Fennimen, Ferrucci, & Mathews: Rural Journalism Rescue and Revival

In Revenue & Readership: Rescuing and Reviving Rural Journalism, Teri Finneman (Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Kansas), Patrick Ferrucci (Journalism, University of Colorado), and Nick Mathews (Journalism and Communication, University of Missouri) seek to understand how both rural newspaper publishers and readers perceive the business side of journalism.

The news industry was revolutionized in 1833 when The Sun in New York City changed the price of a newspaper from six cents an issue to one cent per issue. The key was advertising. The business model of using advertisements to off-set costs and provide affordable news to the public remained for 170 years. Then came the rise of digital media, with social media taking the lion’s share of advertisement revenue. Fast forward to the COVID-19 pandemic, and fears of an “extinction event” for newsrooms emerged. Rural newspapers were hit particularly hard, without the economic resiliency of some larger and more prominent news organizations.

In this article, the authors sought to understand how weekly newspaper publishers and rural residents who read their papers felt about funding local news. Surveys went to rural residents across North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, and to the publishers who distributed to those areas. The study found that of the 181 publishers surveyed, the vast majority relied on traditional, historical funding streams such as advertising (100%), print subscriptions (96.7%), digital subscriptions (74.6%), and legal notices (87.3%). Rural news organizations, however, were found to rely on more diversified income sources, such as graphic design services (39.2%), commercial printing services (48.1%), or office supply sales (20.4%). On the other hand, the 414 surveyed readers were most supportive of published events (54%), print subscriptions (51.9%), e-newsletters (48.1%), and donations (40%) as funding sources.

The authors determine that the data show a significant disconnect between publishers and their audiences. While various solutions exist, the authors found that the primary reason for the financial decline of news organizations are antiquated business models and failure to diversify income sources. The authors call for further research to gauge attitudes from publishers and readers in more diverse areas and to understand the publishers’ hesitancy to seek out innovative income methods.