(upbeat music) Welcome to "At Issue."

I'm H Wayne Wilson.

Thank you as always for joining us.

This time, the conversation centers on local news, specifically local newspapers.

In 2004, there were nearly 9,000 newspapers in America.

In the intervening 15 years, 1,779 of those papers shut down.

That's 20% of the weekly and daily newspapers in America shut down in a 15-year period of time.

60 of those shutdowns were daily newspapers, which left us with what were called newspaper deserts.

We're gonna talk about how we're filling that void with people who are in the trenches doing this.

Susan DeVilder is with us.

Susan is with The Kewanee Voice, where she is the managing editor.

Thank you for joining us.

Mike Berry is here.

Mike is the publisher of The Kewanee Voice.

We'll talk a little bit about what The Kewanee Voice is in just a moment.

Jeff Lampe is here.

Jeff used to be with the Peoria Journal Star as the outdoors reporter, but what year did you venture out?

- I lose track of times sometimes.

(H Wayne laughs) I was there for 13 years.

I had a great job hunting and fishing and writing about it.

And then we bought a magazine and then since then, started two newspapers.

- And he is the publisher of The Weekly Post and the Prairie News.

Thank you for being with us.

And also with us is Tim Franklin.

Tim is with us from the Northwestern University campus where he's the director of the Medill Local News Initiative.

Thank you for joining us.

- Good to be with you.

Thanks for having me.

- And let's start with you, Susan, because the Kewanee newspaper doesn't...

I guess technically it still exists.

- It does, but it's probably what you'd call a ghost paper.

It exists.

There's news.

It's on the stands every day, but there's only national and state news on there.

And obits and lotto numbers, that's pretty much what you get when you pick up a copy of the Star Courier.

- So there's a void of local news.

- [Susan] There absolutely is.

- And I might point out that if you go to the website, the website for the Geneseo Paper, the Kewanee Paper, the McDonough County Paper and the Canton Daily Ledger are all exactly the same.

So that's a major concern, Jeff, is that we're losing what had been the source of local news.

- And there's still news out there that people want to know about and in the vacuum, they create misinformation.

We've talked a little bit about that earlier, you know, misinformation, facts aren't accurate.

There's no one covering political meetings.

There's no one telling you who to vote for or why to vote for certain people.

And so it's kind of a very important thing to the whole fabric of our society, having this information out there in a reliable source where you can, you know, somewhat trust them.

- I want to get into the two different ways that you got into the local news business and why you did that.

But first I wanna turn to Tim Franklin up at Northwestern.

Tim, I mentioned some numbers at the start, 20% drop in published newspapers in America over a 15-year period.

You have been looking at what's called the Local News Initiative studying this.

What's your takeaway?

What's the condition of newspapers in America from your perspective?

- Overall, I would say it's dire, but it's not hopeless.

So there are now about 70 million Americans, about 20% of the US that live in counties that are either news deserts where there's no source of local news.

There are about 206 entire counties that are news deserts.

And then there are a number of counties where there's just one local news source left in those counties.

And so this is a serious problem and, you know, it's a problem for democracy, not just for the news industry.

There's been recent research that shows that in news desert communities, that civic participation goes down, turnout in local elections goes down.

The number of local candidates running in elections goes down, that government spending goes up, that government borrowing costs go up.

That corruption rises because there are not watchdogs in those communities who are covering local public officials.

So there are very tangible implications to what is a local news crisis.

- Let me turn to Mike Berry because Tim mentioned voter turnout drops.

Can you give us an example of that?

Has that been the case?

- Sure, just about a month ago, there was a local municipal election in Kewanee, which is a town of 12,500 people.

And the leading vote getter got 678 votes.

So I don't know what percentage that is.

But it's really low, man.

Normally, I think there probably would've been a couple thousand votes cast in that election.

- Let me turn to Susan again because, and Mike, please join in this conversation.

You are not a print paper.

- We are not.

We are strictly online.

- But you're serving the same purpose as a print paper.

You've gone nonprofit online newspaper.

- Yes.

Yep.

- And both of you are former employees of the Kewanee paper?

- Yes.

- We are.

Yep.

- [H Wayne] Why did you decide to do this?

- I think we were both working towards the end where we kind of saw the writing on the wall with the Star Courier.

And in December, Mike was told that what we did, correspondents, we had been working as correspondents, was no longer necessary; it was no longer required.

And he and I just both decided that we were gonna go down with this ship.

We were gonna write to the bitter end with Star Courier until they told us to stop.

Well, in December, they told us to stop and they said that they would get back to us in January if they wanted our services any longer.

And he and I said, "Nope, this is not gonna work for us."

So we started a Facebook page and we became NewsBreak contributors and we would use our Facebook page to link to NewsBreak where we could get, you know, local news out.

So we started doing that, but we had to really prioritize our coverage because, I mean, there was just two of us and I had a full-time job.

So that's sort of how it started.

But later we would learn about nonprofit news and then that's how we got started doing the nonprofit.

- And adding to that, and you were at the Star Courier for how long?

- About 43 years.

- So long history.

- Mm-hmm.

- How difficult was it to make the transition in terms of providing news to Kewanee residents?

- Essentially, it's the same job.

We just go out and gather the news from the typical sources, come back and write the stories the same way I always did at the newspaper, and it's just instead of sending it out to the back shop and having it type set and go on the press, you just go to a website and do a couple clicks, and it goes out on the web.

- But the difficulty is there's only two of you and there's more than enough news for two people to go out and find.

- Absolutely, yes.

- And then you have to add to that advertising.

So how do you balance all that?

- Well, we don't... (chuckles) we just gotta go from day to day, I think.

But it seems to have been worked out so far.

We're trying to get some help, particularly with the ad sales end of it, which we're not really good at.

- Ideally there should be a wall between editorial and advertising, but at this point, there really can't be.

So Mike and I have had to kind of do double duty and go out and get ads when we can and find sponsors and get donations and it's problematic, but I think we're managing it okay for now.

- Jeff, reflecting back to when you started The Weekly Post, you added the Prairie News later.

What was your trepidation when you, "Well, I had a full-time job at the Journal Star.

Now I'm out there alone"?

- And we had a magazine, I purchased an existing magazine, a hunting and fishing magazine, Heartland Outdoors, which no longer publishes, so we had that.

But I love newspapers.

I mean, I always say I'm an ink-stained wretch and I have been all my life, you know, I mean, from being a paperboy early on.

And I missed the immediacy of being in a community where you give people the news and they want to know about things, you know, and so my trepidations were millions.

My wife was furious.

She didn't think it was a good idea.

(chuckles) You know, because the money factor is huge in all of this, but we've been fortunate now for 11 years to have great support from advertisers and the community to be able to make it.

And I think the thing that is the most gratifying is that people still want to know what's going on in the communities, and when you can help provide that, they appreciate it.

It's when you don't provide it that they get mad.

You know, people still get mad at me about the Journal Star sometimes.

I used to work there.

I thought it was a tremendous newspaper.

I don't think it's a tremendous newspaper anymore.

I don't have anything to do with it anymore.

But they still tell me, "Why isn't the Journal Star better?"

Well, I don't know.

I can't help them.

But we can do what we can in our own ways, in our own publications and digital publications.

- To kind of pick up what he just said, the Star Courier, you know, really left a gaping hole in local news.

And, you know, they really didn't even announce that, "Hey, we're no longer gonna give you local news."

Just one day they stopped providing it.

And I think people have been very angry at Star Courier and at Gannett for what they've done.

And so Mike and I are kind of honeymooning off that because people are very happy with us and that we're there and that we're filling, you know, this need in the community.

So we're in a honeymoon phase right now.

- The one thing that kind of shook me a little bit was a couple months ago, I went to a local supermarket.

I'm in the parking lot walking in, and an elderly gentleman comes up to me and says, "You're Mike Berry, aren't you?"

I says, yeah.

He says, "Well, I live in," another little town someplace, "and I just hate to see what's happening with the Star Courier; there's nothing in it anymore."

And I talked to him for a while and finally he said, "You know, I've been a subscriber to the Star Courier for 60 years, and I just yesterday called and canceled my subscription."

That's the kind of thing that's happening.

You know, that kind of brought it home to me.

- Let me turn back to Tim Franklin again, because you've probably seen similar situations across the country as you've studied this.

What's your take on the disservice that's occurring with the ghost newspapers, if I may use that term?

- Yeah, no, it's a good question.

So in addition to the news deserts, we estimate there are hundreds and likely thousands of so-called ghost newspapers.

These are news organizations that have effectively very little or no local content in them.

There are a couple of markets around the country, one in California and one in Minnesota, where there are reportedly no reporters at the local news organization at all.

So the problem is actually worse than even news deserts.

And then the question is, what fills the void in those news deserts?

And so we've seen the rise of these so-called pink slime local news sites.

They're kind of fake newspapers or fake news sites that are owned and operated by partisan ideological organizations, in some cases owned by corporations that look like news organizations.

But they're really just propaganda that's being pushed out there.

So there's kind of this wildfire of misinformation and disinformation that's out there too.

So, you know, it is a serious problem without a simple answer.

I admire the work that's being done by my fellow guests on the show.

And we're seeing the rise of these nonprofit and local digital-only outlets.

There are now more than 650-700 of them around the country.

And I think we're going to see more and more of those, but we also need to provide support, whether it's philanthropic support, whether it's government support for these organizations so that they can grow and prosper.

- Jeff, if you could expand on what Tim was just talking about with regard to the disinformation, the misinformation.

What's your experience in terms of people looking for news at other sites, social media sites, what have you, Instagram, Facebook, with vis-a-vis The Weekly Post or the Prairie News?

- We had an example just the other day.

Movie crews came to Elmwood, which is a town of 2,000, which doesn't happen very often, to film an independent film.

And that was on a Tuesday and the next day our paper had not come out yet.

And everyone in town, who didn't really know what was going on, was convinced that American Pickers, the antique buying group, was in town.

They saw cameras, and that's the assumption they made.

It's a pretty harmless thing to be wrong about, but it's completely wrong, and it's just an example of... And this was spread through Facebook and someone making an assumption.

It was wrong, it was totally wrong.

And so when the paper came out, people said, "Oh, it's a movie.

Okay."

You know, just move on with their day.

But the same kind of thing happens in a lot of ways.

You know, you hear rumors about what happened at the school board meeting last night.

Well, often they're wrong, (laughs) you know, and it gets spread and then it spreads on itself.

- Well, and if you look at the masthead of your two papers, it says serving the communities of... and I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's like 15 for The Weekly Post and there's 20 or more for The Prairie News.

How do you keep tabs on all that when people wanna know what happened at the village council meeting, when they all meet on Monday nights?

- You know, and I don't mean to be hard on the newspaper industry 'cause I have a lot of good friends who still work at The Journal Star and other papers.

A lot of them are unemployed now, unfortunately.

And so you can lean on some of these people to help cover news because people who like to cover news, like to cover news.

So you lean on them and then, you know, you really need to be there in person because getting the minutes from a meeting is not at all the same as being at a meeting, let's say for instance, you know?

It makes it difficult.

It's hard to get enough reporters to cover everything that's going on, which was the appeal of daily papers, you know, that was why they were so good.

They had so much information.

There was something for everyone in them because they covered everything.

- And difficult for you at The Kewanee Voice in terms of getting the news and not secondhand?

- Oh no, for example, I've been to all the city council meetings since then.

We've covered every school board meeting, you know, the local government, the park board has a meeting every month.

So, yeah, we just cover things the way we always did.

But we just don't print 'em on a newspaper.

We put 'em on a website.

- [H Wayne] And that's difficult with two people?

- Yeah.

- Well, we're fortunate in that we do get a lot of press releases from various organizations kind of keeping us abreast of what's happening in the community, and we're able to use that a lot to get news tips.

We also have people that call us.

We got a really good story, when we first started, we broke a lot of news in our first...

When we launched on May 2nd, we broke so many stories that had just been laying out there and no one had gotten them.

So we were able to do that and we broke, I think, at least four stories that no one knew about, for instance, the YMCA's building a new facility.

No one knew about that until we reported it.

Mike, didn't we have a few other stories that we broke?

- We had the one on...

There's three car dealerships in Kewanee, and two of them were purchased by a Florida mega dealership.

And we were the exclusive on that one.

- And the tip came to us by someone walked into our office at the senior center and said, "Hey, did you guys hear this?"

And we had not, but Mike was all over it.

And within a couple of days he had tracked down the story and we were able to report it.

So we do have people coming to us.

We do get press releases and we're able to do that.

- And those kinds of stories lead to clicks on your website.

- We hope.

(chuckles) - We hope.

We hope.

We're not very good at... We have Google Analytics on our computer.

And I tried to, I was actually sent a couple reports the other day and I couldn't really...

I need help maybe looking at it to see what it actually means, but I'll get there, I'll get there.

- Let me turn back to Tim, because Tim, you're a member of a task force that Senator Stadelman up in Rockford formed.

It was legislation that passed in the state legislature, and it is the Local Journalism Task Force.

What is the purpose and what kind of help might Susan, Mike, Jeff see from this?

- Sure.

So it's still early stages.

It's about a 23-member task force, and it's a bipartisan task force with members from both parties as well as a couple of academics as well as industry folks.

And so what we're looking at is we're looking at the problem and the extent of the problem in Illinois of local news deserts and lack of local news and information.

And then Senator Stadelman has said that... who's the chair, has directed us to work with him in developing a package of legislation that could be introduced in the legislature early next year.

And so, you know, there have been bills pending in Washington to try to address the local news crisis.

Those unfortunately did not go anywhere.

So the action really is now at the state level.

And there are about a dozen states that either have legislation pending or that have passed legislation to help the local news industry, including California and Washington State and New Mexico and New Jersey.

And so, you know, that legislation kind of runs the gamut.

It includes directing state advertising dollars to local news organizations so this is money that was going to be spent anyway on advertising.

And it's directing it to local news outlets.

There's legislation that's been passed that provides tax breaks for local news organizations, incentives for small businesses to advertise in local news outlets, tax breaks for people who subscribe or become members of local news organizations to try to use the tax system to spur local news sustainability and local news activity.

There's discussion of a replanting strategy that would provide incentives for local owners to acquire lo local newspapers and news organizations from chains and from large organizations.

So we don't know yet where this is gonna go.

We're still gathering information, but the goal is to try to push forward some legislation early next year.

- I wanna stay with you, Tim, and talk about corporate ownership.

There are large corporations now, GateHouse Media merged with Gannett and Gannett still oversees...

I don't even know how many newspapers they have, Lee Enterprises, et cetera.

What kind of impact has that had on what has resulted in newspaper deserts and ghost newspapers?

- Yes, so Gannett, which is the largest chain in the country and owns a number of newspapers in Illinois, is a company that is saddled with a lot of debt, about $1.25 billion in debt from an acquisition by GateHouse Media, which occurred about three years ago.

And so they're now having to repay that debt at the same time that revenue is declining.

So it's not a good combination to owe a bunch of money and then have less money coming in the door at the same time.

So the result of that has been some very significant staff cuts at Gannett publications across the country.

And Lee Enterprises and McClatchy, two other large chains that are also owned by equity funds or in large part by equity funds.

So they have responsibilities to pay back their investors in those companies.

And at a time when revenue is declining, that has become more of a challenge.

And so they've been trying to wring cost out of the organizations and the result of that has been less coverage, less local news coverage at organizations.

And one of the problems of that is that just 10 years ago, 75-80% of revenue for local newspapers and news organizations came from advertising.

Now more than half of revenue at most organizations comes from readers through subscriptions.

So at a time when these organizations are reliant on reader revenue, they need to have a product that people are willing to pay for, willing to plunk down that Visa card so that people will subscribe and continue to subscribe.

And if you're providing less news and information, it follows that, you know, it's gonna be a challenge to grow subscriptions or memberships.

- So let me turn to in-studio guests, and Jeff, if you wanna start with regard to that particular issue of people want news.

Then the advertisers say, "Well, people are going to The Weekly Post," let's say.

Is there a correlation?

Do you go to advertisers, potential advertisers and say, "Well, here are the stories we're doing.

We're local and here's what people are saying"?

- You know, I think it's a pretty basic thing.

If people want to pick up your product or go online to see your product, then it makes sense to advertise with that product.

When they stop doing it, they don't wanna advertise anymore.

We don't have much... We have very good advertisers.

They've stayed with us.

But I was gonna bring up another subject that's really bothered me in this whole thing, and it's a very basic one, obituaries, okay?

People don't necessarily think of them as news.

I think they're news, when someone dies and not only that, it's a historic component that people keep.

They put in their bibles.

They put in their drawers, in their dresser.

Well, we're losing that.

When a paper wants to charge you a thousand dollars for an obituary, that's crazy, you know?

And so we try to provide low cost obituaries, but I think that's just one sample.

You know, I had a kid who played basketball, okay?

And back in the day, they won a regional championship, it would've been headlines; it would've been a big story.

And he would've felt great about that, and I would've felt great about it; that's gone.

That doesn't happen anymore in these big papers.

So many points of life are not being celebrated.

So anyway, we try to provide that celebration, that obituary, and then the advertisers respond because it's an effective way to get in front of people still.

- Susan, you're online, you're not print, but it's the same philosophy.

- As far as?

- Obituaries or things that matter to the local reader.

- We have spoken with all of the funeral homes in town, and our board directed us last month to take obituaries for free.

We actually have a section on our website for obituaries, and it has a really nice obituary section designed by our web team, team WTI.

And they designed it for us, and it's beautiful, but we have not been able to...

I think it's a matter of convincing people to let us have them, so we've actually taken them for free.

And some of the funeral homes are now starting to turn over obituaries because we also think it's important.

- A final note from Tim, if I may ask, looking at the crystal ball that you may or may not have, is there a light at the end of the tunnel for local journalism?

- I'm more encouraged now than I was a year ago.

We're looking at these public policy solutions that we talked about before.

Philanthropy has been pouring millions and millions of dollars into local news, and we're seeing some innovative new business models out there in local news.

- And with that, we have run out of time.

I wanna say thank you to Jeff Lampe, who's with The Weekly Post and The Prairie News, to Susan DeVilder at The Kewanee Voice, to Mike Berry, also at The Kewanee Voice, and to Tim Franklin, who is with the Local News Initiative at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, and also a member of the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force.

Thank you, all four of you, for the conversation, and we thank you for joining us.

See us next time on another edition of "At Issue."

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