Moving forward: How newspapers get saved

Assuming you haven’t been living under a rock, you are well-versed in what is going on in the presidential election. 

This is because in 2024, much of the country is engaged in national news. And it is obviously important. But it is local news that is the bedrock of a community — where local taxes are going, who is spending them, what are the issues facing our children, seniors, and the local environment. 

We’re not going to get that from the national news, Google, or TikTok.

In an earlier column for this paper, I discussed the real possibility that the Reporter as we know it may disappear. The community response to the potential closing was overwhelming. And hopefully you’ve seen the recent good news that our publisher, Andrew Olsen, has decided to extend the print and online edition of the Reporter through 2025.  

Needless to say, we at the Reporter are thrilled with his decision. But we also feel strongly that we want our paper to continue well into the future.

Clearly, we’re not the first community in danger of losing their newspaper. This trend has been going on for years. Some papers have been absorbed into larger dailies or weeklies. Others have folded altogether. But some communities have found creative ways to revitalize their papers when faced with extinction.

The founders of our country saw newspapers as the watchdogs of democracy. This is why freedom of the press got top billing to be part of the First Amendment, along with other freedoms that we hold dear. But according to Peggy Abernathy, of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, community papers have now gone beyond the “watchdog function” envisioned by our nation’s founders, and have become the glue that binds a community together.

Ms. Abernathy calls communities with no source of local news “News Deserts.” As more and more towns are faced with that reality, civic-minded members of neighborhoods across the country have decided that keeping the public informed is a priority.

For example, the Bedford Citizen, in Bedford, Mass., rose from the ashes of the Bedford Minuteman, which had been owned by Gannett, the newspaper conglomerate.  When it closed in May 2022, subscriptions were down to just 445 and had been declining for years. Three members of the League of Women Voters founded the Citizen in 2012 because the Minuteman was not offering comprehensive coverage of town and community events. For them it was an unpaid gesture of love.  

Then a professional fundraiser donated her services and raised money from a number of different sources — voluntary memberships, foundation grants, advertisements on the website and a glossy town guide. Revenue shot up allowing for a small paid staff to emerge. By 2022, the Citizen’s newsletter reached 2,300 subscribers. This is outlined in a book by journalists Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy called, “What Works in Community News.”

Clegg and Kennedy also talk about the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Storm Lake, Iowa. Storm Lake, in the northwest corner of the state, is in hog country. Anyone writing in that part of the country must know about farms. The story of how the paper was saved is so compelling that a documentary was made about it in 2021.

The paper suffered from a near-death experience due to declining advertising and greater losses with COVID. The documentary demonstrates how a small-town paper can stitch together rural communities through good reporting. A newly formed nonprofit, called the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, raises money to fund grants for a small group of nonprofit newspapers in rural communities in Iowa, of which Storm Lake is one.  

The nonprofit achieved 501(c) (3) tax status in 2021, something the Reporter was considering prior to the publisher’s commitment to keep publishing. The grants keep the papers afloat, but the commitment to survival comes from the family that owns it, with excellent reporting. Iowa has turned more to the political right in recent years, but the editorials need to remain neutral because of the nonprofit status.  

The main way to keep a newspaper afloat is through increased advertising revenue. This is easier said than done, particularly in an age where print advertising does not bring in the revenue that it did in the past. But to achieve effective advertising, different markets require a different focus. For example, the upscale community of Pinehurst, N. C. has created three slick monthly magazines, two telephone directories and a local search engine. 

For the economically disadvantaged community south of Nashville, the Daily Herald, every $1,000 of advertising is valued. The paper has developed online services for the community and local merchants as well as “niche’ print magazines focused on health and real estate. Abernathy discusses this in detail in her book, “Saving Community Journalism.”

So, what does all this mean for Shelter Island? We have our paper for now, but cannot take our eye off the ball on how to preserve it. Increasing subscriptions and advertising are the obvious answers. But doing so on a small island with a finite population is challenging. To begin with, all concerned Shelter Islanders should convince their neighbors to subscribe as well as the people they know who may not live here but have an interest in what happens here. North and South fork establishments need to know that their businesses are important to our community and taking a stake in our paper will only help them. Additionally, the paper should be sold all over the Island in retail as well as eating establishments.

We cannot become complacent. We were given a year and appreciate that immensely.  But a year goes by very quickly and our efforts to save our paper must continue.  This is not the end, but a new beginning.