Abstract
This research sought to understand how the loss of a local newspaper impacts the community. Focus groups were conducted among a purposive sample of community leaders. The overall consensus was that residents miss having a single community information platform. Business owners lack an effective way to advertise. Respondents’ perception of the emerging communication platforms trying to fill the information void depends on the consumers’ technical proficiency and prior use of such platforms.
To the casual observer, Baldwin City, a northeast Kansas college town of approximately 4,627 residents (“American Fact Finder,” 2017), appears to be an ideal community, boasting a good quality of life and numerous cultural and historic attractions (cf. “Baldwin City, Kansas,” 2019). With a median household income of $51,640 and average home price of $158, 200, the average age of Baldwin City residents is 32, and 37% of the population has a bachelor’s degree or higher (Chmura Economics & Analytics, 2019). But the otherwise thriving small town has been dealing with a major problem: Its newspaper, the Baldwin City Signal, folded in December 2015, leaving the town without a printed central information source (“Baldwin City Signal,” 2015). The Signal was published by the neighboring Lawrence Journal World since 1999 as one of four weekly papers it printed for small towns in the area. The Signal was Baldwin City’s second newspaper, replacing the historic Baldwin Ledger, operated continuously since 1885. Scott Stanford et al. (2018), the Journal World’s former publisher who closed the Signal, said the Baldwin newspaper was the weakest of the four by both readership and advertising revenue. The Signal had less than 100 paid subscribers when it closed, and most of its readership came from about 600 Baldwin City households that subscribed to the Journal World and received the Signal as an added benefit. The remainder of the Signal’s weekly 1,000-copy press run was distributed free at newspaper racks throughout the city. In its final year, Signal advertising sales totaled only $46,000, of which approximately $25,000 was derived from accounts that also advertised in the parent Lawrence newspaper, Stanford said; only $21,000 was directly generated by Signal ad sales. Stanford said the economic challenges of continuing publication were simply too great: You have (a population of) about (4,600) people or about 2,000 households . . . you’ve got to (have a press run) of 1,000 (copies) to justify turning on the press. (Theoretically) if you had 1,000 circulation that would be 50 percent of household penetration, and who wouldn’t take that in this day and age? But even (with that circulation) the economic realities of going to an advertiser (with those circulation numbers) . . . are very limited.
The Journal World company decided to cut its losses, and on December 30, 2015, a front-page story announced the Signal’s demise and a promise that the parent newspaper would assume Baldwin City news coverage: Being a seven-day per week newspaper, (the Journal World) is going to be able to provide news and information to the Baldwin City community in a more timely fashion than we could [with a] weekly newspaper . . . We’re excited about including (Baldwin City) coverage in the Journal World. (p. 1)
When the realities of the Signal’s closure set in, the Baldwin City community went into crisis mode. In the ensuing scramble to fill the communications void, new digital services and other information dissemination arrangements quickly sprang up. The Journal World attempted to cover Baldwin City news; it promised that its reporter who already lived in Baldwin City and covered the entire county would continue to cover Baldwin City news to prevent an information vacuum (Chad Lawhorn, personal communication, August 21, 2017). A weekly online newsletter containing community events calendar items and some local news stories, the Baldwin City Gazette, was launched on the Signal’s closing (Kevin Surbaugh, personal communication, August 14, 2017). The Baldwin City Chamber of Commerce quickly attempted to fill the information gap with a weekly “E-blast,” an online newsletter sent each Friday to Chamber members and the community at large, replacing a monthly newsletter published prior to the arrival of current Chamber manager Jeanette Blackmar in October of 2015 (Jeanette Blackmar, personal communication, July 18, 2017). And various types of listservs and Facebook pages were established by community organizations, who frantically set up systems to communicate with their members and patrons about upcoming meetings and other pertinent events that would have otherwise been publicized in the Signal.
Gazette founder Kevin Surbaugh (2017), who had studied journalism in college and had worked for a community newspaper at one time, said he began the weekly electronic publication with the goal of “replacing the Signal, and in some cases, making local news coverage better.” Although Surbaugh sells some advertising, his Gazette does not generate enough revenue to support himself (he commutes daily to a full-time job in Lawrence) and his e-publication runs on “a shoestring budget.” Analytics suggest some local readership, with an average of 100 readers per week, and in some instances, higher impact stories may get as many as 500 hits, and that most readers are from Baldwin City. “It’s clear that some residents will be served by this publication and some will not . . . that’s the nature of the internet,” said Surbaugh, who has also constructed a Facebook site to help draw traffic to the Gazette (Kevin Surbaugh, personal communication, August 14, 2017).
Chamber manager Blackmar (2017) noted that the organization’s E-blast is sent each Friday to 209 Chamber members, and 309 other community members who signed up to receive information from the chamber. Depending on events happening, Blackmar issues additional E-blasts. And in Baldwin City’s post-newspaper era, with no advertising vehicle to reach a substantial portion of the population, the Chamber helps member-businesses publicize retail promotions without charge. But Blackmar reports that only 34.7% of members and 26.5% of other citizens open the messages (Jeanette Blackmar, personal communication, July 25, 2017).
Current Journal World publisher Chad Lawhorn admits it has been difficult to maintain the commitment to cover Baldwin City without a local newspaper. The Journal World retained a former Signal reporter to cover it, but that staff member’s beat also includes other Douglas County towns, making consistently covering news in all assigned communities an arduous––if not impossible––task. Despite both Baker University and Baldwin City High School having competitive athletic programs—Baker is a perennial NAIA football powerhouse—sports coverage in Baldwin City is often overshadowed by the Journal World’s coverage of University of Kansas athletics. And, Lawhorn admits, minor sports at Baker and BCHS may not be covered at all, depending on the Journal World’s daily budget of sports stories. “Is our (Baldwin City area) news as good as it once was?” Lawhorn lamented. “Probably not, but we have not abandoned our coverage of Baldwin City. We haven’t walked away from the idea of trying to provide what’s important to folks down there.”
Lawhorn’s statement must be understood within the context of the roles expected of local media. The Federal Communications Commission defines the critical information needs that local community media should meet to include those forms of information that are necessary for citizens and community members to live safe and healthy lives; have full access to educational, employment and business opportunities; and to fully participate in the civic and democratic lives of their communities. The commission groups these needs into eight categories of information: 1. emergencies and risks, both immediate and long term; 2. health and welfare, including specifically local health information as well as group specific health information where it exists; 3. education, including the quality of local schools and choices available to parents; 4. transportation, including available alternatives, costs and schedules; 5. economic opportunities, including job information, job training and small business assistance; 6. the environment, including air and water quality and access to recreation; 7. civic information, including the availability of civic institutions and opportunities to associate with others; 8. political information, including information about candidates at all relevant levels of local governance, and about relevant public policy initiatives affecting communities and neighborhoods. (Friedland et al., 2012, pp. v–vi)
This study shows the Journal World and the emerging new digital platforms have fallen short of these FCC expectations for a variety of reasons.
Literature Review
Baldwin City meets the classification of what community journalism scholars have labeled “news deserts,” where declining audience and advertiser support of legacy media (newspaper, radio and television) have caused a decrease in local news coverage (Stites, 2011), either through newsroom staff cutbacks or, in extreme cases, outlets ceasing operations altogether (Abernathy, 2020). Local residents are left without vital community information when news pertaining to city and county government operations, local schools and churches and other civic-related information is no longer available from a commonly accessed source, the role traditionally filled by newspapers. Moreover, these news deserts also suffer from an inability for businesses to reach local consumers, an important aspect of a community’s economic development and sustainability (Abernathy, 2016; Bucay et al., 2017; Fiedler, 2011; Stites, 2011). Furthermore, results of a nationally representative study involving 34,900 respondents showed that nearly half of U.S. adults (47%) report that what local news they do get generally covers a nearby city rather than their own locality, echoing alarms raised by journalism researchers studying resource cutbacks and media consolidation (Pew Research Center, 2019). Lawrence is 16 miles from Baldwin City; the Lawrence Journal World is available in Baldwin City, but promised intensified coverage of Baldwin City did not happen.
Research for decades has shown that local newspapers are community institutions that are missed when they are gone. Newspaper cessation has a major negative effect on communities, and dealing with such disruption can have practical and even psychological effects on communities. Roland Thompson, executive director of Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, returned to his hometown to find the local newspaper gone and getting “an earful from my old friends about the decline of community institutions because of a lack of publicity, reporting and interest” (Thompson, 2016). Indeed, using U.S. Census Bureau data, Shaker (2014) found that the levels of civic engagement declined in Seattle and Denver from 2008 to 2009 after their newspapers were shuttered, a decline not consistently replicated in areas that did not lose their newspapers. Humboldt, Kansas, went through a discovery process of adjusting to life without a local newspaper when the Humboldt Union closed after 129 years, with residents often not realizing what information was routinely provided by the Humboldt Union and finally missing the Union when such information was no longer available. Smethers et al. (2007) found that people most often missed local government news, obituaries, local people features, school news and local event news, but beyond that was the disruption of the habit of reading local news every week. Out-of-town media and alternative news sources such as the Chamber of Commerce newsletter were judged to be ineffectual. The Humboldt experience echoes Almena, Kansas, where the Almena Plaindealer ceased publication after 102 years of service. A survey of 400 people in the tiny town found that former Plaindealer readers missed similar types of local news and attempts by other area media failed to provide adequate coverage (Smethers, et al, 2017).
Research suggests that losing a local newspaper negatively affects readers’ perceptions about the health of their communities, while uses and gratifications theory suggests that readers would feel a personal sense of loss when their local newspaper closes its doors.
Uses and Gratifications Theory
The uses and gratifications theory provides a great tool to understand the gravity of the loss of a community newspaper as well as any disruption to life, news consumption habits, and attendant social psychological needs satisfied by a community news source. Katz et al. (1974) argued that the theory is focused on the social psychological origins of needs that generate expectations of the mass media or other sources, which leads to patterns of media exposure, resulting in need gratifications. These uses and gratifications fall into five broad categories based on the audience needs to be informed or educated; identify with characters in the media environment; be entertained; enhance social interaction; and escape from the stresses of daily life.
The theory has evolved over time, especially with the introduction of digital communication technologies. Ruggiero (2000) traced the theory’s history, arguing that the internet brings at least three new attributes of data that were not previously reflected in the media: interactivity, demassification and asynchroneity. A six-dimensional definition of interactivity includes available choices, users’ effort they must apply, responsiveness to users, tracking of information use, the simplicity to add information and interpersonal communication acceleration (Kiousis, 2002). Demassification refers to users’ ability to select from a wide spread menu and individuals’ control over the medium (Ruggiero, 2000). Asynchroneity refers to the fact that media messages may be overlapped in time. In regard to audio usage, user can manipulate media; for example, save music on an MP3 player, to listen to it later (Albarran et al., 2007)
The theory has also been used to better understand virtual communities (Cheung & Lee, 2010), social Apps (Hsiao et al., 2015) and online games (Li et al., 2015), especially exploring how users use these platforms to meet needs and gratifications such as social interaction, freedom of expression, social identity and sense of belonging.
The Channel Expansion Theory
A second theory relevant to this study is the channel expansion theory. The rise of new media platforms to fill the vacuum created by the death of the Baldwin City Signal raises several significant issues including the required technological skills, access, affordability and the level of comfort that residents might need in pivoting to new emerging news platforms. The channel expansion theory focuses on the development of users’ perceptions of a given communications tool and their propensity to use it, identifying four experiences as being important in an individual’s perception of a given platform: experience with the channel, experience with the message topic, experience with the organizational context and experience with the communication co-participants (Carlson & Zmud, 1994). As consumers develop experience with a platform, they develop associated knowledge bases that may be used to encode and decode rich messages on channels, and as their knowledge and experience grows, users will come to perceive such channels as increasingly rich. Similarly, they are likely to interpret the message as equally rich because they can interpret the content in an increasing variety of cues. Familiarity and experience with the communication partner is a significant determinant of channel richness perception.
Knowledge of a message’s topic is equally important. If an individual lacks a cognitive schema for a topic and has little interest in developing such a schema, it is unlikely that relevant knowledge will develop and this may impact a message recipient’s channel perception. The development of experience with an organization has a positive impact on perceived channel richness, which suggests that an individual’s knowledge of the organizational context could be useful in developing dyadic or more pluralistic messaging exchange.
The media richness theory has generally been supported when tested on traditional media such as face-to-face communication, memos and telephones but tests on new media such as electronic mail and voice mail were inconsistent. Part of the inconsistency was the time and experience required to figure out the richness in those new technologies. Knowledge-building experiences with a medium, communication partner, topic and social influences are positively related to perceptions of a medium’s richness regardless of the channel (Carlson & Zmud, 1999; D’Urso & Rains, 2008; Timmerman & Madhavapeddi, 2008),
The Pew Research Center (2019) reports that nearly nine in 10 Americans (89%) claim to currently get at least some local news digitally through news websites, apps or social media and 41% claim to do so often. Baldwin City’s news desert, which led to new information sources, raises a significant question related to residents’ perception of the new channels and their experiences in encoding and decoding messages sent through these new channels. Therefore:
What are people’s perceptions of the emerging digital news sources in Baldwin City?
Methodology
After Institutional Review Board approval, focus groups were conducted among a purposive sample of Baldwin City community leaders, who provided firsthand perspectives of conducting business and managing community organizations without a centralized source of professionally sourced news. The discussions were held over a 2-day period in July 2017, roughly 19 months after the Signal ceased publication. That time frame allowed alternative communication methods and platforms to materialize in the absence of the newspaper and for local residents to gain an appreciation for how such services filled the city’s information needs.
Four focus-group sessions were conducted in familiar, convenient downtown locations, with a total of 24 residents participating. Each discussion lasted no more than 90 minutes. In line with recommended focus group procedures (i.e., Adler & Clark, 1999, p. 252; Liosetta, 2003, p. 6), groups were kept as small as possible in an effort to maximize discussion potential, but factors such as respondent availability were an issue (for example, one group had more than the recommended maximum of 12 respondents since it was scheduled over a lunch period and all participants held jobs in the area). The smallest group had five respondents. The facilitator was unknown to community residents and was thus able to impartially gain responses from all participants.
The Chamber of Commerce manager served as an on-site confederate to recruit participants, organize group discussions, and issue reminder phone calls in an effort to boost attendance. Eight males and 16 females participated and were mostly over the age of 40 (four panelists were in their 20s and 30s) and are either current or retired members of the Baldwin City business and professional communities. All subjects were heavily engaged in the community, reporting involvement in various civic clubs and church groups; most panelists reported living in Baldwin City for at least several years; one subject reported living in Baldwin for 35 years, and several had lived in the community for 12 to 25 years. One respondent reported living in town for 7 months, and two panelists said they work in Baldwin City but live elsewhere. Most reported owning their home and more than half of the panelists attended church in the area. All respondents are registered voters and report that they regularly consume news from broadcast, digital and print platforms. All these are factors identified in literature as important indicators of community engagement (Hoffman & Eveland, 2010; Mwangi et al., 2014). A purposive sample drawn from community leaders and those engaged in the community for a study on a defunct paper with a 50% household penetration rate means that you are likely to have a sample of respondents who have used the paper as an information source, to advertise, or communicate a message to the community as community leaders, and can talk intelligently about the communication vacuum, as well as experiences shifting to new channels. The results are not meant for generalization but to add to existing scholarship in what has become a worrying and increasing trend throughout America (Abernathy, 2020; Stites, 2011). Each discussion was recorded onto digital files for later verbatim transcription. Participant comments were carefully reviewed by researchers and thematically analyzed according to variables dictated by the research question.
Results
Missing the Baldwin City Signal
One of the main questions for the focus groups was how the loss of the Baldwin City Signal has affected the community. Respondents generally agreed that they miss having a local newspaper, although some felt that the newspaper being published by an out-of-town company was an issue that usually resulted in less-than-adequate coverage anyway: We took the Signal for a while . . . the content didn’t seem worth it . . . the accuracy seemed to be a little off and . . . in my profession (coaching) . . . I really didn’t have to read about how poorly of a job I might be doing . . . I quit taking (the Signal) because it was more advertisement than it was informative.
Another panelist opined that “the content was very lacking” and that while he missed having a local newspaper, “the news was a little late . . . a lot of times you’ve already heard about it.” Another offered, “as far as ‘news’ news, the loss of the Signal hasn’t altered my life or what I do. I still have my own communication mechanisms.”
But the overall consensus was that Baldwin City residents at least miss having a single community information platform, a role the Signal filled. Business owners and managers bemoaned losing an effective way to advertise to current and potential customers, essentially positing that losing a local legacy medium is essentially an economic development issue in a small town. One panelist from a local cable TV company said, I miss the paper personally as a business (manager) . . . we’ve been in this town for 25 years . . . everyone sees us as a big corporation, which we are, but we will want to maintain that small town customer service and that local connection through advertising.
Another local merchant, a banker, agreed that losing the newspaper means losing a valuable way to reach current and potential customers: We used to do quite a bit of newspaper advertising, but we don’t do that now. We can advertise (to our current customers) through (stuffers) in our monthly statements. We tried direct mail advertising last year. It wasn’t very successful . . . we had a coupon on the back for (getting customers to come bank in to the bank). We did not get a very good response. We can reach our (current) customers that way, but we can’t reach outside that group.
A panelist bemoaned the fact that it is more difficult to patronize local businesses and services without information provided by local advertising.
I would rather use somebody from the community than (employ) someone out of Kansas City to come and do the service. Even (something as simple as) having high school-aged kids at home who may be looking for odd jobs is more difficult now.
For many respondents, the lesson learned about losing the newspaper is that so many communication needs that a central news source provides are taken for granted until the source is gone, something that is especially true for organizations, such as the school district, that rely on distributing important organizational information: We (now) have our own method of communicating information, but it’s limited to reaching parents in the school district. As a result, there is always a part of our community that does not hear about our (activities) because they do not have kids enrolled in the schools. The Signal was, of course, our main provider of information about enrollment, events and activities . . . When it comes to legal notices, we now have to put them in the Lawrence Journal-World just to satisfy compliance (with state law) because it’s the nearest newspaper.
The director of the Lumberyard Arts Center, a community arts hub located in a building that once housed a lumber and home remodeling business, said the loss of the paper “ . . . has been dramatic. (The Signal) was one of our main avenues to get information out to people. Even then, a lot of people didn’t know what was going on . . . ”
One panelist, who had grown up in the Baldwin City area and recently returned, commented that incoming residents often use newspapers as a way to scout what living in a new location would be like, something that cannot happen if there is no local newspaper in the area: It was difficult to find out what was going on the community. As I was going through the (job) application process, I wanted to learn about (Baldwin City) and see what things have changed. I had been away (from the area) for a long time and wanted to do some research (but) there wasn’t anything out there . . . Having some reliable source of (community) information would be really nice.
Another new Baldwin City resident echoed this problem, recalling that “there is not a source we have found . . . to help someone look for work or to find services like tree trimmers and other businesses that you need from time to time.”
In all, panelists reported that they miss the physical presence of the Signal and the minutiae of local news. “If I want to keep up with something that happens and what time something starts, it’s right there,” said one resident who commented on how her media dependency habits have changed. Said another panelist, When people are looking for information, they don’t want someone to push it at them. They are looking for a place where it is all compiled and they can go to it voluntarily . . . people are looking for everything to be in one spot . . .
Another panelist said, “I stay pretty involved with volunteering . . . and I feel like I have (an information) void and miss out on a lot of things.”
One participant touched on the serendipity of reading the printed page, something not replaced by digital platforms: I have to have the newspaper for (keeping track of) things that are going on in town because sometimes you miss (information) when you are on the computer and scrolling and only see what catches your eye. The paper . . . was more there and in your face. Since our kids are not in school now, (we) don’t have that opportunity (to know about) school functions . . . so there’s kind of a void in moving back (to Baldwin City) and not having the paper.
There is a sense of documented, collective memory that is robbed from us when the community paper shuts down. It’s history that is stolen. This observation fits well within the scholarship on the role of newspapers in a community. Ali et al. (2020) identified the four democratic functions of newspapers as informing, agenda setting, watchdog and civic engagement and that a newspaper provides a sense of community and community pride. Dagger (1997) argued that a newspaper provides a memory or recollection of events, people and developments that makes up the community history. (“A lady passed away here in town (this month) and I didn’t hear about it until yesterday . . . ” said one panelist. “The daughter of this woman works for me, but I had no idea because I [could not read about it].”) This echoes the idea of the newspaper providing a shared emotional connection that provides a sense of community, which was deeply articulated by McMillan and Chavis (1986).
Families have been especially hard hit by Baldwin City’s information vacuum, since the newspaper documented important events and milestones in their children’s lives. One resident emphasized the permanency of the printed local news as a family staple. “My grandparents always clipped (news about us) and saved it and scrapbooked it, so now it’s fun to go back and look at those scrapbooks . . . you kind of miss that aspect of not having the paper.” But impacts on families were about more than clippings. One panelist said, “The kids looked forward to seeing their names in the local paper and their scores from the games . . . (you would see) kids’ pictures and field trips they went on. There was so much in that little paper!” Another panelist agreed that recognition for children’s achievements is an important component of local news, adding, “They used to publish the honor roll and my kids looked forward to seeing their names in the paper.”
All these concerns fall within the parameters of at least two categories of uses and gratifications—the need to be informed or educated, and the role of the media in enhancing social interaction; residents can’t interact socially if they don’t know where and when to do it.
The Lawrence Journal World’s Promise
Smethers et al. (2007) indicated that area newspapers’ attempts to provide coverage following local newspaper loss is often problematic, since the circulation of the out-of-town paper may be lacking in the local community. Moreover, factors such as hometown pride and the overriding sense of loss following the closure often overshadows neighboring publishers’ efforts in such situations.
A second major question for focus groups was uncovering people’s perceptions of the coverage promised by the Lawrence Journal World in the absence of the Baldwin City Signal. Most opinions expressed by panelists reflected the fact that the Journal World had mostly failed to fulfill its promise to provide regular coverage of Baldwin City news; overall, panelists gave low ratings to the neighboring newspaper’s frequency and thoroughness. While some panelists refused to give the Journal World a chance, such as one respondent who flatly stated, “I don’t read the Lawrence Journal World,” others reported reading that paper, but registered disappointment. “I think the Journal World has one (Baldwin City-related) article a week and then sometimes they have a little blurb about our sports, but that’s about it,” said one respondent, and another mentioned minimal content “unless it’s an athlete. I mean once in a while they will have something but it’s usually athletic.”
Some panelists saw the reality of the Journal World even trying to fulfilling its lofty commitment. “I don’t think the Lawrence Journal World really held up their end of the deal (to fill the information gap) . . . ” said a respondent, who added, “My uncle owns and runs a newspaper in Kansas City, so I am a bit biased on what they should be doing, but I don’t think they put in the effort at all.” Another panelist appreciated the intent: . . . they spoke at the Chamber of Commerce meeting a couple of months ago about their efforts to include Baldwin (news) and they do . . . I see (some news) but it’s not much. It’s sports here and there and an article about something going on, but not day-to-day things that go on (here) and it’s kind of disappointing.
Another panelist highlighted Baldwin City news as a low priority of the Journal World: . . . We share one journalist with other communities and that means we’re pretty much a non-entity, we’re not important enough. That gentleman has a hard job. There is no way he can be here (covering) the school board, city council and university and high school activities . . . and still cover other communities. We weren’t a priority.
Several respondents came back to Baldwin City information being exchanged “by word of mouth.”
In other words, panelists illustrated how Baldwin City news coverage was falling short of meeting the FCC’s eight categories of “critical information needs” within a community, information provided by newspapers and other community media. Those needs, as earlier explained, include emergencies and risks, health and welfare, education, transportation, economic opportunities, the environment, civic information, and political information (Friedland et al., 2012).
Effectiveness of New Digital Communications
Previously mentioned alternative communication platforms established to fill Baldwin City’s news vacuum––the Baldwin City Gazette, Chamber e-mail blasts, and various listservs and social media communications––had met with mixed reactions. Focus-group responses suggest that the effectiveness of these communication forms is primarily determined by consumers’ technical proficiency and their prior habits of using alternative platforms.
Some respondents felt that Kevin Surbaugh’s Gazette has potential, but the site needed further development for it to be considered a reliable source of community information. One resident, while familiar with the publication, said, I don’t know much about the Baldwin City Gazette. I have looked at it a few times but it doesn’t appear that (it) covers everything and most of it appears to be press releases. It doesn’t seem to be news reporting. I feel the need for something beyond the Gazette. Having a website (to cover local news) seems like a good deal though because I (often) need to go back and look at something (once I’ve read it).
Another respondent offered, The Gazette is kind of a start-up (enterprise) . . . I have never seen the Gazette nor do I know the (publisher) . . . but I would think they don’t have enough manpower. Maybe if they get more advertisers they would be able to cover more stories.
Other respondents claimed to be unfamiliar with its existence, such as a participant who said, “I didn’t know there was a Baldwin City Gazette. That’s news to me.” But another panelist reported that he had “ . . . read the Gazette a few times when it pops up on Facebook or something online.” Said still another resident, “I forget about (the Gazette) honestly, unless someone shares it (electronically) with me.”
Since panelists were primarily business owners and community leaders, most respondents were familiar with the Chamber of Commerce E-blasts and they generally rated the messaging as an effective source of community information. “I like the Chamber (e-mails),” said one panelist, adding “I read that every week to see what’s going on.” Another panelist, a Chamber board member, reported receiving “a lot of news through the Chamber . . . but I have a (information) void and miss out on a lot of things, and often hear (of events) after the fact.” Another panelist confessed, “I am not as aware of community events as I should be, although the Chamber letter seems to be inclusive. If (an event) is not there, I probably won’t get it.” One panelist offered the criticism that e-mail messages can be too intrusive. “You can’t send out (“blasts”) too often because then, (consumers) lose interest and (messages) clog up people’s accounts.” Another panelist appreciated reading the e-blasts, but pointed out, “ . . . Chamber news sort of comes from a business point of view, which is good, but there are other ways to look at what is going on in town.” Another discussant pointed to evidence that the city’s organized communication networks help in distributing information from other community information sources, such as the local school district redistributing the Chamber’s e-blast on its network: . . . the Superintendent of our school district . . . sends (the E-blast) out to all of the (district) employees, which I think helps. I don’t know how other members of the Chamber who get this information disseminate it . . . (But) to me, it is very important because the superintendent hasn’t just left the information on his desktop.
Conversely, the Chamber may re-publish information from other social media sources in its E-blasts, such as in the case of the Lumberyard Arts Center, whose director rated the E-blasts as “surprisingly good” in getting the word out.
Our information that goes out on Facebook seems to reach a lot of people. And with the Chamber adding (other information) to it, because we are a Chamber member, we do get word out (to a larger audience), but we still don’t reach everybody.
Respondents reported that when the Signal ceased publication, it did not take long for individual organizations to take matters into their own hands and establish makeshift messaging systems as a means of keeping community-based organizations operating smoothly and members in contact with club business. The school district, community arts organization and community recreation and senior citizen programs all established email listservs, social media networks and other platforms to accomplish this task. One panelist, the local high school principal, reported that social and academic clubs in the school system use social media for communication, while the high school journalism class maintains a Facebook page for district residents. “How many people read it is up for debate,” he said, “but that is an opportunity for us to (get information out) . . . Not as much coverage as I would like and certainly not as much as we had (with a local newspaper).” Another panelist, the superintendent of the school district, acknowledged, “We have our own internal e-mail and voice messaging system . . . it’s a method of communicating information but it’s limited to reaching parents, students, teachers, and employees of students in the school district.” Another respondent, a Baldwin Senior Center volunteer, said the organization has been trying to establish its own communication system to publicize activities and keep members informed: We have a very active senior engagement coordinating committee . . . we have a person on our staff . . . (whose) main job is to communicate with seniors . . . we have been dealing with (teaching) . . . senior citizens how to use their phones, iPads . . . we have been working at providing education opportunities at no cost for seniors to come in and figure out how to send pictures and do this and that. I really think that if we continue that type of thing and stay more engaged in the digital form of news, we can catch a lot (of information).
Another panelist noted that her church has a program to “collect information and figure out how to disseminate it so that (members) knows about (news). So far, we have found that those who are active in the community want to share (their) information (with others).” Another panelist who manages the local Recreation Commission reported that her organization has switched solely to internet communication. “(We have) no paper publications, everything is done through the internet (and) social media . . . (We get) the content out to people right away. Everybody has their phones . . . ” A local banker added, “We have a lot of civic people that will come in and share their stories and put their news on our time and temperature digital sign.” Some organizations, such as the Lumberyard Arts Center, have used more established methods of communication such as direct mail and printed flyers to publicize activities, which the director described as being very expensive. The organization has attempted to cut costs by using a Facebook account and using any available mass distributed communication, such as the Chamber E-blast.
Discussions revealed that depending on a subject’s media usage background, especially experience with new media technology platforms, the new digital platforms and their perceived ability to provide a satisfying substitute for relaying information were either satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Some panelists, for example, were unaffected by Baldwin City’s communications vacuum, registering comments such as “ . . . anymore if I want to find out something I’ll just find out on my phone . . . ” or “I still have my internal communications mechanisms for what I need to (know).” Predictably, however, the major problem among aging populations has been the task of adapting to new platforms in the face of an overall lack of experience with digital communication technologies. One panelist called herself “technology resistant,” while another reported, “I refer to my children for everything [technology related].” Another subject reported, “I am the most technically challenged out of my group.” But some panelists said that they are always willing to try to learn new technology. “Basically, you show me how to do it and have it written down . . . so I can go back and learn the steps,” said one panelist, “I am OK with being a learner as long as you don’t make me feel like I’m stupid.” Another subject added an optimistic attitude toward learning new methods of communication: “It is just (a matter of) changing our mindsets . . . There has been so much change and this is just a part of it.”
Discussion
Personal accounts summarized here illustrate ingrained media-use habits among residents of a small Kansas college town and show how a disruption in service can plunge the community into perceived crisis. The defunct Baldwin City Signal, despite receiving mixed reviews from subjects cited here, was nonetheless seen as a community institution, and its loss as a tool of information and education is recognized by community leaders as having a severe impact on the social and civic fabric of the community, much as past applications of Katz et al. (1974) in this situation would predict. But research dealing with newspaper cessation (cf. Berelson, 1949; Smethers et al., 2007) was conducted before social media platforms were commonplace, and while this study reveals many of the same disruptive themes introduced by earlier studies of communities dealing with newspaper loss, we see a new twist here. This study reveals how primarily older residents of Baldwin City, Kansas, deal with adapting to alternative news delivery platforms in a post-newspaper era. Here, community leaders recount general ease in establishing individual social media networks to disseminate organization-specific news to patrons, but relate problems associated with ensuring that such information can be shared with the community at large. This study thus casts digital platforms as a mixed blessing in dealing with Baldwin’s information needs. Organization-specific listservs, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and websites are used as communication tools in community organizations, but these platforms tend to promote a certain community fragmentation. Community leaders lament that people rarely know about events that happen outside their peer-communication networks, and that some important meetings and events that would be beneficial to the community often go unpublicized. We thus gain a new appreciation for the town’s former newspaper, which, despite its imperfections, emerges in this study as a previously unrecognized unifying symbol of community information and commerce.
This study points to the larger problem of discovering how alternative news delivery platforms can provide an acceptable substitute for the printed newspaper among older populations. The 1990s concept of “technophobia” (cf. Brosnon, 1998) emerges here as a deterrent among older audiences’ potential use of digital platforms as a substitute for the printed page, although some community organizations in Baldwin City have proactively attempted to teach older members how to use social media platforms for information. The mixed consumer attitudes and experiences regarding the new platforms are also in line with the channel expansion theory, which spells out four experiences as being important in individuals’ perceptions of a communication channel: experience with the channel, experience with the message topic, experience with the organizational context and experience with the communication co-participants. Not surprisingly, Baldwin City residents are more likely to use and appreciate alternative platforms to receive information from and about organizations they are involved in than are others, consistent with channel expansion theory (Carlson & Zmud, 1994).
This study confirms the centuries-long role of the community newspaper as an important economic player in the community (for discussions of this about 100 years ago, see Atwood, 1923; Harris & Hooke, 1923). Historically often the only advertising medium in town other than direct mail (and themselves frequently the oldest business in a town), newspapers not only served existing businesses but could be said to play a role in economic development as their presence helped new businesses after their launch start and perhaps encouraged them to start. Local advertising is a service missed by readers when a newspaper closes (Smethers et al., 2007). In Baldwin City, newspaper advertising might have been of little interest to college students, but the Signal was essentially a once-source directory of important community services and professional businesses for older professionals looking to move into Baldwin City. The importance of advertising in community newspapers may be an old topic, but it is one that has never received much attention from academic researchers.
Overall, this study provides a case study illustration of the ever-growing news desert issue, often described as a crisis, and how news media loss practically affects a community. Similar future research, which can and should assume community newspapers are important local institutions, can further illustrate the practical social, economic and political impacts of legacy media loss in markets large and small, perhaps helping communities prepare for the inevitability of newspaper closure and the types of adjustments that must be made when their locales become news deserts. (In this research, comments indicate that even those who did not regularly read the newspaper, realized they missed it once it was gone.) Certainly, research needs to continue examining how digital platforms can be employed to overcome legacy media loss, and what factors might enhance new media adoption by nontraditional users in an effort to soften the local social and economic impact created by this seemingly inevitable threat.
This study also points out the challenges that legacy media consumers may face in adjusting to alternative new media platforms that may be introduced to serve news deserts. These include not only a learning curve with new technology, but also building trust, especially because new digital platforms may not have the kind of professionally prepared content that commercial newspapers do.
Study Limitations
The purposive sample of community leaders provided firsthand perspectives of conducting business and managing community organizations without a centralized source of professionally prepared news and arguably was the right sample for the issues explored by this study. But the sample also limited perceptions to one social economic standpoint. Therefore, future studies on news deserts could and should survey different segments of the population. Research could also examine how well the emerging digital platforms in news deserts, if they even exist, serve the community’s critical information needs compared with the legacy media they are replacing.