Searching for Sheboygans: On the future of small market newspapers

Abstract

This article addresses the knowledge gap regarding small market newspapers in the United States. We address a deceptively simple research question: what is the state of small market newspapers in the United States as seen through the eyes of practitioners and industry experts? Based on in-depth interviews with experts and practitioners, we argue for a more nuanced vocabulary to describe newspapers and local news. Grouping all newspapers into a monolithic industry – as general sector analyses often do – suggests a homogeneous experience. That is not the case. Smaller publications face their own challenges and opportunities, and they define success and innovation on their own terms. This reality needs to be better understood.

Local newspapers and coronavirus: conceptualising connections, comparisons and cures

“…Our research, along with studies produced internationally, highlights that local news matters to audiences and a healthy democracy (see Ali et al, 2018;Hess and Waller, 2017). The vast geographic distances between Australia's towns and cities, however, generated challenges and opportunities for local media before COVID-19 (Hess and Waller, 2020).…”

“You Had to be Reporting Constantly”: COVID-19’s impact on U.S. weekly newspapers’ journalistic routines

“…Within journalism scholarship, weekly newspapers are categorized as a form of community journalism , which also encompasses small dailies and some elements of the alternative press (Lauterer, 2006; Reader, 2018). The experiences of community newspapers and their workforces are distinct from those of other, larger newspapers, warranting a more nuanced and less homogenizing approach to the topic, as “smaller publications face their own challenges and opportunities, and they define success and innovation on their own terms” (Ali et al, 2020, pp. 454–455).…”

“…This speaks to the general treatment of weekly newspapers as “smaller, low-quality versions of their larger daily counterparts” in journalism scholarship (Garfrerick, 2010, p. 151). Consequently, they are “a silent majority we know little about” (Ali et al, 2020, p. 454). The research-based Newspaper & Community Building Symposium, held at National Newspaper Association convention, and co-sponsored by Kansas State University’s Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media, starting in 1995, was an exception that proved the rule—although scattered scholarly research on weekly newspapers reaches back to the field’s beginnings.…”

“…We focus on journalists at small, locally owned or family-owned publications. We chose this population because most research and news stories about the U.S. newspaper industry focus on large daily newspapers even though most of the nation’s newspapers are weeklies (Ali et al, 2020; Garfrerick, 2010; Reader, 2018). Indeed, “despite being the dominant sector of the U.S. newspaper industry in both total newspapers and overall circulation, the community press is rarely studied on a national level” (Reader, 2018, p. 33).…”

Are We Close Enough? Digital Challenges to Local Journalists

“…This can justify some resistance to extra work. "Local newspapers, for example, have fewer resources to invest in new digital strategies than their national and international counterparts" (Hess and Waller 2017;Leckner, Tenor, and Nygren 2017;Ali et al 2019). At this level and with some exceptions, the most frequent attitude is to react.…”