“I Didn't Know How We Were Going to Survive”: U.S. Community Newspapers’ Resilience During COVID-19

ABSTRACT

As journalists dealt with a nonstop news cycle in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of their newspapers faced a financial crisis as advertising revenue sharply declined during economic shutdowns. Unable to rely on their centuries-old, advertising-centric business model, U.S. community newspapers had to turn to other means to survive. This study features oral histories with 24 journalists and state newspaper association directors in six states for a deeper understanding of how community newspapers handled the financial crisis on top of a public health crisis in early 2020. Through our interviews, journalists at locally-owned newspapers described a variety of strategies, ranging from public- to market-funded, that they used in order to keep publishing. For many, this meant accepting government funding through the Paycheck Protection Program despite the industry's longtime prior resistance to a public-funding model. Community newspapers also turned to donations, grants, and other creative market strategies. However, even after the disruptions of COVID-19 presented new revenue options, community journalists say a complex road still exists for changing their business model.

KEYWORDS:

• Business model
• community journalism
• COVID-19
• newspapers
• oral history
• weeklies

Disclosure Statement

Teri Finneman previously has received funding to do oral history work for the North Dakota and South Dakota newspaper associations and previously has provided trainings at the state newspaper conventions in North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas and Arkansas.

Notes

1 The entire collection can be found at https://www.poynter.org/the-essential-workers/

2 Specifically, transcripts and related materials are housed at the State Historical Society of North Dakota, South Dakota State Archives, History Nebraska, Kansas Historical Society, Oklahoma Historical Society, and The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History.

Additional information

Funding

This work was support by the North Dakota Newspaper Association, the South Dakota Newspaper Association, the Nebraska Press Association, the Kansas Press Association, and the Arkansas Press Association, aswell as a University of Kansas general research fund grant.