Newspapers in this country are undergoing some changes that are not popular with their subscribers. However, in most cases those changes are necessary for their newspaper’s survival.

A report by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism a year ago estimated that some 70 million Americans live in a county with either no local news organization or only one. Those are called “news deserts” that are described as either rural or urban communities with limited or no access to credible information they need to promote democracy.

The Medill report said there were 8,891 newspapers in the country in 2005 that were down to 6,377 a year ago last May. An estimated 75,000 journalists worked in newspapers in 2006, and that was down to 31,000 last year.

Annual newspaper  revenues slipped from $50 billion to $21 billion in the same period. Advertising revenues have shifted to social media sites that use stories from newspapers that aren’t reimbursed.

Medill’s report said 360 newspapers have shut down since the end of 2019, and all but 24 of them were weeklies serving small communities. The Welch News in McDowell County, West Virginia, that closed its doors back on March 13 after 100 years is a perfect example of a news desert.

The Associated Press reported July 26 that McDowell is dominated by rugged mountain terrain where residents live miles apart in hollers connected by winding roads. Residents have no interstate access, leaving people isolated. Cell and internet service is inconsistent— or nonexistent — and there are no locally based radio or television stations.

In 1950, nearly 100,000 people lived in McDowell County and a fourth of that population was Black. Today, 80% of the remaining 17,850 residents are White. It also has some of the lowest graduation and life expectancy rates in the nation.

A third of all McDowell County residents live in poverty. The per capita income is $15,474. Over the years, the county lost big box stores, schools, thousands of jobs, and people. But it still had its newspaper. Now, it’s gone.

Virginia Dickerson, a 79-year-old deputy magistrate court clerk, said, “Now when people die, a lot of people don’t even realize they’re dead.” She said she delivered the newspaper while growing up and said losing the newspaper was like “losing a family member.”

“Anything that happens usually in the community and anywhere in McDowell County, it would be in that newspaper,” she said. “Without no paper, you can’t find nothing.”

Paulina Breeden, a worker behind the counter at the only gas station in the neighboring community of Maybeury (not the Andy Griffith Mayberry), said she trusted the information she read in The Welch News. “You hear a lot, and I know maybe it’s not the actual truth,” she said of rumors around town. “Let’s just read the newspaper.”

Shawn  Jenkins, the owner of a pharmacy, said he feels national coverage of McDowell County — and West Virginia in general— is overly “political, unfair, and often negative.” But he said he never felt that way about the local newspaper.

“I never saw anything that really raised my hackles,” he said. “I thought they were pretty much center line, which is the exception these days,” adding that he advertised in the paper. “I wanted them to survive.”

Derek Tyson, the 32-year-old former reporter and editor of The Welch News, said the newspaper void is being filled by cable news and social media. Much of what he sees circulating on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets is unverified.

The AP said the newspaper used to act as a counter to that misinformation. Two of its stories corrected misinformation about election tampering that turned out to be a change in voting locations and all ballots had been  counted.

Missy Nester, publisher of The Welch News, said when she was raising her three children as a single mother in the 1990s and 2000s, the county’s older residents would stop by her house on surprise visits with meals and cash they’d tape to her front door.

“I saw keeping the paper going as a way to repay them — or to try to — for everything they did to take care of me,” Nester said.

Howard Wade, a 97-year-old retired professor and World War II veteran,  said of the newspaper, “It was like a heartbeat, like a thread that ran through the community.”

The West Virginia community’s reaction to the loss of its local newspaper is a tribute to quality journalism, and I wanted to share their story with our readers.

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