I’ve bought and read each day’s paper this week, and I’ve noticed that the front pages have featured local news, from on-staff reporters, rather than Associated Press or other syndicated stories. That is down from its historic peak of around 20, but has held steady in a time when newsroom staffs have been drastically hollowed out elsewhere.
According to its publisher, Peter Imes-the fourth generation of the Imes family to have this role-the paper’s editorial staff is about the same as it was a decade ago: a total of 12. Now it’s between 13,000 and 14,000 (including a new edition for the nearby, prospering university town of Starkville, home of Mississippi State).īut it has held up much better than most. Then, its daily paid circulation was around 16,000. Like other small-town, local papers, it is in worse shape than it was a decade ago. The paper is printed each day in that same downtown site. Business and editorial offices of The Commercial Dispatch on Main Street in Columbus, Mississippi (James Fallows / The Atlantic) The newspaper is nearly a century old it has been based at its current home, on Main Street, since the 1920s and through that period it has been owned and published by members of the Imes family. Downtown Columbus, Mississippi, on a visit not long ago (James Fallows / The Atlantic) One of the most stately of these downtown structures is the longtime home of the local daily newspaper, The Commercial Dispatch. Its small downtown has architecturally beautiful “good bones,” of pre–World War II buildings now becoming popular for second- and third-story rentals and apartments. For an ongoing account of how newspapers from California to Kansas have tried to use transparency and civic engagement to strengthen their role in the community (and their business base), see reports on the News Co/Labsite, including this from Dan Gillmor.Īnd for a report on how and why one small daily newspaper in the South has been bucking the national trend, read on about The Commercial Dispatch of Columbus, Mississippi.Ĭolumbus is a town of about 24,000 in eastern Mississippi, which Deb Fallows and I have visited and written about frequently over the past five years.For a discussion of philanthropic guidelines in supporting local journalism, see this from the American Press Institute.
The 61 members in the 2019 corps represent a severalfold increase from the previous year. For a look at future leaders of journalism, see the young women and men who make up this year’s Report for America corps of young reporters, who will work at local and regional papers.For a useful Q&A about a “solutions journalism” approach to making newspapers more compelling and relevant, see this NationSwell discussionwith David Bornstein of the Solutions Journalism Network.For a sobering account of how severe this pressure has been for smaller publications, see this infographic from The Wall Street Journal.The pressure to adapt, while there could still be time to survive, is especially intense on smaller, local outlets that may be the only source of community-wide information and accountability in their locale.
Journalism everywhere is coping with a variety of well-known stresses. Economic & Business Development THE LAST FAMILY-OWNED DAILY IN MISSISSIPPIĪs mentioned in the kickoff post in this new “Our Towns” series, anyone who cares about America’s civic, cultural, and economic future should care about the fate of the local press.
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