Local Newspapers

Mark W. · Jan 20, 2016

Anyone have a good one? I get most my news from here. Scary thought!

Russ from MN · Jan 20, 2016

That's probably true, and it explained a lot of people! I have found some newspapers that allow a lot of online reading, that's where I get my information.

Spook · Jan 20, 2016

I get most of my news online. I find that national and international news is easy to come by. Local news is much harder, a lot of local newspapers have either gone out of biz or scaled back a lot. My local newspaper is basically worthless. They are simply a wrapper for ads for grocery stores and car dealers. Btw, as part of their policy, they will never print a story that is negative on any local figure or business. Local people have gotten arrested, and we read about it in the Detroit or Lansing papers.

Determined · Jan 20, 2016

All our local paper is good for is to let you know how a supper, festival, show, sale etc went 3 weeks after it happened.
They are useless when it comes to advertising anything beforehand.

Mike M · Jan 20, 2016

Our local newspapers are really getting thin. I wonder how they keep in business. Barely any for sale ads either. But the advertising rates always were pretty high. And like the other guy said I always find out about an event AFTER it happened !
I also am amazed at how cutting edge the news I get from here often is.

Dick2 · Jan 20, 2016

It has been known for a long time that if small town papers mention a person's name at least once in a year, that person will keep up their subscription. Don't know if that still holds true but it used to be a strategy that worked years ago.

tractorguy2 · Jan 20, 2016

We still have a good one. I like to read the sheriff report and court news. The paper is getting thinner. There is less news to report. We use to have four schools. Now we have two. There are also less ads. We had two Ford,two Chevy,two John Deere,and one IHC dealer that ran ads. We now have only one dealer left,A Chevy dealer.we also had five hardware and five groceries stores. We now have two hardware and one grocery store.

Anyone under the age of 35 is not going to read a newspaper.They will go straight to the net.

rrlund · Jan 20, 2016

Not here. I check their website every day to check the obituaries. They have a few random news stories on there too,and if it interests me I read it,but as far as actually paying to get the print version,well,let's just say I wouldn't walk across the road to get it of it was free.

Just to show you their political leanings,right after 9-11 they ran a political cartoon showing Cheney saying to Bin Laden "Congratulations,you've done to this country what nnalert environmental policy hasn't been able to do.". After that,there's no way that rag will ever be in my house again.

Goose · Jan 20, 2016

Don't know if it still applies, but back when I was managing a small town newspaper, to be financially healthy a newspaper needed to be approximately 65% paid ads and 35% news. Back then, we actually had the luxury of refusing any out of town advertising that competed with our local merchants. As a matter of policy, we also refused any beer or liquor ads because the publisher's father had been an alcoholic. And we still averaged well over 60% paid advertising.

Now that same newspaper is half as thick and it's a free for all as to advertising. And like a local radio station used to say, "When you hear it, it's news. When you read it, it's history".

Roger in Wisconsin · Jan 20, 2016

Last week I sent a link to my brother-in-law for tractor talk. I said it is better than the newspaper.

Leroy · Jan 20, 2016

The paper I delievered for around 15 years. Back room talk from drivers the unofficial motto of paper was "If it is news we don't want to know about it, if we acidently find out about it we will not print it. One company owns both papers in county. And then they do not cover all of the county. If they would give up the idea of 2 papers and go to one that covers the complete county plus the neighboring half of the at least 5 countys where most of the people that live in the county have to go for work, shopping, Dr. or even family I think they could have a good profitable paper. It is just management that is the problem with the papers. There advertising rates are so high the auctioneers cannot put auction bills in them. They use the free distribution papers that cover 10 times as many people and advertisements are less than half price.

W_B · Jan 20, 2016

Our local paper is still pretty good for local news, occasionally they have a national filler article. They are big on promoting local business, lots of articles on that are front page headlines. Sports is pretty much local only or Ohio pro teams (like Ohio State LOL!) and NASCAR. We are basically a not-close suburb to the big city but no news from there, or sports coverage. A large number of people in our county work in the big city so I guess if they care about it they have to buy that paper. The local paper is part of the Gannet group so I think they will be around awhile.

PJH · Jan 20, 2016

"Anyone have a good one?" No

I wonder, almost daily, why I shell out money for a subscription to our local newspaper.

Obituaries are the only excuse I can come up with, and I think they might be readable on line.

I was a newspaper delivery boy for this paper, from 7th grade through high school, so I have been reading it for 55+ years, but my loyalty is getting as thin as the paper itself has become.

Also - I often feel like they are trying to shoot me in the foot - politically speaking.

JOCCO · Jan 20, 2016

They are dying around me, many have stopped, some are online The daily one is ok they others are as determined said 3 weeks behind.

Dave H (MI) · Jan 20, 2016

Livingston Press/Argus/whatever they call it? They were huge supporters of my daughter when she was playing for the high school. I sure read it regular back then! Most of their stuff is on their website now, but I agree wholeheartedly...they are like a branch of the Chamber of Commerce. Bad stories are discouraged.

Charlie M · Jan 20, 2016

We just stopped getting ours. We get most of our news from TV, radio and internet so paper was mostly repeat of the same news. I do miss the comic section and sports section - even those were getting short. Newspapers are a dying breed. Ours was up to $40/month for 7 days so stopped the paper and now we're squandering the money on something else.

db4600 · Jan 20, 2016

The EV "Yournal" closed up because the advertising profits were drank up. The neighboring paper expanded into the area and does a nice job. An indication of how bad the readership has dropped came when my mechanic opened up in his new shop and had an open house with free food enticing people to make a visit. He said only half of the expected local leaches showed up for the free food. In another example, The Peach covers a several county area in central MN and used to encompass two sections of mostly farm related ads. Now the new publisher has included Obits and commentary in the weekly advertiser and still can only put together enough for one section. In times past The Peach would have two pages of upcoming auctions near the back. Spring time might bring four pages. Now they have one page of the die hards. In contrast look how many online action houses have sprung up. The tack boards at the local mills are a skeleton of what they used to be.

unc · Jan 20, 2016

Here we have a local weekly that has a regional section. The editor is a good guy who works hard to keep his readers happy, but I fear he's fighting an uphill battle. Wednesday is paper day, and the first order of business is to get a paper, a coffee , and see what's happening in the district. It's a kind and gentle newspaper that tries to be positive in an area that could use a good kick in the slats. I will miss it if it goes.

JerryS · Jan 20, 2016

In my small city the paper is part of the Gannet group, so it reflects the Gannet style, format and philosophy. Most of the content is touchy-feely consciousness-raising stuff, artsy lifestyle and cultural stuff, or drum-beating for whatever cause is trending at the moment. The use of photos is rarely used to depict the actuality of whatever event occurred, but to demonstrate the photographer's artistic skill in capturing the "mood" or "essence" of the moment---a ground-level view of an accident scene, for instance, wherein the only things visible are grass in the foreground with an out-of-focus crumpled bicycle in the background.

Their policy regarding local hard news is, "If the TV channels covered it, it never happened." Case in point: Back last spring a cattle truck rolled over on one of our main traffic arteries---two two-lanes divided by a median. The cattle that weren't killed were bleeding and bawling, and some were loose outside. An embankment made it very difficult to extract the cattle, so the operation took all day, with traffic being diverted to lengthy detours around the area. The newspaper never mentioned a word of it, as the TV channels had reported it the evening before.

Even so, I subscribe to the thing, mainly for the obituaries, the crossword and the funnies.

JMS/.MN · Jan 20, 2016

You"re referring to the EV Urinal Pizzonit? Oh, I meant the Journal Patriot! Yeah, town paper to the east really stepped up, especially coverage of the school district, until paper to the west forced the district to use them...used something about state law to make them switch. East town paper still does a better job.

David G · Jan 20, 2016

Mount Vernon Iowa Sun, actually locally owned and operated.

SmokeEater2 · Jan 20, 2016

Our local paper got bought out by the Gannet group a few years ago and it's worthless now.

Very little local news unless they can find a gay couple to do a front page story on or that an atheist group sued the county for a Nativity scene on the court house lawn.

It used to be a good paper when it was locally owned but it's junk now.

ss55 · Jan 20, 2016

Small local newspapers do not seem to be adding online versions very well. Those that do have online versions price their online version the same as printed version even though the printing and delivery costs are gone.

Two Dogs · Jan 20, 2016

Our local paper must be owned by auto dealers. About 3/4 of it is full page ads for cars. The rest is the obits, a few comics, and as I call it, the low life section.....city court. TDF

old-9 · Jan 20, 2016

I have read the South Bend Tribune ( South Bend Indiana) for as long as I could read. My family had it delivered 7days a week. And I subscribed for the last 20 or 30 years UNTIL Janurary first of this year. They decided not enough subscribers to pay a delivery person. I always looked forward to reading the paper. As time went on , from when I was a kid to today the paper slowley stoped covering my county and the county to the North. I wonder why people stoped buying the paper. Our local weekley paper has the court news so we know who got caught, wrecked, married, or divorced. What it does is confirms the gossip. When I was in the service, my grandmother had the local paper sent to me, I would get them 2 or 3 at a time but was a welcome read. Kept up on local gossip.
I do miss the comics. joe

Brendon-KS · Jan 20, 2016

There is a weekly free newspaper in our county that we think is quite good in spite of being free. Being a weekly publication they don't go after the latest headlines but have local events, editorial columns, a business/ag section, school board and city council meeting reports from communities in the county, a lot of school sports, auction sale bills, classified ads, and other stuff. You'd think that a free paper would be mostly ads but I don't find them to be any more intrusive (maybe even less) than what you'd find in a typical subscription paper.

Spook · Jan 20, 2016

I've lived here just over 30 years, and have come to understand that I will never be one of the local bubbas. This is still a pretty small town, and for some folks, if you don't have grandparents in the local cemetery, you are just passing thru! I exchanged emails with the editor a couple of times, asking why there wasn't more coverage of local news. He responded by thanking me for my interest, but never answered the question. I do believe that a lot of it is that he doesn't want to upset anybody. Never going to be any investigative journalism here.

wolfman · Jan 20, 2016

We still have a local newspaper, but it is not good for news. I think they have no reporters like newspapers used to. They seem to copy (and print a couple days later) stuff from the next county's paper. I've said for years that there could be a wreck right in front of their office and you'd have to read about it in another county's paper. And you know what? There was a tractor-trailer that wrecked on the street by their office and it didn't make their paper!

Hobo,NC · Jan 21, 2016

(quoted from post at 19:04:01 01/20/16) Anyone have a good one? I get most my news from here. Scary thought!

The Sanford Herald, it leans a tad to the right. We also have a sheriff that's hard core to the right

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