Newspapers Are Alive and Well

Newspapers Are Alive and Well – powered by Happy Scribe

We are looking forward our way from Studio C in the 511 Studios in the brewery district south of downtown Columbus. Hi, this is Brett, and with me, as always, is Carol. We both have had opportunities to work with many media members over the years. My role on radio, Carol’s role at both the University and as a director of a nonprofit. When an article crossed my screen regarding our guest, I was floored, but she is the new owner editor of a community newspaper in Eastern Ohio. Our audience may not consider that to be news, except that she’s a 20 something local English teacher taking over a newspaper that’s been printing since 1815, over 200 years. It’s my pleasure to introduce Bonnie Rutledge. She is the owner editor of the Harrison News Herald. Thanks for joining us, Bonnie. We appreciate it.

Thank you. Hello. I so appreciate you having me on.

Bonnie is basically working two jobs that are more than fulltime individually, so she’s calling in to us from Eastern Ohio. We are really proud that you are so willing to give us your time and wisdom. We know you’re a busy person, so thank you for that. But let me first set the stage for our listeners because they’re probably like going Harrison County, Where’s Harrison County, many are not going to be familiar with your community, but your newspaper represents that county, and it resides in the village of Caddis. And I’m hoping I’m saying that correctly. Harrison county sits in the mid Eastern area of Ohio, just one County West of the West Virginia border, and it is just about 14, 500 citizens. It’s actually the fifth least populated county in our state. So lots of area, not a lot of people, but it’s named for General William Henry Harrison, who later became President of the United States. And shout out to Ohio, we have eight Ohioans who have been President over the years, and Kattis is the county seat. But Harrison County is an aging population, and actually all of Ohio is an aging population. Your average age is 44.

There are no large cities, but you have ten villages and 15 townships. So there’s a lot of government that’s going on out there. And for those who are history buffs, how many times have we heard Tippak Canoe? Well, Tipa Canoe is located in Harrison County, and it was General Harrison’s nickname. We all hear Tipa Canoe and Tyler, too. I think that was a presidential slogan. The village of Caddis has just about 3500 residents. It’s well known in the shale industry, but it is mostly well known as the home town of actor Clark Gable. So I was telling Bonnie I needed to say all that other stuff so I could make sure I got in. Clark Gable, Bonnie, again, welcome. Thank you for your time. Let’s first start out by talking about you and your story. Let’s give our audience an overview of your career path and how you ended up becoming a newspaper owner. So thank you again.

I think not to be long winded, but I do think my story starts while I’m still in College. I switched my major about 20,000 times and ended up with a professional writing degree about two years in. And part of this professional writing degree, which has been such a blessing, was that I needed an internship. So my fiancee at the time was back home in my tiny town. There was no way I was going to find a paid internship that was geared towards writing. And so I basically went to the local newspaper and begged them to work for free so that I could fulfill this requirement and be at home over that summertime break. So it was not something I was taking very seriously. But once I found myself in town Council meetings and reporting on events and all of these things, I just fell in love with it. And it was so fun. I tell people all the time, you just cannot make up local news. It’s funny in and of itself. It’s entertaining in and of itself. That’s why it’s been around forever. And so I went back to Cedarville after that summer where I graduated from and ended up winning a silly award for most interesting internship report.

And from that internship rolled into me working on a part time basis for the paper all through College when I was home on weekends or over breaks or whatever. So fast forward, when I graduated in 2020, I was really realizing that the newspaper was declining, that we’re running on a skeleton crew. The owner is kind of becoming disengaged. He had been in the business for a long time, and the prospects that he had to buy the paper seemed to me like maybe they had their own agendas. Maybe that wouldn’t be the most profitable thing for the county. And I was actually the first person that he offered the business to. So at first, I was certainly not interested. He had offered me the business once before while I was still in College, and that just seemed kind of not even plausible. But then after being home and realizing these issues are all present very much in our faces, and that maybe this new owner or this new potential owner of the newspaper could really sway things one way or the other, that made me rethink my decision, rethink my whole career path. And so I quit my job that I got right out of College to take over the newspaper.

Bonnie, for one thing, it says a lot of how much he must have respected your ability to literally sell you his paper. That is amazing. But also, when you just mentioned that buyers of newspapers have their own agenda, there’s been a whole bunch of stuff out there. 60 Minutes just did an article about the Chicago Tribune being taken over by a hedge fund that is pivotal for your newspaper. Who knows if it would have lasted at all under a buyer that wasn’t really interested in the community?

Yeah, I counted an honor and a privilege. I do think I was kind of in a unique position being so young. I don’t have any allies. I don’t know a lot of people. My staff is all new. And so we talk a lot about really trying to stay unbiased, really realizing that if we get the full story from someone, we still don’t have the full story. We need to go talk to all the sources. So that’s definitely something. I know that it’s a philosophical argument, even if you can be unbiased in your writing. But as much as we possibly can be, we are so committed to it. We have whole staff meetings committed to it. It’s ever present on our minds. And so that’s been, I think, a big part of our success.

Well, a lot about what we want to do with this episode is not necessarily the story about a newspaper, but also highlighting the value of being a small business owner. What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t bought that paper? The consequences for your community overall? What do you think?

So on a personal level, my coworkers would have lost their jobs, and it’s a small town. I know them personally, and so that mattered to me. But then on a larger scale, accountability would be lost, for one. Not that anyone’s asking my personal opinions on anything, but I do think our local politicians do a great job. It’s just that we want to prove that with investigative journalism, not hope for them doing a good job in ignorance. So I think the accountability is absolutely essential. I know that an entire demographic would have been further isolated from the community. A lot of our readers don’t even have Internet connection at their house. And so the fact that the aging population, who may not be on social media or the very rural members of the community or even the Amish part of the Amish community would have been just farther away from what’s going on, further out of the loop, farther out of that integral thread of our Appalachian community here, our history would have ceased to be recorded. Tv stations. We have a TV station. They do a great job. They report on some of the events that we go to as well.

But it’s certainly not comprehensive, and that’s not their goal. That’s their business model. Our business model is to comprehensively record this history that’s going on to record the marriages and the vents and the local characters and feature stories. So that would have gone away with the paper and then also just more lost pride. It would have been one more thing we don’t have. And I hate that attitude. Right. Because we have so much and the paper has shown me that we have a lot. It deserves to be celebrated. And it deserves to be celebrated in this comprehensive, ethical, and unbiased way that the newspaper can provide. Our paper matters, the quality of our work matters, and that specific outlook definitely matters and influences these attitudes and perceptions of individuals on our local community.

Bonnie, that is amazing. I’m just sitting here in awe because you have really demonstrated the importance of our communities, regardless of size. The big cities take up all of the wind and the air in the room, and this is amazing. Let me just follow up with my next question as to what you were just saying. So you’re looking at what are the goals, the mission, the vision? What do you want to accomplish with the newspaper then?

Obviously, from a business standpoint, we want to continue to increase our subscribers and our advertising. My staff and I just celebrated this week a record number of subscribers. We are increasing for the first time in ten years. Instead of declining in numbers, our paper has grown from eight pages to 14 pages, and I haven’t even been in charge for a full year. So that’s really exciting. We’re going to continue to up those goals. We also want to grow our coverage area. So we cover all of Harrison County, but there’s a lot of these fringe towns on the outskirts of our county who are also not getting coverage from the other bigger newspapers in the area. And so we’d really like to reach out to those guys as well. And then, of course, we’d like to attempt some more modern iterations of digital news, how to reach, say, the high schoolers and the Gen Z’s of our area as well. But all while keeping print alive and keeping print our main focus.

Well, we noticed that your online subscribers don’t pay anything for the electronic version. Typically, newspapers are increasing their costs, telling us that advertising is down or the cost of printing is sort upward. How are you affording to do the electronic version free of charge? And I’m kind of wondering if it may be a goal of yours to keep it free, considering where you are.

That’s a great question, and I think that depends on how you answer the question of what is your business model and what is your goal. If our goal is to keep prints alive and to keep print the main focus, like it has been for the past 200 years, then the e addition is just a bonus. In addition to if you kind of want to dip your toes into the water of the local newspaper. Essentially, when I first came in, I didn’t want to shake up our business model too much. I didn’t want to change too many things because when I bought it, it was viable and I knew that I could do a lot with it. So we may change the cost of the e addition in the future. I haven’t necessarily decided print right now is doing well and the print is so fun. You get so much from the print that it’s digitally difficult to recreate the same experience in a PDF. So if we do something digitally, it’s going to have to be a lot better than a PDF for me to feel good about charging for it. But I am excited.

I have some ideas for that. Maybe that I can’t articulate very well at this time, but I’m excited to continue to keep print our priority and our focus, all the while kind of innovating new ways to disseminate news, because this is a new problem. This is a new thing that we really could be exploring or discovering for the first time.

Yeah. Digital is something you really can’t ignore, but you’ve got to figure out how to put your arms around it at the same time. Is that correct?

Absolutely. Yeah. And our goal is we want to make news the most readily available as we can and keep the doors open. If online is the only way that a lot of people, especially the younger generations, are going to see the news, then we’re going to do everything in our power to keep that as accessible to them as possible.

Bonnie, all of the things that you’ve just been talking about, it’s plain to see that the role of your newspaper is critical for your neighbors. You’re not just talking about who lived and died and promoting local schools and businesses and highlighting historical events, but you really mentioned you are giving the community a sense of self, a oneness that kind of links everybody together. How do you see this as different than the large city newspapers?

I think it’s very important to not lump all newspapers together or to not lump all media together, because the goal of social media is different from the goal of television is different from the goal of newspapers. And I think that people often take a broad brushstroke over all of media and say, well, all of media is fake news and all newspapers are dying. And everything is social media. And everything does best on social media. And as a Gen Z, as someone who is very acquainted with all of these different forms of media, I think that’s very wrong. That’s a very vague and inaccurate way to think about things. So in terms of our newspaper being different from the big newspapers, we are exclusive to Harrison County. We do not stuff our pages with state news. We do not curate national news from other news sources. We do not buy our content. We are very niche to our area. Everything is written in house with this purpose and vision in the minds of all of our writers. They’re very aware of our specialty. And we know that in order to be good at what we do, we have to be experts on our area.

And I honestly cannot imagine being an expert on anything bigger than Harrison County because we really do have a lot going on, and we’re one of the most quaint little counties in Ohio. And so we really just want to focus on this and do a good job on this because you can’t get this information anywhere else. There’s just some things that Google cannot tell you. And it’s such a fun thing to be able to provide that information.

And we mentioned earlier, you’re part of the Gen Z crowd. And again, that generation has grown up on social media. That tends to be where you get your news. How is that playing out for what you’re looking at? I mean, is this a generational change? Is it a pendulum swing? How do you feel changes will continue over time with new tech technology? Actually, how do you tell your and convince your fellow Gen Z that read the newspaper? It’s cool compared to going to social media and getting their news.

I think it might be a little bit dangerous if I step into the shoes of a social commentator. But what I have noticed with my friends and with my students, my high school English students, is that we are so disengaged. I actually deleted my social media profiles about a year ago because I knew that I didn’t have time to be on social media and do all of these things that I wanted to do. And so I chose my goals over social media. And I feel that that’s something that a lot of people aren’t willing to do right now. But that’s beside the point. I just feel that we’re living vicariously through others, through the people on our feeds, instead of experiencing life ourselves. And that’s not motivating. You think you see a pretty girl or one of your friends on Instagram doing something cool and, wow, that’s motivating to me. I want to do that. Well, no, you just sit there on your couch and feel bad about yourself because you’re not doing that or you’re not looking like that. And so, again, not that social media is a bad thing necessarily, but I think it really can be really devastating to look at this globalized talent and then overlook everything big that your local neighbors and your local community members are doing.

And so something from a social aspect that the newspaper is doing is showcasing local talent. We’re showing people, these micro heroes, these small business owners who are putting their livelihood on the line to make a go of it. And I found even just with our readers in the past eight months that when people are doing it, when people are taking risks and succeeding in your backyard, you know, you can, too. So I think socially that’s important to take into consideration with Gen Z. Also kind of pivoting a little bit into, well, is print going to die? People ask me that a lot with the newer generation. Well, we’ve digitized all of our College textbooks and the majority of College students are still buying or renting hard copy textbooks. So we’ve had the technology to digitize print for a long time now, and we’re not doing that. And we’re even moving farther and farther away from that, it seems. So I’m not worried about print. I’m not worried about the importance of this local newspaper. And so what I am worried about is that we are so distracted that we don’t worry about knowing the full facts, knowing the full story.

We don’t place ourselves in our community because we’re so distracted by this global stage. What social media is not is it’s not comprehensive. And so this is dangerous when it’s distracting us from the actual worlds that we’re living in. At the newspaper, we are trying to connect the dots to paint a full picture of what’s going on locally while you get on social media. And they throw 50% of the dots out the window, and then you have to try to pick them up and figure out what’s going on from people’s opinions and half truths online. So obviously, society is going to continue to evolve. Obviously, news is going to continue to evolve because there are so many untapped possibilities here. But more than print, I’m concerned about the apathy of our generation long term and just really waking my friends and my generation up to see that your life is only as good as the community that you live in.

That’s very well said, Bonnie. That’s amazing. And so very true. Social media has certainly changed our notion of our world and as well as our small communities. And it’s not necessarily for the good. Let’s continue in this conversation. I want to ask you, things have changed over time. All of these mediums TV, print, radio, we see that that’s all going to be different over time. But when you’re really talking to your readers, what do they want from you? What do they see the newspaper being to the community?

Sure. And I think, again, I don’t want to be repetitious, but our readers continue to tell us that they want us to stay local. They want us to give them this information that is not readily available anywhere else. And so a lot of times people say, okay, well, I’m just not a politics person. Why should I read the local newspaper? Well, we have so many elements outside of the realm of politics that are still local. For instance, a couple of months ago, we added a column called Dear Anne, and it’s pretty much the equivalent of a Dear Abbey column, except it’s written by a local lady, and our readers submit questions for it. We also have an Amish column where an Amish Lady, Catherine, gives us some updates on the Amish community. And then she shares one of her homemade recipes with us each week. And so it’s just all about these little infusions of wisdom and these social aspects and different businesses and recipes and all these things that. Okay. Well, you’d probably look to social media for that, but you’re looking to someone in a different country or in a different state for that information, when really your neighbors and your community members also have really good answers to those same questions.

What surprises fell into your lap after you took over the ownership of the paper?

Yeah, certainly. My dad is also a small business owner and an entrepreneur himself, and so I’ve seen him be the actor in a lot of different business ventures. And I guess the one thing I’ve learned from him is that you can’t predict a lot of what’s happening. You have to take risks. And when I bought the newspaper, I knew that there was a lot I didn’t know about. I knew that there were a lot of aspects of the business that I wasn’t even educated enough about to ask questions before I purchased the paper. And so I just tried to make the best judgment I could in the beginning and say, alright, I’m going to just face these risks and these issues as they come and tackle them, because that’s part of it. So there have been a lot of surprises that I did not know about one at the time of purchase. I had to hire almost all new staff, which was completely unforeseen and oddly all for very different purposes. But we’ve got a great team of people here. We’ve almost doubled our staff, so that’s been a huge blessing. I’ve also been really surprised that it’s taken so much effort to get people to take me seriously.

And I think that is because of my age. I don’t know. I never thought about that before I took over, but I do face that very frequently. But I’m just very surprised and extremely grateful for how well it’s gone. In spite of my youth and my inexperience, I accredit a lot of it to the staff who has joined me in this mission. It just would absolutely not be possible without them and of course, without the support from the community as well.

Bonnie, you have given us so much to think about in this episode. As I said, I’m in awe of this notion of the importance of our small communities. Just like we put a lot of emphasis on small business, small communities really are the ones who are holding up probably the larger communities. When we wrap up each of our episodes, we ask our guests to give us some words of wisdom. And so part of me is asking you tell us what would have happened in your community had you not bought the paper. We have a little bit of an idea from some things you’ve said, but let’s hear those last words of wisdom that you have for your community and our audience overall regarding this important work you’re doing.

Sure. I just feel that when the community loses its voice, you lose your voice, and that’s just so clear to me that we need each other. We need our neighbors for successful living of all ages and of all backgrounds. And the beauty about the newspaper is that it extends your reach beyond your Facebook timeline, it extends your reach beyond your regular errands you run, it informs, and it brings together commerce and politics and sociality all into your lap because it’s all for the individual. And I think that when we start realizing the community is our personal responsibility and our personal reward, we begin to treat our neighbors and our small businesses differently.

What would you say to the folks who are listening to us to convince them to do that?

From their standpoint, I would know what’s going on. Pick up a local newspaper, see what you like, see what you don’t like, engage with, engage with your local media outlets. Let them know what you need. We are dedicating our entire lives to this. And so it’s really nice when we get feedback. It’s really nice when readers are engaged. And man, it is so encouraging when people come to us and say, hey, I read your article and because of that, I went and donated to this place or because of that, I got my oil changed at so and so garage who advertised in your paper. And so pick up that newspaper, look at the local advertisements, read these local political stories, read the feature stories about your characters in your area and just take a second to realize all that we have instead of looking at what you don’t have in your area.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Bonnie, and your continued success and it’s such great news to hear that your subscribers are up. You’re seeing almost doubling the amount of pages in the newspaper in the last year. That’s fantastic. So it sounds as though even though they didn’t know where you’re coming from and your age was deceptive, they’re actually putting their arms around you and welcoming what you’re doing with the newspaper. That’s great. Congratulations.

Thank you. I so appreciate that.

And listeners, don’t forget, check this show notes out for our podcast on the website. We’re going to have a link to the newspaper as well as more information about the article that we found out about Bonnie as well, too. But stay in contact with your local newspaper as well. I think Bonnie’s giving a great advice that get involved. Get involved.

Bonnie, thank you so much for coming, Brett and I kind of like going out on the road, so if you’ve got some exciting things going on out there in Harrison County, I may convince him to take a trip and we’ll come out and visit. I would love to see cats and where Clark Gable was born, so that would work out really well. Thank you again. We really appreciate it.

May, and we’d love to have you for sure. Thank you.