Solving the Rural News Platform Problem

[Colleen Bradford Krantz] The sun has barely risen when four women begin their work in the back room of the Hillsboro Free Press in Hillsboro, Kansas.

Within an hour, they are joined by middle and high school students who will deliver the papers – under the watchful eye of school employees – as part of a life skills class.

[Paula Jost, paraeducator, Marion County Special Education Cooperative] We were able to get one of the paper routes so we come and pick up the papers and fold them on Tuesday mornings and then deliver ...one of the paper routes…. It teaches them work ethic and that’s what our classroom is about.

[Krantz] None of this might have been possible if it weren’t for Joey and Lindsey Young. The couple took over the Hillsboro Free Press, and run two other south central  Kansas newspapers during a period when many might have looked at industry trends and fled.

[Joey Young, Co-Owner, Kansas Publishing Ventures] It’s just that I really liked it. And it was youth and ignorance. It was just that abundance of 20-something-year-old attitude that you are indestructible and that older people don’t know what they are doing. I think there are certain things that we did better. And then there were a lot of things that I needed to be humbled with and that I was, you know, just flat out incorrect about.

[Krantz] It was 2012 when the Youngs bought their first newspaper, The Clarion, in Andale, Kansas.

[Joey Young] Lindsey and I lived like paupers. We saved my copy desk salary for six to eight months, something like that. We sold a car to get enough down payment and enough money to put in the bank, which was still not enough, to purchase the paper.

[Krantz] The Youngs – with their money and time invested in keeping local journalism alive – are part of a shrinking group. According to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, the United States lost more than one-third of its newspapers over the past 20 years. The nation now has 208 counties without any local news source at all, areas Medill calls “news deserts.” 

If given the choice, Joey Young wouldn’t change the path that led him from his job at a daily newspaper to where the couple operates their Kansas Publishing Ventures out of the Harvey County Now newspaper office in Newton. But he would change the conversation about local journalism if he could.

[Joey Young] All I hear is this really depressing statistic that everybody likes to throw out to claim that newspapers are dying. Never is there a follow-up to where like, "Hey, that town lost 50 percent of its population over the last 20 years."If you’re losing Main Street businesses, do I think that there’s a magical answer for sustaining journalism in your community? No, I don’t. You have to figure out how your community is going to survive. If your community is going to survive, a newspaper will survive.

[Krantz] To make sure community members and business owners keep a bit of their focus on their local newspapers, the Youngs and their employees have done everything from a Halloween-themed toy ghost treasure hunt in downtown businesses, to hosting an annual concert in a local park, to a Friday community happy hour in the Newton newspaper office.

[Joey Young] We used to have a Democrat elected to the statehouse, which represented Newton. He came for a Beer Friday. So did the local head of the Republican party. And we were all just hanging out having a beer. And I was like "This is great.: You know? This is America. This is the way things should be …having civil conversation…being a part of the community, which I think is special.

[Krantz] He knows not everyone is interested in being engaged in their local community but enough still see value in it.

[Kelsey Nicklesen, Newton, Kansas] A lot of these small towns, you know, the people who live there grew up there and know just about everybody. When you have a local newspaper, you can connect to those people you’ve known. You can see if someone you know is like the homecoming king or queen, who is in the games as far as sports, what kind of local events are going on like festivals.

[Krantz] But the financial struggles are real. When paper prices spiked during COVID, the company struggled to break even. Instead of suffering quietly, the Youngs were honest with their readers and put out a survey to see whether they wanted to rely strictly on the digital versions, or pay a little more to continue the printed versions.

[Joey Young] Nine out of ten of our readers said they wanted a print paper and that they would pay more.

[Krantz] Nearly 90 percent of subscribers stuck with them when they went ahead and doubled the subscription fee.

Throughout their dozen years as publishers, the Youngs have struggled with recruiting journalists as some aren’t sure about living in smaller communities. They are not alone with this challenge as other rural news outlets also struggled with new recruits. As a former high school journalism teacher, Lindsey came up with a plan for non-journalists called “Earn Your Press Pass.” The training is now available through press associations in 21 states.

[Lindsey Young, Co-Owner, Kansas Publishing Ventures] This was just a way of saying: here’s someone who has lived in our community for 20 years, they’ve put kids through the school district, they work here, they know everybody. Let’s just teach them how to write and do a good interview and now they can be an asset for the newspaper.

[Krantz] Lindsey cringes to think of a future where more counties become “news deserts.” She believes that “ghost papers,” where the product is still there but with no local reporters, are not much better.

[Lindsey Young] We take a lot of pride in just making sure that local governments are doing the right thing. Just having a person in the back of the room, it’s amazing how much that holds people accountable to make sure they are doing the right thing. So I feel like we are protecting our taxpayers too.

[Krantz] Ultimately, it’s also the upholding of the newsroom’s traditional task of being the recorders of the “first rough draft of history” that matters to her. 

[Lindsey Young] I think for us as community newspapers, we are the only recorders of history. There isn’t anybody else who is writing this stuff down or reporting on it..Being such an intimate part of a community and being a place where people trust you with their stories and with what’s going on, I think that’s such a gift and it’s humbling and it’s really fabulous to be part of. So I’m absolutely 100 percent am head-over-heels in love with the industry.

By Colleen Bradford Krantz, colleen.krantz@iowapbs.org