Tim Waltner was an enthusiastic tour guide as we drove the streets of Freeman, S.D., population 1,317, on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon in late October.
Waltner, longtime publisher of the Freeman Courier, one of the best weekly newspapers in his state if not the nation, proudly showed off the new public library next to his office and the new pharmacy across the street. We paused in front of an abandoned garment factory that has gained new life as professional offices. We drove partway around the Wildcat Manufacturing plant as Tim pointed out examples of the screening machinery the company makes. And we saw the beautiful Freeman Public Schools complex, where 375 students, kindergarten through high school, are taught in modern buildings that would make many larger communities jealous.
Tim was typical of the small-town publishers I met with during a week visiting more than a dozen community newspapers in “east river" South Dakota, plus one each in Iowa and Nebraska. The largest was the 12,329-circulation Watertown Public Opinion, the only daily on my itinerary. The smallest were weeklies in the 1,000-circulation range. The Timber Lake Topic, published by former schoolteachers Jim and Kathy Nelson, serves an isolated town of only 183 households but boasts a far-flung circulation of 1,332.
Most publishers were proud of their communities and anxious to talk about the good things happening in them. Several showed off recent improvements to their buildings and equipment. Everyone talked about improving their web sites or buying new ones, which, as a salesman of web sites, was the purpose of my trip.
Nobody bemoaned the supposed “death” of the newspaper industry, because in small-town America, most newspapers are doing just fine, thank you.
Everywhere I traveled, I asked, “How’s business?”
“Not bad,” one publisher said. “OK,” said another. “Status quo,” said a third.
It isn’t that small-town newspapers are recession-proof. Those that relied heavily on real-estate and automotive advertising before the recession are getting by on less of it now. In the smaller towns, those car ads often came from dealers in bigger cities, dealers who cut fringe-market newspapers from their ad budgets as the economy tightened.
In one town near the Minnesota border, the publisher of a 1,500-circulation weekly worried about the fate of a family-owned GM dealer on the edge of the town. Yet, even this town of 1,300 still has a Ford dealer downtown.
The newspapers in America’s smallest towns – especially those towns too distant to be sucked into the economic woes of larger cities – don’t suffer as much from the lows of a bad economy and don’t benefit as much from the highs of a good economy. Business generally is steady in good times and bad.
In Onida, a 740-population county seat northeast of the state capital of Pierre, The Watchman launched a new web site the day before my visit. Publisher Curt Olson and sales rep Amanda Fanger told me how all but one online ad position was sold before the launch, an incredible success story.
The publishers I met with aren’t immune to thinking about the future of their industry, but it isn’t the first thing on their minds. In South Dakota, the big worry in late October was whether the farmers could get in the wet fields in time to save the soybean crop. (They did.)
Other worries are more mundane, like how to cover two football games at the same time, or whether anyone is donating blood when the photographer shows up to take a picture.
Yes, newspapers die in small towns when economies shrivel to nothing, but newspapers still start in small towns, too. The weekly Cooper County Voice debuted Nov. 10 in Boonville, Mo., population 8,200, in competition with the 90-year-old Boonville Daily News.
Small-town newspapers have a couple of big advantages over their big-city brethren, the papers that are crying the blues the most.
The first is that more small papers are family-owned, and even the small papers that are group-owned tend to operate as if their ownership is local. The best publishers at group-owned newspapers in small markets are considered “owners” of their papers in the eyes of their readers.
But the best advantage small newspapers have is their stature in the community. Through a century or more of positive service, both in the pages of their product and in personal volunteer work, most of them have earned the rare status of “community institution.”
These small papers are so well-respected in their communities that citizens can’t imagine life without them. They are their papers. Just like a member of the family, these papers are cussed or loved depending on the week, but they can’t be ignored, and they won’t be allowed to die. They will continue to serve their communities for years to come regardless what the future holds for big-city dailies.
Back in South Dakota, Tim Waltner showed me the new photo studio son Jeremy uses at the back of the Courier office. Publisher Larry Atkinson gave me a tour of the Mobridge Tribune’s beautiful new office, including its state-of-the-art commercial-printing equipment. Watertown publisher Mark Roby showed how the Public Opinion’s plant neatly utilizes a former Coca-Cola bottling plant. Kathy Nelson talked about her work with the Timber Lake Museum next door and, in particular, a 672-page town centennial book that will be released this month. Publisher Doug Card of The Britton Journal explained how his town, population 1,328, built a new swimming pool. Tribune & Register publisher Becky Tycz told me that most of the storefronts in Tyndall, population 1,239, are full.
Life goes on in a world where newspapers have no intention of dying.
Gary Sosniecki is a regional sales manager for TownNews.com specializing in weekly newspapers. He has owned three weekly newspapers and published a small daily in Missouri during a 34-year newspaper career. He may be reached at gsosniecki@townnews.com.
