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Matt Paxton
Last week, a friend contacted me a nd told me that his h ome t ow n community newspaper in Iowa had announced that they were closing. His message said, “I felt like my old friend just died. Very hard to take. I thought to myself ‘now there is nobody who will record the goings-on in this town anymore.’” This is being repeated in towns and cities all across America.
According to the Associated Press, an average of 2.5 newspapers a week closed in 2023. That’s over 125 communities losing that local connection that a local newspaper provides.
But, there are some positive signs, though not nearly enough. Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism’s Local News Initiative highlights some of these ‘Bright Spots’ on its webpage at localnewsinitiative. northwestern.edu/ projects/state-of-local-news/ explore/#/brightSpots. Several of these are in Virginia, including the nearby Recorder in Monterey. The Recorder has traditionally covered Highland and Bath Counties, and recently has beefed up its coverage of Alleghany County, adding a reporter to its staff and netting additional advertising revenue. In an area of low broadband coverage, the print edition of The Recorder remains a vital source of information for three of Virginia’s least populated counties.
A recent start-up is the Roanoke Rambler, an online local, investigative and literary newsletter and website based in Roanoke which went live in 2021. Started by a former Roanoke Times reporter, the site features the work of a number of local free-lance journalists tackling local business, environment, government and politics, food and culture, and investigative journalism. Take a look at www.roanokerambler.com.
The Rambler isn’t a nonprofit entity. It sells sponsorships and advertising but also accepts donations. The site is behind a pay wall but the weekly newsletter is free. The site’s About Us page says, “ Part of the experiment of The Rambler is to encourage community members to get back in the habit of paying for local news. We believe a committed reader base is a more reliable and sustainable source of revenue – which will allow us to grow and provide you with more and better journalism.”
Charlottesville Tomorrow is another digital-only publication, but its business model is different from The Rambler’s – it’s a 501(c)3 nonprofit entity, relying on grants, memberships and donations. Their website indicates that they have over 9,500 email subscribers, and 900 individual donors. In December, Charlottesville Tomorrow was the recipient of one of the first Press Forward initiative grants totaling $350,000.
Charlottesville Tomorrow describes itself as a community-driven, socially conscious news organization. Look for it at www.cvilletomorrow. org.
So, while there is much to be concerned about vis-à-vis the state of local journalism, there are some encouraging things happening right in our neighborhood.
To follow up on the story on the newspaper closing in Iowa, I saw just this weekend that a buyer has been found. The paper expects to have a limited edition on newsstands this week with full publication resuming in coming weeks.
I wanted to provide a few examples of some positive things happening in local journalism, and while these are gratifying to see, the overall trend is still very disturbing. However, these several examples show that there are a lot of new ideas and models for sustaining local journalism springing up. Some will work, and some won’t, and much will depend on the community that the medium is in. I’ll be following all of these to see how they’re doing.
