I do not usually post an article I didn’t write, but I felt it was important to share this perspective for our community and our students.
Your Community Voice
Joan Mariner
There has been much talk about how alienated and unheard segments of our nation feel. That seems to be particularly true for people in urban settings. However, rural communities with a local paper have a voice that speaks to and for them in multiple ways. If you are one of those who fail to see the value of your local, weekly newspaper, this article is for you. If you do see that value, it is hoped that you find more information to support that opinion. Communication is an essential element to any healthy relationship. Whether it be couples, parents and children, business groups or schools, strong communication networks make relationships function smoother and remove or reduce areas of stress and conflict. Some companies spend time and money to facilitate the lines of communication with their employees with the knowledge that productivity will be improved. This need for clear lines of communication exists for communities also. Without information about what is going on in one’s community, the connections that tie people together begin to erode. For about nine months between December of 2009 and August of 2010, the Fern Ridge Area was without a local paper, and its absence was keenly felt. That voice of community activities helps people stay aware of events going on around them in a line of communication not easily replaced elsewhere. A letter to the editor to the urban daily paper has little chance of being published, but one to a local paper will almost certainly be printed.
An article published by the Stanford Review (http://web.stanford.edu/group/ruralwest/cgi-bin/drupal/content/rural-newspapers) had this to say:
Rural Newspapers Doing Better Than Their City Counterparts
“In the United States, some 7,500 community newspapers–papers with under 30,000 in circulation–still hit the streets, front porches, and mailboxes at least once a week. A 2010 survey conducted by the University of Missouri, Columbia for the National Newspaper Association produced some enviable statistics: More than three-quarters of respondents said they read most or all of a local newspaper every week. And in news to warm the heart of any publisher, a full 94 percent said that they paid for their papers.
The community newspaper business is healthier than metro newspapers, because it hasn’t been invaded by Internet competition,” says Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. “Craigslist doesn’t serve these kinds of communities. They have no effective competition for local news. Rural papers own the franchise locally of the most credible information.”
Newspaper publishers are beginning to take notice of the fact that weekly newspapers in rural communities are continuing to thrive even as daily publications struggle to stay afloat. It is not difficult to understand why this would be the case. Larger city publications do not focus on the events, sporting and otherwise, that form the ties that connect people in nearby rural areas. Youth leagues of baseball, softball, and basketball, among other sports, draw enthusiastic crowds of family and friends, but the urban daily will seldom even report the scores, let alone have pictures. The local weekly, however, will give rundowns of the winners and the losers with pictures of the action. Parents and participants can see their efforts depicted, and they point with pride when their faces are in the photographs.
Other community events will be reported in a local weekly that are generally ignored by the urban daily paper. Library events, local theater productions, annual BBQ feasts, and Harvest Festivals or Scandinavian Festivals all get their coverage as an acknowledgement of how these things both build and reflect a community. The local paper will have articles on businesses and services that interact with people in its area, and these help people to know the support systems available to them. Informative articles concerning issues such as highway safety, local construction projects, and school events help the entire community stay connected in ways that would not be possible without their weekly newspaper. Another key aspect of the local weekly is the ongoing interest in the people who make a community work. Teachers, principals, business leaders, fire fighters and other local personalities are introduced to their community. These people often live without the recognition that a local paper can provide.
A key element in the local weekly is the Calendar of Meetings inside the front page. That allows the reader to review quickly who is scheduled to meet, and when and where that meeting can be found. The news briefs under the meeting schedule give advance notice of upcoming events and service opportunities scheduled. People can easily keep track of what is going on in their local government and their schools. While some of this information is available in the urban daily, it is frequently buried in small print sections difficult to access. This is particularly true of the deliberations and decisions by Veneta and Junction City governmental agencies. The weekly provides the only regular updates on those local government activities.
Running a weekly newspaper is not a task for the faint of heart. Because they serve rural communities, the advertising base is not large, and because it is available at local outlets, people often do not subscribe. Needless to say, it is not a short-cut to wealth or fame. However, the people who do it, stay with it because they have a commitment to their community and a vision of the niche they fill. The Owner/Publishers of D & P Connections, LLC, Pam and Jean Petersdorf, grew up in this area and have a wealth of experience with what it means to live in a rural area. The seventh generation of Petersdorfs are growing up here. They publish the Fern Ridge Review which covers events in Veneta, Elmira, Noti, Walton, Blachly, Alvadore, Triangle Lake, Crow, Lorane and Cheshire. Their other paper is the Junction City Tribune News which covers Junction City, Harrisburg, Monroe, Blachly, Alvadore, Triangle Lake and Cheshire. They have kept both papers going through significant personal hardships as they each worked their way through serious health issues. Not only do they search out and organize the content of the paper, they get up at 4 AM Mondays to pick it up, put labels on the ones being mailed, and deliver them to the Post Office and the localities that distribute it. Knowing the individual characteristics of the two communities, they keep the two papers separate so that the information will relate directly to the readers in those communities. Occasionally, articles can be shared by the two papers, but often the material is completely different.
Also published by D & P Connection, LLC is the local phone book. In a rural area, cell phone coverage can be absent or spotty, and many seniors do not have cell phones. A local phone book not only provides information about local residents, it also informs people about nearby business activities that they may otherwise not be aware of. A local phone book allows the user to quickly get to the local information they want without wading through the volume of information they don’t want from the surrounding cities, and because it doesn’t have that volume, the larger print size makes it easier to read.
Please take the time to evaluate the key role the local weekly paper plays in the life of our rural communities. It communicates many important aspects of a community’s function, and that communication link not only improves the function, in some cases it makes it possible. Arranging for a subscription will allow it to be delivered in the mail, assuring that nothing will be missed. The price is very reasonable when compared to the daily paper published by the nearby city. Business people who advertise in the local paper make connections with the people around them, both in adding a customer base and in making themselves visible to their neighbors. It is all too easy to underestimate the value this local voice adds to our communities.
Interested in reading more? Try this article: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/13/opinion/la-oe-muller-weeklies-20110913