In my state, which has large tracts of rural countryside, the hometown paper is what informs the people living in the small villages. Much of it is not newsworthy in the sense that it tells a story, but I certainly want to know when the Lions Club is holding their pancake breakfast, or who is speaking at the library next week, or what’s going on at the town hall.

This sort of information can certainly go online, but the local businesses continue to support the local offline newspaper, and for that I am grateful.

In my state, which has large tracts of rural countryside, the hometown paper is what informs the people living in the small villages. Much of it is not newsworthy in the sense that it tells a story, but I certainly want to know when the Lions Club is holding their pancake breakfast, or who is speaking at the library next week, or what’s going on at the town hall.

This sort of information can certainly go online, but the local businesses continue to support the local offline newspaper, and for that I am grateful.

Wow! You don’t look that old!

Seriously though, the smaller regional papers are based upon a different business model than the large metropolitan dailies. The former are typically community-centric, focused upon providing a service, with the maximization of profits holding a lower priority than the corporate-modeled papers. As such, they aren’t so quick to cease publication in response to a dip in the bottom line. Add to that the facts that their overhead is typically much lower than the big rags (reporters & contributors paid significantly less, production subcontracted, rather than performed in a capital-intensive in-house press), as well as the less tangible but significant appeal of a more personal appeal, and it should come as no surprise that the smaller papers are surviving while the larger ones falter.

Wow! You don’t look that old!

Seriously though, the smaller regional papers are based upon a different business model than the large metropolitan dailies. The former are typically community-centric, focused upon providing a service, with the maximization of profits holding a lower priority than the corporate-modeled papers. As such, they aren’t so quick to cease publication in response to a dip in the bottom line. Add to that the facts that their overhead is typically much lower than the big rags (reporters & contributors paid significantly less, production subcontracted, rather than performed in a capital-intensive in-house press), as well as the less tangible but significant appeal of a more personal appeal, and it should come as no surprise that the smaller papers are surviving while the larger ones falter.