♪♪ [Nebbe] Over the past two decades, the United States has lost over 3,000 newspapers, leaving nearly 55 million people without consistent local news coverage.

♪♪ ♪♪ [Nathan Countryman] As an editor of a small-town newspaper I'm wearing multiple hats.

I am person writing a majority of the stories that come in the newspaper.

♪♪ [Nathan Countryman] Circulation of our newspaper is roughly 3,000 I want to say.

People in these communities want to read about what is happening at their school boards, what is happening at their city councils, what is happening in their local schools.

It's important to highlight what is going well in your community.

It's important to highlight what needs improvement.

♪♪ [Nathan Countryman] Most of the comments I get in this community are, you seem to be everywhere in this community.

You seem to be at all these different events.

When do you ever sleep?

♪♪ [Nathan Countryman] Sure.

I would definitely entertain it.

It would be something I would be interested in reading.

♪♪ [Nebbe] Despite the challenges facing the journalism industry, the Daily Iowan, an independently run student newspaper at the University of Iowa saw an opportunity and purchased the Solon Economist and the Mount Vernon Lisbon Sun.

The deal is a win-win.

Students gain practical hands-on journalistic experience while the papers get help filling gaps in local news coverage.

Did we get photos for 80 hours?

[Jami Martin-Trainor] You can only do so much reporting and so much coverage when you're not allocated the proper resources.

The Daily Iowan is a learning lab, so you don't really go in having this deep repertoire of knowledge.

And so, when there is this support network and we're looking for people to get involved with these papers, it becomes a lot easier to broaden experiences and skills in a low stakes environment, but still getting published and actually reaching community members.

♪♪ Writing a profile story.

So, the first thing you want to do is do your research on a subject -- ♪♪ [Nebbe] Students in the School of Journalism take classes where they learn how to cover community news and high school sporting events.

♪♪ [Nebbe] With a little bit of editing, students earn bylines in the newspapers and some even have the opportunity to become interns.

♪♪ [Joel Kellar] I just spent the summer working with the Mount Vernon Lisbon Sun and the Solon Economist and I basically covered anything and everything that happened in those towns.

♪♪ [Joel Kellar] The best thing was they just kind of let me loose.

The first couple of weeks they were like, all right, let's just see what he comes back with.

So, that kind of forced me to be creative and tell stories in my own way and helped me find my voice.

♪♪ [Nathan Countryman] The first story I got back from Joel Kellar as an intern where he was covering the school board meeting is he had the nuts and bolts of the story, he had the things that were there.

He was just missing quotes from people that were talking at that meeting of hey, this is what actually gives this a little bit more flavor, a little bit more life.

(national anthem) (whistle blows) (crowd cheering) [Joel Kellar] You can't really learn it other than going out into the field and learning how to adapt.

(crowd cheering) [Emily Nyberg] Communities like Solon and smaller really tight knit communities, a lot of pride is placed in the people that come from those communities who are making an impact.

[Jami Martin-Trainor] People like to see themselves in the people that they're reading, which is why representation in journalism is so important and why community journalism is key to really show what is happening in these faces.

[Nathan Countryman] I think it goes back to helping build the community that you live in.

These are the faces you know.

These are the people that you encounter all the time.

It's important to show just the variety of reporting we can do in newspapers.

♪♪ [Nebbe] In the Daily Iowan documentary workshop, students take a deeper approach to storytelling.

Last year, they produced a story about a young Solon basketball player who became a Hawkeye.

That story ran in both the Daily Iowan and the Solon Economist.

[Emily Nyberg] Callie Levin is a women's basketball player from Solon, Iowa.

She currently plays for the Iowa women's basketball team.

I met Callie during the project that the Daily Iowan documentary workshop did on the Iowa women's basketball team.

[Jami Martin-Trainor] It's right in our back yard and with the acquisition of the Solon paper we sort of had conversations about how we wanted to give that some real estate in print for the Daily Iowan and the Solon Economist.

♪♪ [Emily Nyberg] Seeing the parts of community and life that we know happens but we don't often get to see is really crucial to understanding the people around us.

♪♪ [Jami Martin-Trainor] We're getting into people's lives with their consent and permission, making them feel comfortable enough to spend time with us and give us that access so that we can tell this full, well-rounded story.

[Nathan Countryman] It's something I'm excited about seeing as well.

What can we do with more students on the ground to help with our coverage?

[Joel Kellar] They want to put out good quality content.

They want to put out content that educates their communities.

People need this.

And I enjoy it, so I want to provide it to the people.

I want to educate the public as much as I can.

♪♪ [Jami Martin-Trainor] So, it has been great to have that support both from peers in the newsroom and our professional team to make sure that we're never settling for what could be a really good and well told story.

[Nathan Countryman] It helps me to have a reporter that I trust is reporting on those items.

[Emily Nyberg] When there's not the financial or personnel resources to do that, to have students and a student paper who are able to come in and provide that support so that those stories don't fall through the cracks and don't go unnoticed is really vital and it's something that I'm really honored to be able to be a part of.

♪♪