Rural newspapers thrive on community connection
Mark Rhoades is fed up.
As the president of Enterprise Publishing in Blair, Neb., owner of 11 newspapers and publisher of three, he’s tired of hearing that all newspapers are dying, that the Internet is taking over, that no one will pay for news.
“They’re throwing all newspapers into the same boat,” Rhoades said.
Metro dailies and national newspapers deal with the effects of the economy and the Internet, but it doesn’t appear that Nebraska community newspapers suffer the same fate. Small, rural newspapers act as niche publications for specialized, localized news. No other news organizations can or will fill that niche.
“I think people are looking for local news,” said Aaron Wade, executive editor of the Hemingford Ledger in Hemingford. “There’s always going to be those people, and you aren’t going to find it on CNN.com.”
But readers still can find news online, even in small towns like Hemingford. The difference between small town newspapers’ Web sites and larger papers is that the rural newspeople aren’t planning to give away their hard work.
“We [are] limiting the content we put on the Web,” Wade said. “Why would people subscribe if they can just go to the Web site?”
Wade isn’t alone.
Ted Gill, owner and publisher of papers in Ravenna, Elwood, Arapahoe and Sutton, doesn’t allow his editors to post full stories or full versions of the papers online.
“What else would we sell if we didn’t sell our newspapers and what we do?” he said.
Gill, with Wade and Jim Edgecombe, owner and publisher of the Minden Courier in Minden, offer Web subscriptions, but recognize the digital version of the paper isn’t for everyone. At least not yet.
“The younger generation definitely would like to be on the Internet than have the product in their hand, but there’s still some that like to read the paper and flip the pages,” Edgecombe said. “Of course, the older generation want to have it in their hands … but I do have some in their 70s and 80s that do have Internet subscriptions.”
It’s only a matter of time, though.
“There are still some older people that will not recognize the Internet, but they won’t be here forever,” Gill said. “And the young people coming up, they know what it’s all about.”
Community journalists don’t expect to run their printing presses forever, anyway, and when they shut them off for good, they intend to keep gathering and reporting the news.
“We may not always be in newsprint,” Rhoades said. “There’s a version of [e-readers] that’s come out, and I’m thinking that will probably be the future.”
For Rhoades, the changes presented when news goes completely electronic also comes with a benefit: not having to pay for postage to mail newspapers.
In May 2009, postal rates for periodicals increased by an average of 3.97 percent. This increase directly affected community newspapers that use the U.S. Postal Service to distribute their publications. The Hemingford Ledger’s subscription rate went from $19 a year in 2007 to $29 a year in 2010. And for Edgecombe, the post office is the most effective and efficient way for him to distribute the Minden Courier.
“I don’t think you can do it as cheap as what you can do through the post office even though the rising prices are a factor on your bottom line,” Edgecombe said.
Gill, who has mailed his papers since he purchased the Arapahoe Public Mirror in 1974, said mailing concerns aren’t a new consequence of the economy.
“That’s been a concern since year one,” he said.
Mailing costs are a necessary expense until printing is obsolete, forcing newspapers to find a successful Web business model. And even now, Internet access isn’t an issue in small-town Nebraska.
Hemingford, located in Box Butte County in the panhandle, has its own telephone company and Internet source, providing people in the rural community with high-speed wireless Internet, even outside city limits. For Wade and other editors, having such good Internet connection is helpful in reducing mailing costs and makes Web-edition subscriptions more affordable for residents of their communities.
“People [might not be be] able to afford the $30 sub … because they needed to pay for a car repair, you know, or buy their kid clothing,” Edgecombe said.
That’s why he and his wife and business partner, Michelle, are considering cutting their Web subscriptions to $20 because of less required labor to produce the paper.
Gill doesn’t believe in selling the e-edition for less than the print version. He said he thinks the Web addition is equally valuable because of the hard work put into producing the paper, whether it’s a tangible copy or on a computer screen.
“We’re going to be able to count our Web subscriptions the same as our regular subscriptions,” Gill said. “And consequently we don’t care which kind they have as long as they’re buying it.”
Source Newspapers' Town Populations and Circulations
And they’re buying.
Edgcombe, Gill, Wade, Rhoades and John Weare, managing editor of the Alliance Times-Herald in Alliance, all reported their subscription rates were at least steady during this time of technological advancement and economic recession. All said they were confident in the ongoing success of their news organizations and their financial situations.
Community newspapers in Nebraska are doing so well, in fact, that new publications are starting up, according to Allen Beermann, executive director of the Nebraska Press Association, who cited a new paper in the Gering area as an example. Established readership is high in the state, too.
“Around 88 percent of the people in Nebraska weekly, daily or on a Sunday, read a community newspaper,” Beermann said. “So the community newspapers are doing quite well because they have a local news hole.”
That news hole is different from what metro dailies and national papers cover, Beermann said.
“[Community papers] are covering such things as 4-H, FFA, the various sports and athletic teams,” Beermann said. “They cover churches, they cover Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts and all of the local things that happen in the community becaue they chronicle the community’s history.”
And papers like The New York Times can’t fill that niche news hole.
“They don’t have enough reporters to get to all of the smaller communities around that they would cover,” Beermann said. “They simply could not cover, nor would it be of interest to their readers to cover some local school board or some city council or county board of commissioners.”
Community newspapers not only cover stories important to their audiences, but they also provide an affordable outlet for local business’ advertisements.
“We run grocery inserts. That’s the biggest thing,” Rhoades said. “We’ll carry 10, 12 of those in a paper, and there’s no way to effectively deliver those electronically. …[A lot] of grocery stores have theirs online, and apparently it’s just not that effective because they keep spending thousands and thousands of dollars a year to put them in the paper and get them printed.”
Edgecombe, who has owned the Minden newspaper for almost 17 years, said he stays in Minden for advertising, which has helped to weave his publication into the community and make it familiar to residents.
The subscribers are the most important part of running the paper to these newsmen.
“Community newspapers do not belong to the owners,” Gill said. “They belong to the people, the people who subscribe and the advertisers that support them. So you’ve got to back your community 100 percent to be successful in these small towns.”
As long as rural journalists continue to do that, community newspapers will survive.
“Newspapers are going to be around,” Rhoades said. “We’re not going away, and we won’t go quietly.”
No retirement for Nebraska newsman
Newspapers are Ted Gill’s second career. He never meant to get involved.
His reporting job at the Tri-City Tribune in Cozad, Neb., was only temporary, just so he and his family could get by until something else came along after his former employer, JM McDonald’s, a department store in Hastings, Neb., threatened to close.
“I’d had some journalism in high school, and I love photography, and I thought those were two attributes [that] would help me in the newspaper field,” Gill said. “So I pursued it and got lucky.”
He never bothered looking for something else.
Dean Dorsey, the publisher and editor of the paper in Cozad, assigned Gill to the paper’s Lexington, Neb., office, but not before training him for his new job.
“Dean taught me everything there was to know about the newspaper,” Gill said. “Any time I asked something, he’d try his best to answer. It was pretty much an education with Dean because you did everything.”
Gill’s writing needed polishing, and Dorsey taught him. Under Dorsey’s guidance, Gill learned how to sell ads and find stories.
In 1974, four years after becoming a journalist, Gill bought his own paper, the Arapahoe Public Mirror. His friend, Allan Gaskill, who owned the paper in Cambridge, Neb., encouraged him to make the purchase.
“He says, ‘Why don’t you come down and buy the Arapahoe paper? We’ll have a lot of fun,’” Gill said.
Some “banker friends” generously granted Gill loans. 
“You couldn’t do what we did today those days,” Gill said. “The banking regulations wouldn’t let you do it. But my banking friends helped me out considerable. They probably loaned me money when they shouldn’t have.”
But Gill never defaulted.
First came the redesign. New typeface, new headline style and size. A building remodel that involved replacing “everything from the front door to the back end,” Gill said. The staff stayed.
Right after he bought the Arapahoe paper, he fell and sprained his ankle.
“I don’t even remember [how],” he said. “Probably doing something I shouldn’t have been.”
Then, the town’s grain elevator burned down. Gill covered the story.
While he was recovering from his injury, a truck fell through a county bridge into a “rather good-sized canyon,” Gill said. “I hobbled out there on my crutches and so forth, and I got a picture of the rescue crew bringing the driver up.”
Five years later, Gill bought the Elwood Bulletin.
“It was the same story over there,” Gill said. This time, the story came with out-of-date, heavy press equipment, requiring a tractor to maneuver through the back door to remove the antiquated gadget.
In 1993, George Peterson, Gill’s friend from Loup City, told him the Ravenna News was for sale. They bought it together.
“We had a dream that whoever would live the longest would buy the other’s share,” Gill said. “George left us in, I think it was 2003 or [2004].”
Ravenna made three.
In 1995, Gill decided it was time to retire.
“[I] tried it, but didn’t like it,” Gill said.
He came out of retirement, kept writing stories and managing his papers.
Cut to June 1, 2009. “It didn’t look good” for the Clay County News in Sutton, Neb., Gill said.
“When a town loses its school, its bank or its newspaper, it’s on the downhill go,” Gill said. “It’s those combination of things that are the backbone of a town.”
He didn’t want to see that happen to Sutton, and he knew he could fix the paper. He said that less than a year later, the circulation increased about 25 percent, a result of writing stories people wanted to read and connecting with the community.
Gill doesn’t plan to retire again. At age “old enough to know better,” he said he plans to be buried with a computer in his lap.
“I didn’t know I had ink in my blood, but I guess I do.”
