This is Thanksgiving week and I’m thankful to be writing this column.
I’m thankful for God’s provision for The New Era, which was on the brink of financial collapse at this time last year. I know some might offer other explanations, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the recovery of this newspaper from near demise a year ago has been bigger than just me and Miriam, my wife.
Readers will, no doubt, recall how, nearly a year ago I wrote an editorial outlining the problems the newspaper and its staff were facing and the fact that its demise was imminent – outside of a financial infusion from the community. We needed help.
The community did help – big time.
The day after the editorial appeared, several people were lined up outside our front door when we opened in the morning and they were just the beginning of a community response that, all told, numbered some 150 people who stepped up with checks or cash donations. Plus, some local businesses purchased advertising, which has helped sustain us through the year.
It became pretty clear pretty quickly that the community definitely still wanted its newspaper and we were going to go for it.
When Miriam and I returned on Jan. 1 of this year – we’d already been volunteering, simply to keep things afloat while we determined whether it was even feasible to move forward – we knew we had our work cut out for us. By Thanksgiving of last year, we’d had a chance to survey the situation, which was dire, and which resulted in that editorial.
Not only did we have to rebuild the financial side of the business, but we needed help on the editorial side, which produces the stories and photos you read each week. The newspaper staff, which has never been large, had shrunk noticeably from the size it was when we had sold the operation in the summer of 2023.
We’re very thankful for the volunteers and freelance writers and photographers who have stepped up to help us cover the community events and sports when our “official” staff has been spread too thin to get to everywhere at once, so to speak. You can tell who these people are when you see stories bylined “For The New Era” or photos with the credit “Courtesy of So-and-So.” Without them, the quality of our coverage would be greatly diminished.
We’re very thankful for the support the community has shown. When the money poured in, a group of community leaders agreed to serve as an “accountability committee” to whom we reported while we were using the funds that had been donated, which lasted about three months – just long enough for us to rebuild some of the advertising and other revenue sources that had languished.
Over the past year, people have constantly asked us how things were going with the newspaper. They let us know they care, and we appreciate that because, in the end, as I’ve said more than once in the past, The New Era is the Sweet Home community’s newspaper. Our role is to operate it.
What’s Next
When we returned to The New Era, Miriam and I were very aware that the landscape for newspapers has changed drastically even since we took over the operation of The New Era in 2005.
Google and social media have siphoned off many of the advertising dollars that used to go to newspapers, and although advertising remains a major revenue source for us, it takes a lot of effort to stay on top of the water. Thankfully, we have a seasoned and dedicated staff who know how to do a lot with a little, and who have helped us recover.
But it was clear to us when we returned that we need to find a way to improve the business side of the newspaper – which is what pays for the editorial staff who produce the news, sports and other community coverage you see each week. We’ve seen Sweet Home businesses owned by local people slowly disappear, usually due to retirements, and many of the retailers who have moved into town are chain stores. They have local staffs, but the owners are far, far away. And they show little interest in supporting or participating in local community efforts, including its newspaper.
As many readers know, we started a monthly community newspaper in Lebanon in 2016, the Lebanon Local, in response to increasing signs that the long-standing Lebanon Express, which was at one time a thriving newspaper, was circling the drain. It ceased publication not long after.
It’s become clear to us that the best solution for providing a financially stable operation for your local newspaper is to expand it to cover the entire east Linn County. So we plan, on Jan. 1, to combine Lebanon Local with The New Era to form a (hopefully) larger newspaper that can benefit from a wider business community – both Lebanon and Sweet Home, and will provide better coverage for Lebanon than our monthly has been able to over nine years.
There will be some changes, particularly in sports coverage, which I’ll detail more thoroughly next month, but I think – and many people in Sweet Home have told me this as well, that this will actually be a true win-win for the readership of both newspapers, hopefully resulting in more staffing and better coverage of the entire east end of the county.
More on that to come.
Given what’s happened over the past year, though, I’m grateful that we still have The New Era in which I can tell you that.
It’s been a long 12 months, but I’m thankful.