has bought four newspapers in and around Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the family owners of the paper, minority stockholders, don't like it. Times-Shamrock Communications is selling the Scranton Times-Tribune, The Citizens' Voice in Wilkes-Barre, The Republican Herald in Pottsville, The Standard-Speaker in Hazleton, and several less-than-daily papers and pressrooms. The sale does not include the firm's radio or billboard operations, or its building. "The family that started Times-Shamrock—the Lynetts—have been producing newspapers since 1895 in Scranton," WNEP reports, along with a blistering statement from family members:

". . . Alden does not reflect the business principles we feel are consistent with the stewardship of any newspaper. The sale was driven by a majority of our shareholders. We understand the fears about our ability to remain competitive. We recognize the underlying concerns about the newspaper industry’s revenue and audience declines, and the desire of many of the shareholders to leave the painful decisions to cut costs, coverage and employees in someone else’s hands. We remained confident and hopeful that our current board of directors and management team would have been able to lead us through the industry’s headwinds more effectively and humanely than a hedge fund like Alden. The willingness to sell a company steeped in integrity and family tradition—and staffed by loyal, bright, compassionate employees—to a company with such a devastating reputation in the industry runs against everything we believe in. . . . A newspaper is much more than just a business. It is the only business explicitly protected by the Constitution. It is a local institution and expected to track government spending, keep an eye on politicians, advocate for the voiceless, ask tough questions, cover local sports and businesses, and record the milestones in readers’ lives. Newspapers ... are the only true local watchdog with a large newsroom and resources capable of providing in-depth, verified news and investigative reporting on a large scale in any community. Most family newspaper sale announcements bear some variation of stock language regarding the new owner's ability to ... 'continue to provide strong local reporting' and "maintain the legacy' of the selling family. Sadly, we feel that none of that will be true in our case."

A much more amicable sale: Delphos Herald Inc., one of the older family-owned newspaper chains, has sold its eight papers in Ohio and Indiana and its commercial printing plant to CherryRoad Media. Six of the papers are in northwest Ohio and are based in Delphos: the Delphos Herald, the Van Wert Times Bulletin, the Putnam County Sentinel, the Putnam County Vidette the Paulding Progress and the Ada Herald. Also sold were the Monroe County Beacon, a stand-alone weekly in Woodsfield, Ohio, and the Register of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, in the state's southeast corner. Company President Roberta Cohen said her father, Murray Cohen, who died in December 2021, started the chain in 1962: "I can entrust our long-held newspapers to a company that shares the same vision and values that my sister Jennifer Shneiderman and I have and that my father had." CherryRoad owner Jeremy Gulban said he would keep the printing plant, his second bought in short order: "While the newspaper industry looks to embrace the digital future, we realize there is a need to keep printing newspapers."

News-media roundup: Gannett sells to CherryRoad again, this time for its first press; Okla. gets a States Newsroom

Reno County, Kansas, of which
Hutchinsion is the seat. (Wikipedia)

CherryRoad Media CEO Jeremy Gulban said at this year's National Summit on Journalism in Rural America that so many pressrooms are closing, he might build a printing plant for his growing newspaper chain. Now he has decided to keep building his company in the main way he's already done it: buy from Gannett Co. Gulban announced Wednesday that he has agreed to buy Gannett's printing plant in Hutchinson, Kansas, which is already printing most of his 80 papers, more than 60 bought from Gannett. The sale does not include Gannett's Hutchinson News. Gulban said in a press release that he "wants to blend new technologies with traditional printed publications to help ensure the future of local newspapers."

States Newsroom, a network of state-based nonprofit news outlets, has launched its 36th operation, Oklahoma Voice. The editor-in-chief is Janelle Stecklein, who has covered Oklahoma government and politics since 2014 as state-capital bureau chief for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.

Seventeen nonprofit news organizations have created the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets to provide mutual aid and encourage more philanthropic contributions to their operations. The group grew out of appeals to foundations for more unrestricted operating grants. "It was evident that we needed an organization to represent the interests of nonprofit news outlets by continuing to apply pressure on funders for the long haul," wrote Jason Pramas, executive director of the Boston Center for Nonprofit Journalism. "We have absolutely no intention of competing with existing nonprofit news coalitions like the Institute for Nonprofit News and the Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers. ANNO’s work will be focused on pushing journalism funders to give more money to news nonprofits, give it directly to those organizations, and disburse it in the form of larger general operating grants rather than smaller, less effective, project grants."

Ogden Nutting, longtime head of Ogden Newspapers, dies

Ogden Nutting

G. Ogden Nutting, who watched his family newspaper chain spread from West Virginia to 17 other states, died Friday, Aug. 25, at age 87.

Nutting was the grandson of H.C. Ogden of Wheeling, who founded Ogden Newspapers in 1890. Nutting became president of the company in 1970, when it owned seven daily and two weekly newspapers in West Virginia and 19 other newspapers across the country, reports The Intelligencer, the chain's flagship. It now has more than 50 dailies and 80 weeklies, mostly in small markets, and is run by his son, CEO Robert Nutting, who also owns the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Ogden Nutting was the “last of the great publishers in the history of newspapers in West Virginia,” West Virginia Press Association Executive Director Don Smith told The Intelligencer.  “Ogden Nutting symbolized the family newspaper ownership that served as the structure of our association during the last century and ensured a free and independent press across West Virginia.”

Nutting received many awards and established a scholarship fund at West Virginia University for juniors and seniors studying print media, as well as a library endowment, multimedia studio, visiting professorship and semimar series. He was part of an effort by publisher Kevin McClatchy to keep the Pirates in Pittsburgh and build PNC Park. He "was chronicled in Ski magazine for likely skiing at more ski resorts than anyone had skied before," The Intelligencer reports.

Nutting is survived by his wife, Betty Woods “Snookie” Nutting; his brother, William C. Nutting; sons William and Robert Nutting; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. "There will be no visitation or public service," The Intelligencer reports. "Those desiring to do so should make contributions to the church or charity of their choice."

News-media roundup: Presses dwindle; why the Kansas raid was unusual; family-owned daily marks 175 years

"Many residents in rural areas with poor internet access still rely on printed papers for local news." So says the American Press Institiute, painting with a broad and somewhat loose brush in noting the Medill Local News Initiative's report on press closures. Mark Caro pegs his piece to the shutdown of the press at Gannett Co.'s Pueblo Chieftain, first noted here last month, and examines the lack of any newspaper press in Vermont. Presses have been shutting down all over for decades, largely due to ownership consolidation, leading to earlier deadlines, changed publication schedules, longer drives, higher costs and a few newspaper closures. Anna Brugmann, policy director for the Rebulld Local News Coalition, told Caro that rural publishers discuss the need for “a runway” to transition to digital, but “Chopping off the runway altogether means the plane runs aground.”

Why is a police raid on a newspaper in Kansas so unusual? asks The Associated Press. David Bauder and Jim Salter write, "It’s very rare. . . . Police have confiscated material at newspapers, but usually because they are seeking evidence to help investigate someone else’s crime, not a crime the journalists were allegedly involved in, said Clay Calvert, an expert on First Amendment law at the American Enterprise Institute. . . . The Marion raid 'appears to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, and basic human decency,' said Seth Stern, advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. 'Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.'"

"One of the oldest newspapers still owned by the same family" celebrates its 175th anniversary in Celina, Ohio, this month. "The Daily Standard and the genealogy of the Snyder family are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same. That makes this newspaper both a cherished family heirloom and a critical public trust," the paper says. "The family watched as corporations gutted newsrooms and cut back on local news coverage in pursuit of higher profits and the adverse effects these moves had on the communities they served. . . . It's a tough fight for a family-owned newspaper to stay afloat in a world where people expect free news content on the internet, but one worth waging to keep residents informed of happenings in their local governments, schools and communities."

Still native, but not only American: "The Native American Journalists Association announced Friday it is changing its name to the Indigenous Journalists Association in an effort to become more inclusive and strengthen ties with Indigenous journalists worldwide," AP reports. The change was announced at the group's annual conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, after members voted 89-55 in favor of it. "About 400 Indigenous members were eligible to vote."

Police raid of Kansas weekly was prompted by a tip that didn't result in a story until the target publicly complained

Wikipedia map, adapted

Local law-enforcement officers raided the office of a rural weekly newspaper in Kansas and the home of its publisher and his 98-year-old mother Friday, contributing to her death the next day, the Marion County Record reports, telling its own story.

"The raid is one of several recent cases of local authorities taking aggressive actions against news organizations — some of which are part of a dwindling cohort left in their area to hold governments to account," write Steve Lee Myers and Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times. "Raids of news organizations are exceedingly rare in the United States, with its long history of legal protections for journalists."

The Record, in a town of 1,900 in a county of 11,500, "is uncommonly aggressive for its size," 4,000 circulation, Myers and Mullin report. Publisher Eric Meyer told the Times that the weekly "has stoked the ire of some local leaders for its vigorous reporting on Marion County officials," including the employment history of Police Chief Gideon Cody.

Eric Meyer (Photo by Chase Castor for The New York Times)

The search warrant for the raid mentions restaurateur Kari Newell and cites "potential violations of laws involving identity theft and the illegal use of a computer," the Times reports. After Newell ejected Meyer and reporter Phyllis Zorn from an event with the area's congressman, the paper reported on it, prompting a tip to Zorn that Newell was trying to get her driver's license reinstated from a 2008 DUI charge so she could get a liquor license pending before the state and the Marion City Council. Zorn confirmed the charge via a state website. "Newell said that someone had unlawfully used her identity to obtain private information about her online," the Times reports.

"Meyer decided not to publish a story about the information, and he alerted police to the situation," report Sherman Smith and Sam Bailey of the Kansas Reflector, quoting him: “We thought we were being set up.” Police told Newell, "who then complained at a city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents, which isn’t true," the Reflector reports. "Her public comments prompted the newspaper to set the record straight in a story published Thursday." The raid came at 11 a.m. the next day.

"Newell framed the dispute as a straightforward violation of her privacy by the newspaper rather than a First Amendment battle," the Times reports, quoting her: “I firmly believe that this was a vindictive move, full of malice,” which she says was caused by her ejection of the Record from the meeting at her restaurant, John Hanna and Mergery Beck of The Associated Press report. In another story, they report widespread criticism of the raid. Editor & Publisher has a roundup.

Meyer is a former reporter for the old Milwaukee Journal and a retired professor at the University of Illinois, "whose father worked at the newspaper from 1948 until he retired." Meyer bought the paper in 1998 to keep it from being sold to a larger chain, the Reflector reports. He told the Times that much is at stake: “If we don’t fight back, and we don’t win in fighting back, it’s going to silence everybody.”

UPDATE, Aug. 15: Bill Ketter, senior vice president of news for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., one of the larger chains, wrote a column for CNHI papers in which he says "Anti-press rhetoric has also whiplashed small town America at a time when local newspapers are more needed than ever. They are a cornerstone of rural democracy."

'These are Hitler tactics and something has to be done.'

Meyer pronounced her first name "Joann." 

“These are Hitler tactics and something has to be done.”

Those were some of the last words said by Joan Meyer, 98, a newspaperwoman for 70 years, after police in Marion County, Kansas, raided her son Eric's newspaper and their home Friday, acting on a warrant obtained by a local restaurateur who apparently feared that the Marion County Record was going to publish a story, based on public records, that would keep her from getting a liquor license. The next day, Meyer collapsed and died, after telling journalists that she was upset and stressed by the invasion of her home.

 

"The crux of the police investigation seems to be whether the paper and its reporters committed identity theft and/or unlawful acts concerning computers in confirming Newell’s driving records. An affidavit justifying the warrant is being withheld by County Attorney Joel Ensey, whose brother owns the hotel where Newell has her restaurant," the editorial boards of The Wichita Eagle and the Kansas City Star said in a joint editorial.

"There could very well be more sinister motives in play here, involving the police chief himself. [Gideon] Cody was hired by Marion in April, after taking an early retirement from the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department, where he was a captain. According to Eric Meyer, the Record has been actively investigating the circumstances surrounding Cody’s departure from the KCMO department. Friday’s raid gives Cody and his subordinates access to reporters’ notes and materials from confidential sources who were interviewed as part of the newspaper’s investigation." Cody told The New York Times, “I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated,” but declined to discuss details.

UPDATE, Aug. 15: The Associated Press reports, Cody referred questions Monday to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, saying it was leading the investigation. The state agency, in turn, refused to say it had taken over the investigation, referring instead to a statement saying it had “joined” the investigation and seemed to try to distance itself from the raids."

The Kansas City and Wichita newspapers say Magistrate Laura Viar, "or the presiding district judge, should immediately revoke the overly broad search warrant she signed and declare that any evidence seized under it be inadmissible in court. Viar or the district judge should order the immediate return of all equipment and materials seized." We agree. --Al Cross, professor and director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

UPDATE, Aug. 15: Bill Ketter, senior vice president of news for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., one of the larger chains, wrote a column for CNHI papers in which he says "Anti-press rhetoric has also whiplashed small town America at a time when local newspapers are more needed than ever. They are a cornerstone of rural democracy."

UPDATE, Aug, 16: The Times honors Joan Meyer with an obituary.

'Fight for your newspaper,' rural editor urges her readers

Editor Pam Lowe

When the former owners of the newspaper in Corning, Ark., closed their business recently, Editor Pam Lowe ran a story reassuring her readers that the weekly wasn't doing likewise. And it also led her to write a long column that was a message not just for her readers, but for all in small towns.< br />"I have answered and fielded questions about the future of the Clay County Courier from concerned residents," Lowe wrote. "If anything this concern that the paper could ever close should serve as a flag that newspapers need support," partly because "Industries and businesses are looking in newspapers for a town with potential for growth and hope."

Publisher Jeremy Gulban

The Courier and its sister paper, the Clay County Times-Democrat in the county's other seat, Piggott, are owned by CherryRoad Media's Jeremy Gulban, who bought them in June 2021 and March 2022, respectively. "Our publisher took a risk investing in a newspaper in a town that was down on its luck," Lowe writes. "He was tickled to death over the response to his purchasing the Courier and the number of people who came to our open house two years ago, which he flew down from New Jersey to attend. I’m sure he felt if he invested in our town and our people by purchasing a business that the community would respond in kind and support the paper; in essence, take a newspaper with a strong publishing birthright and build upon its rich history to transform it into its best self."

Lowe said the late-2022 deaths of her father and grandmother made her try "walking away from the paper," but "My love for my town, our people and the newspaper drew me back. I’m not one to give up easily when I feel passionately and believe in something and I believe in our newspaper. I want our people to love and believe in it too. I have fought, sometimes behind the scenes, for our town and community, our senior citizens, our veterans, our children, our school, and just about every aspect of Corning. . . . What the Courier needs, what every newspaper needs now, is for the community to fight for it. Are you having an event, a yard sale, do you need to sell something? Do you own a business? Fight for your newspaper and purchase advertising. Become a subscriber. Your newspaper needs sustainable and consistent advertisers."

Clay County, Arkansas (Wikipedia)

Lowe's local narrative evolved into one for any town: "If your town’s newspaper eventually closes due to lack of community and business interest, life will go on and you all will go on. But your community won’t have local coverage of fact-based news and events. Your community will likely rely on social media information and that thought is insufferable because the information there is so often unreliable, not to mention negative. Your community deserves better than that."

Lowe concluded, "Communities are at their best when we join in a fight together for what we believe in. While it is important to fight to bring in new businesses to our towns, it’s just as vital that we support and keep our existing businesses, especially a business that protects, informs and cares about our community. Your newspaper knows your city. It is your city. Fight for your newspaper."

News-media roundup: Daily hosts community-journalism forum with monthly papers; Gannett headed back to black?

Berkshire Eagle house ad for forum with three journalists from smaller newspapers

The Berkshire Eagle is hosting a forum at which journalists from monthly newspapers will talk about the value of community journalism. The latest in the daily's "Community Talk" sessions will host Country Journal Editor Ellenor Downer, Monterey News Editor Stephen Moore, and Ronald Bernard, founder and board member of The Sandisfield Times, and The Eagle says "We welcome representatives from other local publications" to the Aug. 9 session.

The National Newspaper Association's annual Convention and Trade Show is Sept. 28-30 in Washington, D.C., and the earlybird pricing deadline of Aug. 14 is approaching. Registrants can select "Invoice me" and pay within 30 days; to register click here. The first day of the conference will focus on Capitol Hill visits. The headquarters hotel is the Omni Washington DC-Shoreham. Make reservations online or call 800-843-6664 and mention "National Newspaper Association Foundation" for a discounted rate of $229/room plus tax; it's available for stays Sept. 27-30, and while rooms last or until Sept. 6.

Gannett Co. said Thursday that it's more likely than not to make a profit this year, after a quarterly earnings report that said it lost $12.7 million, well below the $53.7 million loss reported in the second quarter of 2022. The nation's largest newspaper company said its revenue from advertising and marketing fell 8% form a year earlier, to $353.3 million, but digital subscription revenue rose 17% to $37.9 million. The company "forecast between a loss of $10 million and a profit of $20 million for the year, compared with its previous forecast between a loss of $15 million and a profit of $15 million," Reuters reports. "Analysts on average expect 2023 profit of $8.2 million, according to Refinitiv data."

Iowa Newspaper Association Executive Director Susan Patterson Plank is resigning to rejoin Gannett, INA reports. She joined INA in 2013 as sales and marketing director and moved up in 2016. She will become Gannett’s vice president of public records strategic initiatives, a new position. The Iowa native worked for the company in 1989-98 and 2001-13, at The Des Moines Register and in Indiana and Minnesota.

The University of Georgia is seeking nominations for the 2022 Rollin M. “Pete” McCommons Award for Distinguished Community Journalism. Supported by an endowment, the award "honors outstanding leadership, innovation and entrepreneurism in community journalism each year, from small- or niche-market media outlets that have produced single or packaged stories on issues affecting their community and can offer how these stories may have impacted their community," the university says, adding that the professional journalists, students and faculty "who produce community journalism of consequence" are eligible. The nomination deadline is Sept. 30. More information and the nomination form are here.

Ghost papers are increasing, but how to define, count them? Medill's Local News Initiative is working on it; so are we

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

There seems to be little doubt that America has an increasing number of ghost newspapers, but it's hard to say how many – not just because there's no widely accepted definition, but because determining whether they fit any sort of definition is very time-consuming.

The Local News Initiative at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism is working on it, as we learned in the first session of the third National Summit on Journalism in Rural America, held by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues on July 7.

Zachary Metzger, the chief researcher and database manager for the initiative's State of Local News Project, said the project hopes to have something to say on the topic in its next report, which it plans to publish this fall. He gave an example of three ghost papers being operated jointly, but said finding such examples "is difficult to do en masse."

"It tends to be kind of difficult to determine whether or not a paper is a ghost newspaper without looking at its content, without looking at the bylines of authors," Metzger said. "There's several kind of web-scraping techniques that could in theory be used to try to determine the size of newsrooms, to try to determine how many articles are being written by individual writers, and then kind of tracking those writers in terms of how many papers they might be writing for."

He said the project is working with "outside consultants and scholars" to develop some prototypes of those research methids, "but they’re still works in progress."

As moderator of the discussion, I said I was glad to hear about that work, "because I think in rural journalism today, we don't have so much a problem of quantity as we have a problem of quality."

I ventured, and Metzger agreed, that another metric for a ghost newspaper is the number of hours its physical office is open to the public. Several newspaper chains have closed most of their offices, and others are keeping them open only a few hours a week.

On a front door in Logan, Ohio

Without mentioning its name or location, I noted one newspaper in southeast Ohio that still has "Daily" in its name but prints only two or three times a week and is open to the public just nine hours a week: on three days, three hours a day. 

Metzger said "That's probably a result of the declining staff numbers," and perhaps because the staff is down to one person, "and they are maybe responsible for even going around multiple counties. Then there might not be a lot of time for them to be in the office. But absolutely, that can be a strong metric."

He said that if a paper's office is open less than 40 hours a week, "You lose the availability of that newspaper to be able to connect with the public, and that is where a lot of the stories and reporting can come from. And when there's only one reporter on staff, there's no administrative staff. There's no office staff to be able to handle those kinds of questions and queries and engage with the public. then that paper does lose that significant resource of of public engagement."

Some sort of survey about newspaper office hours seems to be in order. One represented at the Summit, The Woodford Sun in Versailles, Ky., is open 26 hours a week, mostly seven hours on the main production days and publication day, and closed on the day the staff has to send the pages to the printer at 11 a.m. The weekly is locally owned.

In Mountain City, Tenn.

In the far northeast corner of Tennessee last month, I found that the office of The Tomahawk in Mountain City is open 23 hours a week, with a similar schedule to The Woodford Sun's. As a former weekly newspaper editor and manager, I consider that close to the minimum necessary office schedule. The weekly is owned by Six Rivers Media, a small regional chain.

Metzger said "A ghost newspaper can be thought of as a newspaper with a severely reduced staff. It still exists. There's a masthead for it. You can find it in newsstands or download e-editions online, but because the staff has been so reduced, or because it's so minimal, most of the content that is going to be within that paper is either going to be coming from a single reporter who's covering a wide area. It's going to be reprints from wire services, reprints from adjacent newspapers. almost exclusively opinion articles or some combination of those and it will lack the resources for sustained critical local reporting."

Three newspapers that share a nameplate in central Georgia.

Metzger said ghost newspapers are increasing in rural areas, and briefly presented his 2020 case study of the TimesJournalPost in central Georgia, owned by the Dublin Courier Herald and consolidating papers in three counties with a total of about 30,000 people: The Cochran Journal, The Twiggs Times New Era and The Wilkinson County Post. "These are technically independent mastheads, but they sort of exist under the umbrella of the Times Journal Post, and the Times Journal Post is essentially all three of those. They don't have individual sections within the paper," and the three counties "are largely covered by one person, one writer, who also seems to be the editor."

However, this isn't so much a ghost paper as one of the increasing consolidations of titles across county lines, which have long been the most basic definition of a rural newspaper's market (and is reflected in the lower postal rates for mailing a paper inside the home county).

Metzer said a ghost newspaper in a rural area like this one "tends to focus on crime news, probably because police logs are relatively accessible and relatively easy" to turn into headlines and stories. Another "red flag," he said, is "Special to" bylines, which once indicated work by a frreelancer or correspondent but increasingly indicate that the story is actually a press release.

"The term ghost, in a sense, comes from the fact that many of these newspapers used to be much more robust, but then reduced their staff size, and so they have become a ghost essentially of their former selves," Metzger said.

2 Calif. papers, a daily and a weekly, grow coverage areas

At least two California newspapers, a daily in the north and a weekly in the south, have stared the realities of the local-news business in the face and decided to expand, not retreat.

Rick Green

When The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa heard that the Napa Valley Register "was dramatically slashing both its staff and number of days it publishes and how its three weekly editions would now be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, we knew readers’ lives were being severely disrupted," Editor Rick Green wrote in a message to Napa County readers getting a free copy of the PD, which now has staff members assigned to Napa. "At a time when countless media companies and newspapers around the country are retreating — either eliminating days of publication or reducing newsroom staffs — our organization is doing something radically different. We’re expanding significantly into a new market to serve readers like you: Residents, taxpayers, voters and families in Napa County who depend on a consistent news source to help them lead better lives."

The Ojai Valley News, which had to find a new printer when the Santa Barbara News-Press went digital-only and shut down its press, responded aggressively. Publisher Laura Rearwin Ward raised circulation prices to cover the increased costs of printing and transportation, and expanded her coverage into other parts of her county, home of the Gannett-owned Ventura County Star.

Laura R. Ward

"In order to survive this increase and maintain the quality of the image reproduction and readability, we have made the difficult decision to raise advertising rates by 3% and the print-paper price to $2 each," Ward told her readers. "For subscribers who find the rate a financial hardship, we still offer a no-questions-asked 'need discount' option. And for those readers who are able to contribute extra to support this program, we thank you for checking the box on your renewal card, 'Support of Local Journalism,' or by contributing directly at www.ojaivalleynews.com. Your support helps us to continue offering that discount for anyone who needs one and fill in with print-cost shortfall and extra reporting staff." Then Ward delivered "The good news," including expansion: "To shore up gaps in professional news reporting in Ventura and Oxnard, we have begun to also do business as the Ventura County Sun," with a new website.

Ward wrote on the member Hotline of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors that the increases are unlikely to cover her extra weekly cost of $750 "for a local paper printing 2,400 copies a week," but she hopes to make up the difference with donations. She said the letter got her "$1,100 in donations and a promise for help from a big donor, as well as lots of personal concern from subscribers."

Ward wrote that the "need discount" started when she took over the paper six years ago and found huge "a number" of subscribers in the mountain retirement town were getting a senior discount. "It was killing us. Rather than eliminate the discount, we 'expanded' the discount to include anyone who 'needs' a discount. We basically changed a rewards program into a charity-based program. No questions asked, just check the box that you need financial assistance." The rate isn't offered online. "We explain to callers that while the senior discount is no more, we have expanded it to include anyone who needs financial assistance. Amazingly it seems only those who need it take it. . . . It has been a success, it amounts to a small percentage of our readers and it creates a safety to keep readers that it breaks your heart to raise rates for, as well as keeping subscription numbers stronger. It was a risk worth taking for us."

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.