Since Oct.20, 1877, The Recorder has not missed one single issue.
Anne Adams is publisher of the Monterey-based weekly newspaper — which covers the neighboring counties of Bath, Highland and Alleghany — and she’s fighting to keep that streak alive.
It’s no small feat.
Since 2005, 1 in 4 newspapers has closed its doors. As a result, 70 million Americans live in a news desert, meaning 20% of the American population has no newsgathering agency covering their localities.
“Back here, people want us to go to their kid’s softball games, and they want us to go to the meetings so that they don’t have to,” Adams said. “They want to know if this pipeline is going to ruin their well if it comes through. Is their water clean? They care about where they live.”
That’s difficult information to access in news deserts.
“Without that information, how can a community talk about the issues, the challenges?” Adams asked. “You can’t talk about that unless you’re all on the same page. You can get online and read the fake news or the real news. There’s a lot of good journalism happening on that level. My readers need to know what’s happening right here, and we’re the only ones doing that.”
Others around the commonwealth have joined Adams in the fight to keep local newspapers alive and to prevent more Virginians from living in news deserts.
It’s challenging work.
“People don’t trust the media anymore,” said Julia Wilson, dean of the Scripps-Howard School of Journalism at Hampton University. “This is a problem, because who do they believe? The public gets four kinds of information. They get the news. They get editorialization. Then they get disinformation and misinformation.”
A news desert doesn’t prevent information from traveling through a community. Instead, it often means that information hasn’t been properly vetted for accuracy – and truth.
That furthers the importance of local journalism, as Wilson said. “Journalists,” Wilson said, “have a role to tell the truth.”
It’s an obligation that people like Matt Paxton, publisher of the News-Gazette in Lexington, take seriously.
“There’s a rumor that such and such a plant’s going to come in. Well, when we see the permits, we’ll print it,” Paxton said. “People will say, ‘Well, everybody knew it,’ I’ll say, ‘Well, they might have known it, but they couldn’t prove it.’”
Political preferences also skew people’s perception of the truth.
Vincent Schilling is an independent journalist for Native Viewpoint.
“We have these platforms that are incredibly diametrically opposed,” Schilling said. “You have CNN and Fox that definitely don’t share the same opinion. Where do you draw that line, and what do you tell?”
Rather than a political leaning, Paxton believes journalists should side with the truth.
“If you have people from the right perspective mad at you sometimes, and you have people from the left perspective mad at you, you’re probably where you ought to be,” said.
But distrust isn’t the only challenge facing local newspapers:
There’s also the business model.
In many cases, the local newspapers that closed their doors were not locally owned.
“Right now, we have six or seven conglomerates — corporations — who own all the main media,” Wilson said. “Something seems to be wrong with that.”
Adams, who said she has never worked for a media conglomerate, has peers that work at some of those outlets.
“What I hear on the ground from the folks who work for those papers are that the paper’s ownership keeps changing. They don’t know if they’re going to have a job tomorrow,” she said. “There are so many layoffs in recent years. The corporations that buy the papers reduce the staff until there is one editor left in the newsroom. Those guys I feel for.”
Locally owned newspapers face their own set of business challenges, too.
“‘How do we generate enough income to keep this newsroom going?’” Paxton asked. “We serve two masters: We have to make sure the paper remains profitable, but we also have the civic responsibility of covering our communities.”
Making sure any newspaper remains profitable means generating ad sales.
“Classified ads used to be about 60, 70% of revenue,” said Carlos Santos, publisher of the Fluvanna Review in Palmyra. “I was a reporter. I didn’t care what went around the stories. Now, it’s pretty much everything.”
At The Recorder, ad sales have a direct correlation to how much actual news gets reported in a print newspaper.
“Do we have enough advertising to add eight pages this week, or no?” Adams asked. “If not, that means tougher decisions about what we can publish and what we can’t.”
Though challenges persist, publishers like Adams remain optimistic.
“Do I think some day we probably won’t be printing? Maybe,” Adams said. “Not on my watch, though. I think we have some solid years ahead yet, if we can just hang on.”
This article is based on the Community Journalism episode from VPM’s Life in the Heart Land Season 2 docuseries. The series gets to the heart of those creating unique solutions to rural Virginia’s toughest challenges.
Watch Mondays at 9:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on VPM PBS or anytime on the PBS App.
Visit vpm.org/heartland to learn more.
