Having lived in Sweet Home for 20 years and having published your newspaper for 18 of those, I am well aware of something this community is very confident of: Its willingness to step up when there is a real need.
Well, I can only say that I and my wife Miriam have witnessed that on the most personal level over the two weeks. Following the publication of the editorial – for lack of a better word – in the Dec. 11 edition, alerting the community about the dire state of The New Era, the response has been such that we are fully engaged in seeking to right this ship. You’ve given us what we need to go for it.
The day after the article appeared in Sweet Home mailboxes, we opened the door of the office to several people who were standing there, waiting and ready to chip in to help us. They were the first of a nearly constant stream of readers and community members who have thrown their lot in with us to make this happen.
We received one early donation so generous that tears were shed and we were suddenly filled with optimism that yes, we can fully engage in the process of rebuilding your newspaper.
Thank you so much, Sweet Home.
The paper isn’t saved yet, but it is closer than it was a few weeks ago. We are working to hire some necessary staff and get ourselves organized with the employees we have – all of whom are people we’ve worked with in the past, which helps a bunch.
When I mention generosity, I’m not just talking about individuals. Businesses and other organizations have stepped up with advertising, which is crucial to this process.
One reader stopped in to suggest that he organize a fun run to raise money for the newspaper, like we did to help Steelhead Fitness weather the COVID shutdown. I can’t say I’d thought of that, but it sounds like a good reason for folks to get in shape, which has its own benefits.
More on that to come, but it’s planned for Feb. 8, a reincarnation of the Sweetheart Run. So start working on it. The run, he says, will be donation-only, which means you can contribute whatever you want to run a 10K (6.2 miles) or a 5K (3.1 miles) or simply walk all or part of that distance.
We’ve heard from multiple people who are willing to volunteer, which is something I thought might become a necessity when we previously owned the newspaper. It’s always been the community’s newspaper, as I’ve stated previously, but we are definitely interested in finding ways to get the community more involved in its production. So all those would-be volunteers will be hearing from us, once we get things organized a little bit.
One prominent citizen offered to personally go door-to-door to solicit subscriptions.
We thank all these people who have generously stepped up, and we hope that we can get to the point that they and you, the readers, will be reliably served by this publication for many years to come.
We’ve received some large donations of money and, as I wrote in the previous article, we want to be transparent with how we’re using it. Put bluntly, without the money we’ve received, we would have had very little, if any, confidence in moving forward. But the revenue that has been contributed gives us something to work with in a business in which most of the costs are up-front (if you don’t have the cash, you don’t get printed.)
Due to the significant financial response, we have contacted several community members who have experience as board members and managers, and three have agreed to serve as an accountability group for us. So far, they are: Bob Burford, former police chief and current president of the Sweet Home Community Foundation; Steve Hanscam, a retired local CPA who is a board member for the Sweet Home Alumni Foundation and the Lebanon Community Hospital Foundation Board of Trustees; and Kristin Adams, chair of the Linn Benton Community College Board of Directors and a member of a number of other boards. We plan to add at least one more, but due to the holidays, that process has been a little slow.
These are people who are known and respected in the community, whom we will report to on a regular basis to keep things above-board and so the community knows that all their donations are going directly to solve the problems we face in rebuilding the newspaper.
Regrettably, the day our editorial appeared was also the day the much-older The Times newspaper of Brownsville died the very death that was threatening The New Era. The Times was in its 139th year. We had no clue that was about to happen until a Brownsville resident called and said she wanted to subscribe – that her newspaper had just stopped publishing.
These are tough times for newspapers.
A few days ago, after our editorial appeared, someone handed me a report from the Oregon Journalism Project, a new, nonprofit investigative journalism effort, which points out how Craigslist, Meta and Google, in particular, have sucked up dollars that not long ago supported local newspapers.
“Across the country, this has driven local newspapers out of business or resulted in zombie newsrooms,” the report states, noting that more than “68% of our state’s incorporated cities, and three entire counties, now lack a local news source.” The state’s three once-largest newspapers, the Oregonian, the Register-Guard in Eugene and the Statesman Journal in Salem are mere shadows of what they once were – thriving, prize-winning, journals that kept politicians accountable with watchdog journalism.
This is reality, but we have seen very clearly how Sweet Home refuses to lie down and let it happen. We don’t plan to either, and we’re optimistic that, with God’s help, we can provide a healthy local news source for Sweet Home.
But it will take continued support, and that will need to continue to come from you, in various ways.
One of the common reasons why newspapers die is because their communities didn’t know, or didn’t wake up, until it was too late. Those who have responded have demonstrated very clearly that you don’t want that to be the case.
Thank you again, Sweet Home. Now it’s time to get to work.