Community Newspaper Publishing – a worthy, exciting, satisfying and responsible way to serve communities

This will be the third and final column on Community Newspaper Publishing. I can hear you now. “Thank goodness,” you say, “enough is enough!” Thank you for hanging in there these three weeks as we make our final effort to help you, our readers, better understand what your community newspaper is all about.

Matthew Arnold once wrote, “America is the chosen home of newspapers.” And despite the presence of the electronic media, America is still the chosen home of newspapers and will continue to be as long as we produce quality, community oriented newspapers. Thomas Wolfe once said, “Americans love their newspaper.” And he is right. Most folks in the communities we serve do love their newspapers.

Your community newspaper must be the guardians of the First Amendment on the local level, just as the national press must assume that responsibility on the national level. The First Amendment protects the rights of those with who we disagree as well as the rights of those with who we agree. We should never forget that.

Pastor Martin Niemoller was imprisoned by the Nazis during Hitler’s rule and wrote the following. “First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

A free press exists for the rights of the people and we must be unyielding when we act to protect the public’s right to know. There is little room for compromise on this issue.

Over the 55 years plus that I have been privileged to be in the newspaper business, our community newspaper editors, including myself, have faced some trying times for printing what we believed the people had a right to know.

We have been sued, threatened with suits, cussed at, had our lives threatened, lost advertisers and had gossip spread around our communities in an effort to destroy our good names.

We have even had people report us to the IRS and OSHA because they disagreed with what we printed, or our editorials. Rest assured, this has never stopped our editors from printing the truth and what the people have a right to know, and it never will.

The newspaper you are reading this column in today has an editorial (opinion) page. All of our community newspapers do because we believe a strong editorial page to be vital. This page is a place for locally written editorials, comments from our readers, personal columns and occasional editorial cartoons.

It is a page where the newspaper’s opinion is expressed and where everyone’s opinion is welcomed. If you have an opinion or comment you would like to share with our readers, please send a letter to your community newspaper. It must be signed, with a phone number shown for verification. No libelous comments please, or curse words.

We believe that our management and editors should be involved in their communities, they should be leaders and in touch with their communities. In fact, we believe they should live in, or very near to, the communities they serve, and that they should be the decision makers regarding local editorial practices.

One area that must be mentioned as we conclude our three-part series on Community Newspaper Publishing is advertising. Advertising by far is the number one revenue source of community newspapers. Our pages provide space for the local merchants in the community to advertise their products or services. The classifieds help sell household items no longer needed, automobiles, etc. Help can be found through classified advertising and so on.

There is no other advertising media in your community that offers the buying power that your local, paid circulation, newspaper does. Most of our community newspapers are read by upwards of 60 percent of the people in your shopping area.

There is no other media in your community, be it radio, cable TV, or free shoppers, that can match the readership percentages of your community newspaper. Give our management or advertising consultants a call.

We need your business and you need our product for customer development.

Community Newspaper Publishing; a worthy, exciting, satisfying, and responsible way to serve our communities. Thanks for reading us!

HHJ News