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Daily newspapers have been on the decline for decades, but one small town in Kansas still has one, Council Grove, population 2,200. The Council Grove Republican publishes every Monday through Thursday, filling its pages with local news. Matthew Algeo of Kansas Public Radio reports.
MATTHEW ALGEO, BYLINE: The Council Grove Republican occupies a small storefront on Main Street, sandwiched between a chiropractor and a real estate agent. Jan Sciacca owns the Republican. She's also the paper's reporter, photographer and sales manager. Sciacca grew up in Council Grove but moved away when she was 17. When she heard the paper was for sale in 2021, she moved back and bought it.
JAN SCIACCA: I love this paper. I grew up with it. It was a daily staple of a small town, and I just - I knew who might possibly buy it, and neither one of those parties was from Council Grove. And so somebody had to do something.
We're going to City Hall.
ALGEO: Sciacca spends much of the day in her Nissan Altima, darting from one event to another, like the swearing-in of new city council members in Council Grove.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: All right. If you'll all please raise your right hand and repeat after me.
ALGEO: This is the kind of story the Council Grove Republican covers and has been covering since 1872 - local politics, local sports, community events, the mundane and the important. An example of the latter? Last fall's mayor's race between the city council president and a local businessman.
SCIACCA: It turned out to be a tie, and then the businessman ordered a recount, and there they found a ballot that the intent was to vote for him, so he ended up winning by one vote.
ALGEO: And who would have covered that story, if not for the Republican?
SCIACCA: It would just be whatever people had on social media, and we know that there's so much fake news on social media. I don't know how that would have been reported.
ALGEO: Sciacca's two full-time employees are Christy Jimerson and Kay Roberts. Jimerson is the circulation manager, handles the billing and lays out the paper. Roberts helps with reporting and types up the material that readers contribute - sports results, honor rolls, obituaries. They have worked at the paper a combined 85 years.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRINTER PRINTING)
ALGEO: An old printer spits out the mailing labels for each day's paper. About half the Republican's 800 or so subscribers get their copy through the mail. The other half get the paper the old-fashioned way from paperboys and papergirls. The Republican is one of the last papers in Kansas to use kids as carriers. They earn about $100 a month. One of the carriers is 14-year-old Gwen Eaton, who says she likes the job.
GWEN EATON: I think it's just helped people to get their newspapers, and it just feels good going out.
ALGEO: How long have you been doing it?
GWEN: Like, a month or two - I don't know.
ALGEO: How long do you plan to do it?
GWEN: Probably the end of summer.
ALGEO: Not for, like, 10 years?
(LAUGHTER)
GWEN: I don't know. No, that's way too long for me.
ALGEO: A single issue of the Republican cost 75 cents. Local subscribers pay $11 a month. Council Grove is lucky to still have a newspaper, much less a daily. Tim Franklin studies local news at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He says almost 40% of all local newspapers in the U.S. have gone out of business since 2005.
TIM FRANKLIN: For decades, the business model for local news was based on advertising revenue supporting local journalism, and advertisers have moved to social media platforms, to YouTube, to other platforms, and that has left local news organizations without the fundamental base of financial support that they need.
ALGEO: The Republican has a loyal base of advertisers. The paper also gets revenue from printing legal notices for local governments as well as from subscribers. But Jan Sciacca says costs are always a concern.
SCIACCA: We spend about $2,500 a month in postage and about $3,000 a month in printing.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOORS CLOSING)
ALGEO: After a quick dinner at home, Sciacca is back in her Nissan, headed out to cover a school board meeting.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: All right, we're at 6 o'clock. We'll go ahead and call the regular...
ALGEO: The board is proposing a $31.5 million bond to build new schools, a huge expense for a small town like Council Grove. It's the kind of story that only the Republican will cover.
SCIACCA: I do this because I think Council Grove is unique and the Council Grove Republican's unique. And I just want to keep this as part of the community as long as possible.
ALGEO: After the school board meeting, Sciacca goes home and like most nights stays up late writing stories for the next day's edition of the Council Grove Republican, keeping alive one of American media's most endangered species, the small-town daily newspaper. For NPR News, I'm Matthew Algeo in Council Grove, Kansas.
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