I feel the need to apologize because after reading an article from Editor and Publisher, I realize that as managing editor of The Kewanee Voice, I have been remiss in not explaining to the community just what has happened to my former employer, the Kewanee Star Courier.
According to the aforementioned article, Jason Sethre, publisher of the Fillmore County (MN) Journal, posted an online op-ed with the headline “One Moment, Please. . . Hutchinson News in Kansas or Minnesota?”
Sethre, who lives in Minnesota, took a newspaper faux pas and turned it into a way to educate his readers about how many small rural communities have lost their hometown newspapers. Those publications, once filled with articles about city government, events and business news have been replaced with zombie “ghost papers.” You know the kind? The newspaper that still remains on the stands but on the cover and nowhere inside can you find any local coverage whatsoever. Sound familiar?
You see, the Gannett-owned newspaper, the Hutchinson News in Kansas, served up an article with a front page photo showing a group of senior citizens having an outing on a lake in Hutchinson with a headline of the story detailing how the Hutchinson Senior Center keeps seniors busy with an array of activities. The only problem was that the photo was taken in Hutchinson, Minnesota, not Kansas.
It would appear that Gannett can’t keep its Hutchinsons straight. Those two towns are 628 miles apart, but don’t tell Gannett or the editors of those papers who most likely don’t live in any town named Hutchinson.
If you’re confused, you can only imagine how the residents of Hutchinson, Kansas must have felt. The publisher goes on in his satirical op-ed to explain to his readers how newspapers, purchased by large corporations such as Gannett, have downsized operations so much that there is no one left in their newsrooms that could even catch such a mistake.
Sethre wrote, “For the community of Hutchinson Kansas, it’s an absolute disaster what has happened to their local newspaper.”
And for the residents of Kewanee, Ill., it’s an absolute disaster what happened to yours.
The Star Courier, once the leading newspaper for the county, is now one of many “ghost newspapers” owned by Gannett. Copies are still sold on the stands and soon will be delivered right to your door, but if you hope to get any local news from them, you will be bitterly disappointed. There is not one local person who has anything to do with the Star Courier any longer and if Gannett has anything to say about, there never will be again.
It’s not just the Star Courier that has become a shadow of its former self. The Galesburg Register Mail, an award winning newspaper, is little more than a collection of USA Today articles and their Facebook page inexplicably shows homes for sale in the area. The Geneseo Republic’s building was divested last summer by Gannett and its editor, a lovely woman who taught me how to collect the property transfers, was shown the door.
The Star Courier will never again report local news. If Gannett changes its business model and brings it back, I will be shocked, but who will write for it? Not me and certainly not the Kewanee Voice Publisher Mike Berry.
Local news stories have appeared in its pages a few times, but at least one of those articles was written by a staff member of the Peoria Journal Star. Locally-produced content hasn’t appeared in its pages for a year now, and one of the biggest stories to happen recently, the Kewanee Boiler fire, was simply ignored by the Gannett publication. Meanwhile The Kewanee Voice provided seven articles relating to the fire and the former manufacturing company, even breaking the story on the arrest of the two teens in connection to the fire.
It’s a shame. Both Mike Berry and I were hesitant to talk about its demise early on when we were invited to speak in front of groups about our new endeavor. I guess I thought we could continue to ignore the elephant in the room. But our community has a right to know that any hope of the return of local news to the Star Courier is foolhardy. The Star Courier is, at least figuratively, toast.
But the news isn’t all bad. Young upstarts like a teen from the other Hutchinson in Kansas, 16-year-old Michael Glenn, have launched new online-only news publications. Glenn started The Hutchinson Tribune in Kansas, which covers all of the things you would expect local news publications to cover. And Glenn is blowing the Gannett-owned “ghost paper” out of the water, posting dozens of local stories a week.
Towns like those are some of the lucky ones, and that young teen makes me feel old. But the truth is that small underserved communities that lose their local news rarely get it back. And what happens to them has been studied and it doesn’t go well. Towns that lose their local news and journalism lose their sense of community. Voter participation drops off drastically, rumors and conspiracy theories spread, government corruption rises and civility erodes. They become both deeply divided and woefully disconnected.
What happened to the Star Courier didn’t happen overnight. There were signs and towards the end of last year when Gannett began to offer employees six-month sabbaticals and buyouts, all with the aim to drastically cut costs, former Editor Mike Helenthal, whom I consider a good friend, took the buyout. I can’t say I blame him. Like an extremely slow moving trainwreck, the demise of the Star Courier’s local news coverage was always going to occur. Not knowing when became unbearable for many.
It took awhile for Mike Berry and I to let go of the idea of it. After all, we had both been dedicated to our community and providing the paper’s coverage. Mike, who had worked for the Star Courier for over four decades, took a little longer than I.
But it’s time to let it go. It’s time for all of us to let it go.
We did eventually make our peace, mourn in our own way and move on. We launched The Kewanee Voice in May. The Star Courier, what we knew it to be, was after all, gone. And so, we set to work to provide Kewanee with the news and information it deserved. Like the teen in Kansas, we did what we had to do.
What other choice did we have?
***Copy edited to correct the age of publisher Jason Sethre.
