National Newspaper Association
Protecting, Promoting and Enhancing Community Newspapers Since 1885
Into the Issues by Al Cross
Al Cross edited and managed rural newspapers before covering politics for the Louisville Courier Journal and serving as president of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the extension professor of journalism at the University of Kentucky and director of its Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog at irjci.blogspot.com and the Midway Messenger at MidwayMessenger.org.
NeSmith, Georgia publisher turns dying weekly into nonprofit to be maintained editorially by the University of Georgia
Two strategies that have been touted as ways to preserve community newspapers — the nonprofit model and university involvement – are combining to save a weekly newspaper in northeast Georgia. ...
Let’s steer some of that pandemic relief money into sample copying
Few vaccine-hesitant or -resistant people are likely to be persuaded by a news story or editorial urging vaccination, but it's important to keep delivering facts about the vaccines because social media ...
Pandemic facts can be delivered with unusual means: social media, Extension agents, federal funding
With the nation desperately in need of vaccination and masking to prevent deaths and keep our hospitals from being overrun, what role should community newspapers play?
Editorials provide leadership needed in pandemic
Hale-Spencer discovered that a court-appointed lawyer was going to sell the property to a developer. “We believe the price is not right and the assets are being ignored in the name of haste,” ...
Now we have to make people want local news
This is just one example of how we can get Americans interested in local news again. We can’t just talk about why newspapers are needed. We have to prove it.
Paxton Media buys Landmark Community Newspapers
One of America's larger community newspaper companies is buying the other. Paxton Media Group of Paducah, Kentucky, announced May 25 that it is buying Landmark Community Newspapers LLC, a chain of 44 ...
Pandemic payoffs: sample copies and public notices
The main issue facing the country and most of our communities is what it has been for more than a year: the coronavirus. We are in what is almost certainly the last chapter, immunization — but this ...
Al Smith’s journalism was one of good faith, now often missing
Al Smith, my friend and mentor who died March 19 after a very full life, was known best in Kentucky as the host of a TV show on which journalists gathered to hash out the week’s news and as one of ...
The pandemic has made Americans more interested in health issues
The coronavirus pandemic could actually make America healthier in the long run by prompting reinvestment in its eroded public-health system, Joanne Kenen, executive health-care editor of Politico, wrote ...
Be a leader, and stand up for the truth
“Recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson. There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit. And each of us has a duty and a responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, ...
Go beyond the data and science of COVID-19, write the stories of people affected
With winter and the holiday season here, the virus is out of control, especially in rural areas, and we’re more at risk than ever — partly because millions of Americans have mistaken beliefs ...
News organizations across the country receiving pushback for reporting coronavirus statistics
Just as some people are tiring of taking precautions against the novel coronavirus, helping it spread, I'm sure some newsrooms are tiring of covering it. And that helps it spread, too, by making it seem ...
If you produce good journalism, you can get direct contributions from readers
A new maxim — or is it a mandate? — of the newspaper business is “Get more revenue from your audience.” But that doesn’t have to come entirely in the form of higher subscription ...
Postmaster general says some changes delayed mail, vows extra effort to get ballots delivered timely; backs 6-day mail
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy acknowledged in sworn testimony before a Senate committee this morning that his changes in the U.S. Postal Service have delayed delivery of some mail, but he said ...
Bold, persistent experimentation is needed
We must repeatedly explain that news outlets offer journalism, which has a discipline of verification: we emphasize facts, attribute opinion and clearly separate the two.
Open-records battles — a good topic for Sunshine Week; will the census count rural America well?
“What happens when the news is gone?” The New Yorker magazine asked in January, in its headline over a long story about the failing local-news ecosystem in Jones County, North Carolina. It ...
Into the Issues: Research in old community newspapers shows value of printed page and granular local reporting
When Jim Phillips of Lexington, Kentucky, started poring through microfilm copies of old newspapers to research his family history, he thought it would be “a legacy to be left for my family and others, ...
It's a buyer's market for community weeklies, but buyers are needed; how about it, refugees from metropolitan papers?
That’s not true of most community newspapers because they are the sole, reliable source of news about their communities, and most of them “are doing fine financially,” says Kevin Slimp, ...
Counteract stigma with reporting; localize national rural health issues
The folks at Oak Ridge said local news media can counteract stigma with reporting.
