Small Town Newspapers – Use Them or Lose Them
By Cliff Yankovich || Contributing writer
Two things came to my attention last week. First, I could not help but notice all the coverage of the LHS graduating Class of 2024. The Ledger featured their graduation on the front page above the fold and then devoted 17 pages to the graduates. The normal coverage of schools sports was in there, as well. This is how things are done in small towns – we make news out of the accomplishments of our kids, neighbors, non-profits, civic groups and business owners. A functioning press also helps residents keep tabs on local government and boards. Well, all of this is not something we should take for granted.
Item number two that got my attention was reading about how Cheboygen, MI, no longer has a viable paper. The Daily Tribune is accessible online, and they do print a very minimal edition that you can find a couple stores, but they have NO local news reporters. NONE. There is someone who covers school sports, but he is the only one left. The population of Cheboygen is 4,700, very similar to Lowell, at 4,130. The decline of the Tribune has had an effect on people in Cheboygen.
“Use it or lose it” is a great statement that maybe gets over-used. As someone old enough to qualify for single-payer health care, the phrase resonates when it comes to my physical health. If we don’t use the muscles, ligaments, and tendons, we stand a good chance of losing our ability to use them. Same thing goes for The Lowell Ledger.
To my way of thinking, the way to properly “use” our weekly paper, in order to not lose it, can be accomplished in a couple of ways. The two steps are very connected – I believe one fancy-pants word to use here is “symbiotic”. (Meriam-Webster defines it, thusly: “characterized by, or being a close, cooperative, or interdependent relationship .”) First, subscribe to The Ledger. Have it sent to your home or business every week. Yes, you can get a digital edition, but nothing beats a physical copy of the paper – especially when it contains an article and pictures about something great one of your kids or neighbors did that earned them a place in the paper. If you are holding a Ledger in your hand, you probably subscribe; well, feel free to invite your local friends and neighbors to support our paper, please.
The second part is to advertise your business or service in the paper. The reason these two steps are symbiotic is because business owners want to spend their advertising dollars wisely – they need to reach people with their message or offers. Generally speaking, the more people they can reach, the better the return on their investment. Not having a good number of subscribers makes it hard for a paper to attract advertisers, and without advertisers to pay for the cost of reporting local stories and the production/distribution of the paper, means a shrinking of the paper and what it can cover.
Once upon a time, yours truly wrote a column for the Advance Newspapers. I had a blast, because in addition to the occasional opinon piece (motorcycle helmet laws, for example), I would write sports stories about student athletes who never knew the joy of being written-up. I would bug coaches and Athletic Directors to tell me about kids who worked hard and did the right thing by their team and schools, but who didn’t ever get any press. My favorite was a young man, who ran track for an area school. He was on the team all four years, had a fantastic attitude, never missed a practice – but he never got good enough to qualify for competition in a meet. He was the opposite of the star quarterback or the ace gymnast that got some ink on a regular basis. I loved to spotlight a student athlete who had never enjoyed such attention. I would get great feedback from parents and coaches for these stories. (Who doesn’t want to see their child get a pat on the back?)
Excuse me for chasing a bit of a rabbit there; my point about the Advance papers is that when I started writing for them, in the early part of this century, they published 13 different weekly papers. We lived on 52nd Street near Whitneyville Road and we received the Ada/Cascade edition of the Advance. In my early days, that paper could be 30 pages or more. It was the same with all the other 12 editions that served other regions, in and around Grand Rapids. My editor liked what I did and kept me on as the Advance kept shrinking. First, the papers got smaller and smaller. Then they combined editions and then gradually closed them down completely. If I recall correctly, one of the last Advance papers we received was only a dozen pages.
Small towns need their papers. I value a functioning arm of the press as much as I value being able to get gasoline, groceries, or find a delicious something to eat or drink locally. Over the last couple of years that I have been a regular Ledger contributor, I have interviewed a lot of different people. I am always shocked when I learn of someone who lives in the area, owns a business, or is involved in our community, who does not subscribe to The Ledger. I find it odd that someone, who is eager to have me help them tell a story, does not regularly purchase the vehicle they want to use to tell said story. Once again, we can refer to the word of the day – symbiotic. You want The Ledger to tell your story? Then help The Ledger remain here in order to do that.
A cynical reader might take this column as a man just trying to keep his writing gig alive. Sure, there is a small element of self-preservation motivating this column, but I would express the same opinion had I never published a single word in our paper. Really. Just between you, me, and the wall, the main motivator for me to contribute to The Ledger is the enjoyment of telling people’s stories and occasionally getting something off my chest. (Insert smiley face emoji here.)
Keep The Ledger healthy. Subscribe to the paper so we can continue to tell people cool stories about what is happening in our town. Kate Brim is competing all over the world, on her way to competing in the paralympic games. Frosty Boy saved the day for ice cream lovers when they bought Ball’s. The City Council is wrestling with challenges, from water rationing to speeders on Riverside Drive. Liam Christian Lincolnhol has a GPA of 4.39 and is the Class Valedictorian of 2024. We here at The Lowell Ledger love to tell these stories and look forward to doing so for decades, but we need your participation. Use it or lose it.
