Report: State's rural newspapers struggling to survive

May 3—MANKATO — The statistics present a dismal outlook for rural newspapers and the communities that rely on them.

"Going through the research, that was all gloom and doom," said Marnie Werner, vice president of research at the Mankato-based Center for Rural Policy and Development.

The nonpartisan policy research organization's latest report, presented in a webinar Wednesday, was titled "The Disappearing Rural Newspaper."

Even while laying out the numbers — including a 26% drop in the number of traditional newspapers in Minnesota since 2000 and a 70% drop in employees at those papers — Werner tried to add a little hope for the future.

"We maybe should have had a question mark at the end," she said of the report's title.

Just completed last week, the report lays out the wide-ranging financial hits newspapers have suffered, summarizes the importance of the papers to outstate Minnesota and offers a few possible strategies for preserving the ones that remain.

Werner was joined in the 90-minute discussion by two publishers of rural weekly newspapers and a journalism instructor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. There was consensus among them both in the severity of the financial pressures facing the industry and in the importance of finding a way to save newspapers.

"Without its newspaper, a community knows nothing about itself other than what it sees on Facebook or social media," said Reed Anfinson, the owner/publisher of three county-seat newspapers in Benson, Elbow Lake and Morris.

Anfinson said his newspapers provide stories about local personalities, community events and sports teams. But the papers — which often means Anfinson himself — also cover meetings of city councils, county boards, school boards and public hospital boards.

"And 99% of the time, I'm the only citizen in the room," he said.

Unlike some states, Minnesota is not officially plagued with "news deserts" — counties without a single newspaper, according to Werner's report. All 87 counties have a newspaper (although Wilkin County has always been covered by the paper across the Red River in Wahpeton, North Dakota). By 2022, though, 17 counties were down to a single newspaper, a status that includes Olmsted County and its 161,000 residents.

The report began with the story of the St. Cloud Times, a once-thriving daily newspaper that became a "ghost paper" earlier this year when it lost its last reporter.

Other dailies have slashed the number of days they publish from six or seven days a week to as few as one or two. The Free Press is now the only newspaper in outstate Minnesota publishing a print edition seven days a week. Suburban weekly newspapers have suffered, too, accounting for 40% of the 120 papers in the state that ceased to exist between 2000 and 2022.

Those that remained were often weakened as the number of newspaper employees during that period fell from 9,499 to 2,844.

The reason for the decline was primarily about revenue. The free online ads offered by Craigslist starting in 2005 essentially eliminated newspapers' classified ad revenue. The Great Recession of 2008 accelerated the steep decline in display ads, which was already underway as department stores and car dealerships succumbed to new buying habits promoted by Amazon and other online sellers.

Circulation revenue fell, too, as readers switched to cable-TV news, as dual-income families had less time for reading, and as the internet and smartphones put national and international news and other free content at people's fingertips.

Even with fewer readers and plunging revenue, the newspapers still serve a vital role, according to the report, which quoted a St. Cloud State University professor about the loss of the Times' reporting staff: "This would be a great time to be involved in corruption because there's nobody watching."

Communities are harmed in other ways as well.

The report cited researcher Joshua Darr, who studied how readers are impacted by the type of news they consume — including the difference between readers of local news and those who focus on news produced by national media.

"When people read news about their neighborhoods, schools and municipal services, they think like locals," Darr concluded. "When they read about national political conflict, they think like partisans."

People also miss out on the complexity of local issues when they lose their newspaper. Warroad City Administrator Kathy Lovelace is quoted as saying the official minutes published online after school board and city council meetings are a poor substitute for the reporting once done by the now-defunct Warroad Pioneer: "There is no in-depth reporting of agenda items and how they impact the community."

Lovelace mentioned another change for Warroad's high school athletes and other extra-curricular-activity participants since the Pioneer closed in 2019: "It's odd to me to think this whole age of kids are never going to get to see their picture in the paper. As a parent, that was a big deal for me."

Jason Brown, the publisher of the Long Prairie Leader and the Osakis Anchor, said it's obvious at any graduation party that it's a big deal for others, too. The post-commencement receptions often include a wall of newspaper clippings starting as early as the graduate's birth announcement and continuing through all of their activities and accomplishments in the ensuing 18 years.

And the local paper gives people a chance to vent — or to try to influence public policy — via letters to the editor.

"Without us, people often feel they don't have a voice," Brown said. "We provide that outlet to them."

It's usually a less strident voice, too, than the anonymous ones common in online comments because people need to sign their actual name in a letter to the editor, Anfinson said.

"There's accountability because of that," he said.

Whatever public good is provided by newspapers won't continue if they aren't financially viable. The Center for Rural Policy's report offered a few possible solutions, including government tax breaks or direct grants for newspapers. Other possibilities could involve donor-supported news operations like Minneapolis-based MinnPost, finding more creative revenue streams (such as selling sponsorships for community awards) and relying on "community journalists" who cover news for free or for a small stipend after receiving a bit of journalism training.

Anfinson credited the effort to look for solutions, but he said rural areas don't have the charitable foundations or wealthy donors capable of creating a small-town version of MinnPost. And he said college-educated journalists are still needed if a newspaper is going to be a consistently effective watchdog.

Associate professor Jennifer Moore, who coordinates UMD's journalism program, said she still sees plenty of young people interested in the profession and more than a few that recognize the importance of a good newspaper even for a small town. But to get those grads to rural Minnesota will require a livable wage, particularly with the high cost of housing.

Even then, before moving to a rural town, the young journalists would have to believe that their employer will continue to exist.

"They have to see we have a future," Anfinson said.

It's not entirely certain that average Americans care one way or the other. The report cited a 2011 survey by the Pew Research Center which asked respondents how it would affect their ability to keep up with news about their local community if their newspaper no longer existed. Just under 70% said it would have no impact or only a minor impact on their ability to get local information, a number that grew to 75% for adults under the age of 30.

The same survey asked which news sources the respondents relied on for local information.

"Newspapers were cited as the most relied-upon source or tied for most relied upon for crime, taxes, local government activities, schools, local politics, local jobs, community/neighborhood events, arts events, zoning information, local social services, and real estate/housing."

Werner saw some inconsistency between the two sets of opinions.

"There was really kind of a paradox," Werner said. "It seemed that newspapers were just being taken for granted."