The glue that holds the community together 

By Peter W. Wagner

Little Johnny Jones hit a home-run at his pee-wee baseball game last Friday, but most of the town won’t know about it until they see the story and photo when the town’s newspaper comes out next Wednesday.

The school board, meanwhile, hired a new high-school principal at its Thursday night monthly meeting, but most of the community won’t learn the details until they open Wednesday’s weekly paper.

And, the local department store, celebrating they’ve been in business 50 years, is planning a giant sale. But shoppers won’t know about it until the paper arrives in the mail on Wednesday.   

Twenty years ago, communities depended on their hometown paper for all the local news. If it was in the paper, they knew it was relevant, correct and what would be the topics of discussion at the local coffee shop and afternoon bridge game.

Plus, it was delivered in a well edited, easy-to-hold package designed to make reading it exciting and easy for the reader.

Still playing the role

Randy Evans, the longtime state editor at the Des Moines, Iowa, Register says many local newspapers still play that role today and will for many years to come.

Evans, the current executive director of Iowa’s Freedom of Information Council, visited our Sheldon office Wednesday. He’d driven up from Des Moines to update our editors and reporters on the laws and procedures needed to obtain hidden or withheld public records.

After the meeting Evans stopped by my office to discuss the current state of the newspaper business. He is an old friend of the family and he and our son Jay worked together at the Register before Jay’s premature death from cancer.

Together we mourned the loss of Jay and the large metro newspaper he loved and respected.

The Register, Evans thought, had less that a fourth of the 300,000 daily subscribers it served back when he and Jay worked there. 

And the reason for the loss in readership? Evans says it is the lack of original, local content. He praised Iowa Information for the size and commitment of our N’West Iowa REVIEW news team.

“The problem with many individually produced on-line news sites,” he said, “is they lack credibility.” Anyone can create a story, he said, and many can read it for free when it is on the internet. But who can be sure it isn’t “fake news.”

The glue

Local newspapers give life and breath to a community. Their reporting of events, especially those at the local schools — from grade schools to a local college — is often the glue that holds a community together,

Corporate chains often attempt to apply the same “one template” approach to every paper in every market. But what works in one large city usually doesn’t fit the needs and ideals of another metro community. Plus, large operations often shift editors and publishers from location to location without much consideration for the value they add with their extended knowledge of the history, political make-up and expectations of each different market.

Home-owned and managed community papers are usually personally overseen by the very people who serve as the publishers and editors. Those vested interest managers stay in tune with their readers and advertisers and the very heart of the community,

“The best existing newspapers,” says Evans, “strive to provide advertisers with the results they need and expect and their readers with a smorgasbord of local information to attract, hold and satisfy their interests”

Circulation figures are often misconstrued. Listed simply as homes delivered to, they don’t take into consideration the number of readers in each home. Also, copies often serve two or more households as they are passed from mother to daughter or a brother to the home of his sister.

Evans and I don’t believe the printed newspaper will ever completely disappear from public importance. It may change to provide even more unique local content, rise to even more creative design and in the way it is paid for.

But there will always be a need for those scrapbook and refrigerator pictures of Johnny Jones hitting his home-run and of photos and stories of other hometown heroes like him.

Peter Wagner

Peter W. Wagner is publisher of the award winning N’West Iowa REVIEW and 12 additional publications. He is often called “The Idea Man” and is a regular presenter at state press Association and publishing group conventions and seminars. You can contact him regarding his programs “100 Ideas for Fun and Profit” or “Selling Print Advertising the Wagner Way” by emailing pww@iowainformation.com.