College newspaper sweeps up 2 tiny publications in a volley against growing news deserts
With hundreds of U.S. newspapers shuttered, leaving legions with little access to local news, an Iowa college newspaper has moved to buy two struggling weekly publications.
The move by The Daily Iowan, a nonprofit student newspaper for the University of Iowa, is believed to be a first, though other universities are stepping up efforts to fill America’s news void in various ways.
Students will work with the newspaper’s existing one- or two-person reporting staff and put themselves to work covering the small communities of Mount Vernon, Lisbon and Solon, Iowa. The owner of the weeklies proposed the buyout to save the publications, which have a combined circulation of 1,900.
“It’s really a great way to help the news desert problem in rural areas,” said Sabine Martin, editor-in-chief of The Daily Iowan, who will copy editorial stories for one of the newspapers. She already oversees the editorial staff of a school newspaper, which the most recent tax returns show had more than $2 million in net assets.
Since 2005, the U.S. has lost about 70% of newsroom jobs and a third of all newspapers, said Zach Metzger, director of the State of Local News Project at Northwestern University. He described the industry’s demise as a “cliff dive.”
Traditional media has been in that tumble ever since big tech and social media started siphoning off the monstrous share of advertising dollars.
Richard Watts, director of the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont, said his group has identified 120 university-run student reporting programs that provide local news.
A handful of college publications had already invested heavily in local news, including the University of Missouri, where professional editors oversee journalism students who have produced a community newspaper for decades.
“There are many examples of programs stepping in because the local media ecosystem no longer exists as it once did,” said Watts, whose school oversees a service that delivers student stories to professional news outlets.
It’s a microcosm of industrial experimentation, says Barbara Allen, director of university programming at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.
“I don’t think anyone has the courage yet to say, this is the miracle cure,” she said. “We now believe in a magic shotgun… it takes hundreds of pellets.”
Each university magazine’s attack on news deserts — broad swaths of American communities without a specific source of local news — looks different. Some report on state legislators and spread the stories across the state. Others produce stories for Spanish-language publications or expand their reporting beyond campus events so they can distribute their papers throughout the community, Watts said.
The man behind the sale of the two Iowa newspapers is Bob Woodward, no relation to the Watergate scandal reporter. The family business, Woodward Communications, was trying to figure out what to do with two properties that were “not performing well.”
Woodward knew that journalism students at the University of Kansas were running an online news site for a nearby community that had lost its newspaper. He also knew that in 2021, the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication saved a 148-year-old weekly newspaper, The Oglethorpe Echo, by acquiring it and turning it into a nonprofit organization for students to write stories for. The deal went through virtually for free, which set it apart from the transaction with The Daily Iowan.
And then there’s the University of Oregon, where students helped the Eugene Weekly after it fell victim to an embezzlement scheme in late 2023 that led to layoffs. The students even helped unravel a story that led to the local school principal being outdone, said Peter Laufer, president of the university’s journalism school.
With these stories in mind, Woodward approached The Daily Iowan publisher Jason Brummond and asked if he would be interested in a deal.
“We honestly don’t like closing or even selling newspapers, but we just felt like they probably deserved a better home,” said Woodward, who resigned as vice president of the news business earlier this year. overseeing fundraising to pay reporters.
Brummond presented the proposal to Student Publications Inc., the nonprofit that operates The Daily Iowan, and the board approved it unanimously. (The board’s chairman, Ryan J. Foley, is an AP correspondent in Iowa City who graduated from the university in 2003.)
The deal closed in February, with the nonprofit that runs The Daily Iowan acquiring the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun and the Solon Economist.
Neither Woodward nor Brummond disclosed the sale price, although Woodward described it as “a fairly nominal amount.” Brummond said Student Publications may eventually be required to disclose the amount as part of a tax return.
Intern interviews for the two Iowa newspapers will begin soon, said Brummond, who also serves as publisher of the two weeklies. So far, the work has been mostly behind the scenes, absorbing the newspaper’s half-dozen part- and full-time reporters and advertising staff and redesigning the publications’ print and online editions.
In the fall, university reporting classes will assign stories about the two communities and editors will decide whether to use them. Ultimately, non-journalism majors may be brought in to help with the business side of operations.
“Our hope in this is that these are sustainable models that produce really good journalism,” Brummond said.
Nathan Countryman, the editor of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun, would like help with meetings, graduations and beloved community events like Sauerkraut Days. More importantly, the deal means the newspaper will not close.
“We know what that means for our community,” he said.