The Realities of Running a Paper

A local newspaper is supposed to do just that: take care of its community.”

Isabelle Holloway

I sat at the Central Station bar with a Blue Moon on tap and an orange on the rim, watching highlights from a rodeo in Utah. The place was decorated like the inside of a railcar. I had stopped there while passing through Dodge City, where I met a young man who had grown up in Ulysses but had since lived in California and Montana.

We got talking about newspapers, and he mentioned some of the papers he remembered from Ulysses. He seemed disappointed when I told him that only The Ulysses News was still around.

“Yeah,” he said. “The newspaper industry is dying. Young people don't read the news.”

I disagreed. People still consume news, they just consume it differently. They watch short videos, scroll through social media, read stories on their phones and, still, some pick up a newspaper at the gas station. People might be quick to criticize these new forms of media consumption, but fundamentally, human psychology hasn't changed. We prioritize what is easy and efficient. Social media informs us on scales never seen before, connecting us with parts of the world our ancestors never would have been able to see.

The difficult question is not whether people want information. We know people are drawn to information, in part because knowing what is happening around us has always been connected to our sense of safety. It is how a local newspaper can continue making money while serving the people who support it through subscriptions and print sales, while also reaching people who may never pick up a physical copy.

The young man I met in Dodge City had moved around a lot. Still, he told me something significant: “Ulysses is a special community. People take care of you there. You don’t find that in many places.”

A local newspaper is supposed to do just that: take care of its community. It records who opened a business, who won the rodeo, who passed away, which teacher started at the school, which fundraiser took place, and what happened at the city council meeting. But, recording a community takes a surprising amount of work.

I am not literally running the newspaper by myself.

Usually, it is Ervey and me, with Ervey handling sales while I handle the editorial and reporting side. We also have help from our publisher in Pampa, Texas, ReDonn, our former managing editor Nancy, Elizabeth who delivers papers, Soila, who contributes several articles each issue, Tina who designs, Paul who gets us the papers, and many others.

But two people running a newspaper’s day-to-day functions is still a stark change from the staff of nine who previously handled the same publication.

From the outside, writing 10 or so articles a week might sound like something that could be accomplished in a couple of days, until you realize writing is only one part of the job. I am also responsible for the website, social media, mail, legal notices, obituaries, insertion orders, promotions, finding events, files, photographs, among other things.

Then there is everything unexpected: a question from a reader, an unresponsive source, a missing file, a correction, a website update, an event needing coverage, a legal concern, or a shifted deadline.

None of these things is particularly time-consuming on its own, which is exactly why they are easy to overlook. But when dozens of them accumulate throughout the day, they pile up around the actual reporting.

I was encouraged to prioritize the existing readership rather than spend too much time on the website and social media. From a business perspective, I understand why: with a two-person team, it is difficult to maintain the same level of output as before without eventually burning out.

The people running a newspaper have to think about whether the business can survive. If I were looking at the same problem from a business standpoint, I would be asking the same questions: How do we make this sustainable? How do we get the most out of the resources we have?

But there is another side to the equation: when a newspaper goes from a staff of nine to a much smaller team, the work does not disappear, it gets redistributed.

When I first came to the office, I was shown an overflowing filing cabinet containing the names of people who had previously tried to take on the same position as managing editor before leaving within a month. It was treated half like a joke and half like a trophy. Naturally, the competitive edge in me wants to prove that I can succeed despite the odds. But now that I have gotten one issue under my belt, I see that filing cabinet differently.

I don't see this filing cabinet as something to bash those above me. In fact, it makes me respect them more. The overflowing filing cabinet symbolizes a systemic problem that is bigger than any one person or newspaper, particularly in small-town journalism.

If you care about the newspaper, it is difficult to simply stop when the clock says 5 p.m. and leave something unfinished. During the week, I have found myself working until 9 p.m. and eventually having to force-quit. I know the former managing editor often had a similar schedule, sometimes going into the office every day of the week and even working from the hospital to get things done.

I don't expect journalism to fit neatly into a nine-to-five schedule. Sometimes an event runs late, an issue happens at an inconvenient time, or you simply care about getting something right.

This is, in many ways, a dream job. I get to meet people, travel, ask questions, and write about the community around me. There are few things I would rather be doing. However, I don't want to make myself the focus of this story. I have just gotten the job, I am on a rapid learning curve, and I still have a long way to go. Nevertheless, I think my experience is worth sharing. I am only one example of what is happening in small newspapers across the country: that small newspapers, while operating with fewer people, are still being expected to produce the same kinds of publications they always have.

Still, the work does not become less important just because there are fewer people available to do it. That young man in Dodge City had lived in several states, but when he talked about Ulysses, what he remembered was that people took care of each other. A newspaper is a major way a community remembers that.

It's undeniable that the newspaper industry is changing, and figuring out how to monetize the way new generations consume information is a challenge. The question is whether small newspapers can adapt with the times while still remaining what they have always been: a record of the communities they serve.