- Local news in America is struggling, with 75% fewer journalists and 3,200 fewer newspapers than 20 years ago.
- Two women in Nebraska run beloved hometown newspapers that buck all of U.S. media's statistics.
- With mettle, passion and a clear eyed view on what their readers want, they deliver what really matters to residents.
Gerri Peterson started her career as a reporter in the eighth grade, writing for her hometown’s weekly, the Hooker County Tribune, in Mullen, Nebraska.
She saw a job listing for someone to cover high school sports, and her mother called the then owner, Lanita Evans, to get permission for a junior high kid to apply.
Peterson recalled that Evans was enthusiastic. “Absolutely,” she said.
She began by covering the Mullen Bronco’s basketball teams. Later, when playing on those teams herself, Peterson — whose maiden name was Osborne — continued to take pictures and write up the games.
A headline might have read “Osborne Led the Broncos,” Peterson said laughing. “Maybe a conflict of interest? I don’t know.”
Through high school and college, Peterson wrote for the Tribune, even while writing and editing Concordia University’s student newspaper and studying journalism.
During the summer of 2007, right before Peterson graduated a semester early, she was again working for the Tribune when Evans asked her what she wanted to do after college. Peterson said her dream was to own her own local paper. She jokingly said, “let me know when you’re ready to sell.”
In October, Evans sent an email asking if she was serious.
Come July, Peterson had purchased the paper (as well as the house attached to the newsroom). She assumed the duties of publisher, reporter, editor, office manager, copy editor, fact checker, accountant, ad salesperson and every other duty that running the newspaper entailed. She was 22 years old.
Buying any business in 2008 was a scary prospect, but buying a newspaper was an especially precarious one. In the years that followed, the internet irrevocably changed the business model for most media companies — big and small — as advertising and consumption habits changed with the publishing medium.
New digital media brands sprouted into significance seemingly overnight — remember Gawker? — and the old guard like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal did everything to maintain their footholds before the word “paywall” had become a ubiquitous term.
In the years since, the prospects for media — especially local media — has not gotten any better. It’s been a trickle and then a torrent as many media companies have become shadows of their former selves, being swallowed by larger organizations or going out of business. Since 2005, more than 3,200 newspapers have closed.
As a result, there are over 200 counties in the United States that do not have local media at all and over 1,500 that have only one source. Some 55 million Americans have limited access to any media covering what impacts them most directly.
Today, there are 75% fewer journalists than there were at the turn of the century, too, according to a study conducted earlier this year by Muck Rack. In 2002 there were 40 reporters for every 100,000 citizens, covering the school boards, local governments, elections, primaries, health care, you name it. Now, there are only eight.
Between the havoc wreaked by the internet, conglomeration, lost revenue, social media and a public increasingly more interested in what is trending nationally rather than locally, there are precious few independent media organizations left covering the issues closest to most American’s day-to-day lives.
Within that landscape, however, there is one bright and shiny star amid local media’s rather bleak reality. In that same study conducted by Muck Rack earlier this year, it highlighted one newspaper that has managed to not only stay in operation, but maintain a subscriber readership that’s actually greater than the population of the county it covers.
That paper is in Hooker County, Nebraska. It’s Peterson’s newspaper, the Hooker County Tribune, which she has now owned for 17 years.
She’s not entirely alone in Nebraska, either.
In Arthur County, Michelle Simpson is the fourth generation of her family to run the Arthur Enterprise. While her readership is not greater than the county, it’s well more than double her town’s population. And she still prints her papers by hand on a press older than she is — the same one her great-grandparents used.
While both of those newspapers in the Nebraska Sandhills are small — combined, they have just over 1,000 subscribers — they offer insight and clarity into what attributes readers want from their local media outlets.
They also lay bare how the efforts of a single, determined woman can provide for a whole community, week after week, year after year.
A neighborly approach to the news
Peterson doesn’t know which day of the week is first, as they all blend together. But Monday remains her “press deadline,” where she takes the paper to print.
“It’s actually 7 a.m. Tuesday morning, but I have two kids and — especially during the school year — I’m not going to try to get them out the door and my paper at the same time,“ Peterson said. ”So, I personally set it for Monday night.”
That’s every story, advertisement and public notice written, edited and laid out and ready for her readers by Monday evening. The county fair in late July and elections in the fall, make for long days leading up to her deadline.
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday all depend on the stories she’s covering, but also who walks into the newsroom.
With her office and home right in downtown Mullen — and her house attached — a neighbor saying hi, a subscriber dropping off a renewal check, or a customer looking for help designing or printing could walk in at any moment. (One of several side hustles that Peterson has is a design and print service that local ranchers, businesses and individuals all use. Aside from ads, she also makes Christmas cards, graduation announcements and invitations.)
And people do just walk in — all the time. During several interviews and a photo shoot with the Deseret News, she often juggled folks stopping by. In case she’s not there in person, she has a bell in the newsroom so that those who do walk in can reach her when she’s in her home.
The proximity makes separating work and home difficult, for sure, but is a blessing in many ways too. While the office bell can always ring, it also means her kids can linger in her office or pop in to ask a question while she’s finishing up some work before dinner.
On Wednesdays, her mom picks up the printed paper for her in North Platte during her work commute. Peterson then hand labels each paper individually before taking all 701 subscriber copies to the post office.
There are 465 people in the whole of Mullen County, and 283 of those addresses receive the Tribune.
She has a website, too — one she only created in 2020, as a result of the pandemic — but doesn’t even really track traffic. There was a spike when the Muck Rack study came out, but it’s not yet necessary for her to focus on it. Social media is robust, all things considered, with 1,700 followers to the paper’s Facebook account.
It’s not just her neighbors that drop in on Peterson, either. She often walks through town herself to check in on folks and collect or deliver her various vendor payments.
Among her advertisers, she has a lot of repeat business and many of them are local. Seven groups run ads weekly, another three run one every other week and there are seven who run one once a month. It’s not uncommon for someone to shout her name while she’s delivering things to the post or checking in on folks. They’re calling her over to make sure she gets paid.
Printing in ink
Before there even was an Arthur County in Nebraska, Simpson’s great-grandfather thought the community needed a voice. In 1911, the town of Arthur was part of McPherson County — some 60 miles away — and he was worried that his friends and neighbors interests would get lost over the distance; one not yet traversed by highways or commuter roads.
That sense of service has stayed with the paper, all through the next three generations.
“My dad’s uncle took it over from his parents, and then my mom started working for him. When he got to the point he wasn’t able to do as much, mom started doing more and she just eventually took it over,” said Simpson, editor and owner of the Arthur Enterprise. “Then I did the same with my mom.”
“I’m a one-man office ... editor, writer, janitor,” Simpson said. “You name it, I do it.”
Simpson keeps less regular hours than Peterson but her weeks certainly all blend together, too. Especially when she has so many connections and responsibilities for her small community.
Arthur, Nebraska, has 124 residents. The county has 423. And the Arthur Enterprise has 334 subscribers.
Between family and church responsibilities — Simpson is active in the American Baptist church, and the week of our interview she had a funeral to attend as well as trips with her dad to doctors appointments — she sometimes changes the day of the week that she prints her paper.
Her “press deadline” is generally Wednesday. With her husband’s help, they print in the afternoon or evening — folding and labeling each issue by hand — so that she can get the paper to the post office on Thursday.
Simpson also mails her paper all over the country. The Arthur Enterprise lands in mailboxes from California to Maryland, and, until recently, North Dakota to Texas.
Simpson’s small operation breaks even, with her revenue split between advertisements and subscriptions. But — like her great-grandfather — she doesn’t publish the news for the money.
“You don’t get rich in this business ever, and that’s OK, because I would rather keep my rates down a little bit and still be able to provide (the news),” Simpson said. “I think of it as a service to the community more than a moneymaker.”
An actual local focus
Both Peterson’s and Simpson’s papers are “tabloid size,” which means they have 10-inch-by-10-inch pages. Each also run eight-page issues, though they sometimes swell during big news weeks.
That does not leave either a lot of space to include all the week’s news and updates.
Peterson’s pages are bursting with coverage of the public schools, human interest stories, calendars of church and Sandhill events, classifieds, advertising and all of the public notices from government agencies and officials.
Limited column space means Peterson’s core focus is on stories that are close to home and important to Mullen. That focus means that what folks read in the Tribune is mostly unique and catered to their interests.
“I get so excited when I have something in the Tribune that no one else has seen yet,” Peterson said. “I ran this water carnival photo this week, larger than I probably typically run a photo, but I loved it so much. And no one had seen that picture besides my kids.”
The timing of a weekly newspaper, too, means that national stories are long gone by the time her paper reaches mailboxes.
“All that stuff is so old news, like everyone has already seen it on TV or social media or whatever other news outlets that they’re getting their news from,” Peterson said. “That’s a waste of my space.”
She also chooses not to wade into controversial waters. Of course, she has to cover debates around certain school issues or ongoing coverage of a contentious wind farm — without opining and staying as neutral as the story allows — but otherwise Peterson keeps away from the gossipy stories that are catnip for most media outlets.
“There have definitely been some things over the years that I’ve just chosen not to put in the paper, period, involving people that people know very well, that were a big deal in town,” Peterson said. “I’m like, ‘You know what? That family has enough going on right now. That’s not the kind of paper that I want to be. I don’t need to drag them through the mud.’”
It’s another angle of Peterson’s neighborly approach to the news. And one that harkens back to an idealized time when newspapers were thought of as a public service more than a business, just like Simpson and her great-grandfather suggest.
Those controversial or overly political things are also subjects Simpson avoids.
“Sometimes we get some of the stuff in that’s very opinionated and I’m just like, ‘yep, not going to put that in,’” Simpson said. “It’s not that I purposely try to stay away from controversy, but I just don’t want to put that in if … (it’s) just going to make people mad.”
She makes sure to publish her local elected officials and public notices, but leaves her column space for things her readers will feel connected to. She runs serials about local students’ religious missions abroad or the recollections of a retired pastor who grew up in the Sandhills.
She does worry though about what might happen to those stories if papers like hers close.
“You can write about a local rancher, and his ranch and stuff, and people read that. But if you lose that (local) paper, the Omaha World Herald’s not going to cover that (rancher),” Simpson said.
“Even though the small communities out here are very similar, we’re each individual communities, and have individual identities,” Simpson said. “When my great-grandparents started (the paper), they just wanted to lend a voice to this community that was different than the neighbors. There’s a lot to that.”
What works today isn’t guaranteed tomorrow
In Arthur, there are no eighth graders reaching out to the Enterprise begging to write about high school sports. Nor for so many of the other outlets around the country that are struggling to maintain a presence, amid dwindling interest and viability.
As such, Simpson does not know who will take over her paper when it’s time to retire.
“I don’t really see anyone in my family, the next generation, really taking it over,” Simpson said. “And I wouldn’t necessarily wish that on them.”
Which is part of what makes Peterson in Hooker County so special. It takes a certain kind of person, willing to work the long hours and struggle through the difficult business model to make sure that the community is informed, entertained and aware of what’s going on every week of the year.
Peterson’s humble about her paper, especially after getting highlighted in the Muck Rack study as one of the only local outlets in America exceeding all expectations.
It’s a lot of attention for a woman who’s been mostly focused on her tiny square of America, and the community and family within it.
“I don’t feel like I’m any more unique than other small Nebraska (and I’m sure other state’s) newspapers,” Peterson wrote in an email. “I’m friends with publishers across the state who are just as immersed into their careers and communities as I am, all pouring their hearts into doing the best they can.”
Publishers just like Simpson. Who hopes that younger generations won’t be as enamored with technology as those who experienced its integration into society firsthand; and that the two-second videos will get so tired that traditional, analog media might become popular again.
“I’m wondering if there won’t be kind of this turn back towards people wanting to read books that are actual paper, and read newspapers instead of getting sound bites on your phone,” Simpson said. “They’ll get tired of all the white noise from the technology, and go looking for something else.”
If they do, they’ll certainly find caring, attentive coverage of the Nebraska Sandhills, with Peterson and Simpson mailing out the news — one printed label at a time.
