Mount Ayr [Iowa] Record-News and Cook [Minnesota] News-Herald, both small-town weeklies still plugging along with local staff and apparently still quite vital. The publisher/editor in Cook delivers small stacks to retail outlets himself but subscribers, both local and distant (like me) get them in the mail; Record-News subscribers also dependent on the USPS. We have homes on Lake Vermilion in MN and also near Redding, IA and the publications are read cover-to-cover with great interest. Record-News recently survived its second ownership change since we started subscribing three decades ago and the News-Herald guy is the Northwoods equivalent of Art Cullen but at the other end of the political spectrum--not sure what will happen when he is gone but hope there is an interest from someone.
And thank you for weighing in. Small-town newspapers are under siege... tough to know what will happen in the next twenty or thirty years (until the end of my life trajectory), but many of the scenarios are not good.
Just catching up on Substacks--
Mount Ayr [Iowa] Record-News and Cook [Minnesota] News-Herald, both small-town weeklies still plugging along with local staff and apparently still quite vital. The publisher/editor in Cook delivers small stacks to retail outlets himself but subscribers, both local and distant (like me) get them in the mail; Record-News subscribers also dependent on the USPS. We have homes on Lake Vermilion in MN and also near Redding, IA and the publications are read cover-to-cover with great interest. Record-News recently survived its second ownership change since we started subscribing three decades ago and the News-Herald guy is the Northwoods equivalent of Art Cullen but at the other end of the political spectrum--not sure what will happen when he is gone but hope there is an interest from someone.
Thank you for this Substack
And thank you for weighing in. Small-town newspapers are under siege... tough to know what will happen in the next twenty or thirty years (until the end of my life trajectory), but many of the scenarios are not good.