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Looking for some ideas on how to turn your newspaper around?
Search no further than this story on the Malheur Enterprise, the weekly newspaper in Vale, Ore., which has made headlines in recent months for its prize-winning stories and tenacity in surviving — actually, thriving — at a time when too many people inside and outside the industry have given up newspapers for dead.
It helps, of course, that Les Zaitz is at the helm. But I know for a fact there are talented, experienced, dedicated editors, reporters and publishers all over this country who have the same kind of grit. We just don’t hear about them very often.
A big part of the formula is seeing clearly the mission of the local newspaper.
In fact, it was Zaitz’s wife, Scotta Callister, who set the course for the first year:
She got rid of press releases that masqueraded as news. She added an editorial page, improved the format and made other ‘nuts and bolts’ changes.
While big-city publications struggle to maintain an identity, small-town newspapers need only look outside the front door to find theirs.
Here’s Zaitz:
I’ve always been struck that as the newspaper industry went through grinding change in the past decade everyone was struggling for answers and the answers typically came from major news organizations. The rest of us were just expected to scale down what they were doing to fit our operations. Well, what if we turned that around? There are a hell of a lot more smaller newsrooms than big ones in the country.
Digging around in a box of Ande Engleman’s old stuff here in the office the other day, I came across this Jim Day cartoon from 1990. It sums up the attitude readers always have had about their local newspaper.
