Still, for all the myth busting and hardships for rural news, Finneman believes there are a lot of good things happening. “The industry has got to get past this myth that their older readers are the only base that they have to serve because they have a lot of younger people who would be willing to support them if they were given an opportunity,” Finneman said. The study found that residents ages 18 to 54 were more willing to financially help their newspaper than those over age 55. Other myths that were busted about rural America include that older adults care more about the news and consuming it. “And this was something that readers said that they were really interested in.” “We left it simple like that, because there’s different ways to do membership programs,” she said. So it makes a lot of sense that events would be very popular because they’re looking for things to do,” said Finneman, who grew up and spent a large part of her life in rural North Dakota.Īnother top option for readers was memberships, which was defined as a perk beyond subscription. “The most common phrase in rural areas is there’s nothing to do. “And so at any point, newspapers could see that revenue disappear, which is why we are arguing why it is so important to be proactive instead of reactive, so that there are more financial resources coming in.”įor readers, however, the study found that the top response for an additional revenue stream was events. “They very much pitch the current model, which is concerning, because we know that legal notices are under attack at legislatures across the country,” said Finneman, publisher of The Eudora Times, a nationally recognized news desert publication that she runs with journalism students. Not surprisingly, the publishers picked the model that has been around for hundreds of years: advertising and legal notices. Together with two colleagues, Finneman researched the possible revenue streams, speakng with publishers and readers in the Heartland states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. “It really made me start thinking, ‘why is it that we don’t yet have a solution for this business model problem?’ And frankly, I saw this as a failure of academia, like why in the last 20 years has there not been a solution found for the industry? And so this really motivated me to try to look into some solutions to this very serious problem.” Dozens of papers closed during the pandemic alone, Finneman said. In the last 20 years more than 500 rural newspapers have closed or merged, but little of the research on the journalism economy has focused on small-market media, said the study’s lead, Teri Finneman, associate professor at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. The research, written by scholars at public universities in Kansas, Colorado, and Missouri, has implications for small-town and rural media that are negotiating major changes in the news-industry economy.
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