Community newspapers are making their own news

Hail to the Hillsboro (N.D.) Banner, the oldest weekly newspaper in present-day North Dakota. The Banner was founded 140 years ago in 1879 – 10 years before the Dakota Territory was split to form the states of North Dakota and South Dakota in 1889.

This bit of trivia was shared May 28, 2019, with readers of a regular column titled “Neighbors,” which is written for Forum Communications, a family-owned media company based in Fargo, N.D. Its author is Bob Lind, a leading advocate for community journalism. Lind has worked in the newspaper business ever since graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1957.

Lind complimented his longtime friend Neil O. Nelson, former publisher of the Banner, by reprinting one of his final editorials that appeared earlier this year.

Nelson boasted with pride that the Banner “never missed a publication date and remains not only in business after 140 years but is also recognized as one of the better papers in the state.” That attests to “the lasting viability and vitality of the paper and its communities.”

(Hillsboro has a population of 1,610 and is the county seat of Traill County, located on the Interstate 29 corridor about 40 miles north of Fargo near the Red River of the North, the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota. The Banner has a circulation of about 1,150.)

“…Demands put on newspapers today are no less challenging than they were 60 or 100 years ago, when a printer’s hands were mired in black ink, burned by hot lead and callused by the task of handling tons of newspapers,” Nelson wrote. “Back shops in those times were distressingly warm in the summer and uncomfortably cold in the winter.”

“The elements today we can handle; the challenges offered by the advent of new-age technology and the people’s insatiable thirst for on-demand news and information have newspapers scrambling to keep pace in today’s ever-changing world.”

“Hardly a surprise but no less distressing, advertising profits realized are the subject of diminishing returns; for the small-town business owner, the demand for his and her advertising dollar is unending. Yet businesses continue to support their hometown newspapers, and for that…the newspaper industry…is forever grateful.”

Nelson continued: “As a community newspaper, we are sensitive to our many readers and what they expect to find in their hometown newspaper. We take great pride in delivering a quality newspaper; we are guided by the public’s trust that what we do, we do with their best interests at heart.”

Bob Lind was one of the old-timers interviewed for an oral history project sponsored by the North Dakota Newspaper Association, and he commented about the importance of community newspapers as it relates to local government. “People run a democracy, but you can’t do it unless you know what’s going on,” Lind replied. (Dagnabbit, that’s good stuff.)

The truth of the matter is: The Bismarck Tribune, as North Dakota’s leading and state capital newspaper, is not going to be sending a reporter to cover the regular meetings of the municipalities, school boards or planning commissions within Traill County. Neither the Tribune sports desk nor ESPN is going to be covering the athletic contests that involve the mighty Burros of Hillsboro High School.

Hannah Yang worries about such things. She is a reporter at the Austin (Minn.) Daily Herald, which is published Tuesday through Saturday and has a circulation of 5,280. (The community has a population of about 25,000 and is the county seat of Mower County, located just above Iowa on the Interstate 90 corridor.)

Yang’s column on May 29, 2019, provided an insightful look into the current state of affairs relating to community newspapers. She wrote:

“For more than a century, the Austin Daily Herald has been your beacon as a source of news and information. This is the place where you go to learn more about the stories that matter to your community. Yet, I feel as if local journalism has been taken for granted, and that many have forgotten what an essential role and service community newspapers provide for their town.”

She noted that adjoining Dodge County lost two of its local newspapers in 2018, “leaving a hole in coverage for specific communities in the area. Eventually, many towns may become ‘news deserts,’ communities that will not have consistent local news coverage.”

Yang commented: “The Associated Press recently released a data analysis compiled by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that showed more than 1,400 towns and cities in the country lost a newspaper over the past 15 years.”

“Losing a reliable local news source will affect the community, including the inability to serve as a watchdog for government agencies and elected officials,” she wrote. The esteemed Columbia Journalism Review agrees with Yang and Lind: “If local newspapers were to die, then voter engagement will decrease, and the community will become apathetic to its own democracy.”

Yang’s passionate appeal is: “The country deserves to have vibrant, strong newsrooms that are dedicated to telling stories in their communities accurately and efficiently.”

“Larger news organizations won’t be writing about accomplishments that your child achieved in high school or do features on someone retiring from a business after working there” for umpteen years.