LINCOLN — Bev and Ron Puhalla came out of retirement 18 months ago to save their local paper, the Pawnee Republican, from closing down.

Now, the Puhallas and community leaders in southeast Nebraska’s Pawnee County are launching an effort to ensure the future of the Republican, the oldest, continuously published weekly paper in the state.

A recent meeting in the community led to the creation of the Sunrise Publications Journalism Trust, a nonprofit foundation aimed at gathering financial support, via tax-deductible contributions from individuals and organizations, to keep the paper operating.

The effort in Pawnee County, population 2,500, is a rural duplicate of what has happened in many urban areas across the country, including Omaha, where the nonprofit Flatwater Free Press has built a newsroom that rivals the for-profit Omaha World-Herald via philanthropic support.

The pathway to finding financial support in rural areas can be much more difficult, given fewer organizations and less population, but it can be done, according to the head of a journalism trust in western Iowa.From her farm home outside Breda, Iowa, Becky Vonnahme runs the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation. (Courtesy of Western Iowa Journalism Foundation)

The Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, which is based out of a farmhouse outside Breda, Iowa, now hands out more than $300,000 a year in grants, helping 11 community newspapers add and retain staff and fund the transition to digital publication.

“We just need to educate people that this isn’t a failing business that you’re just propping up,” said Becky Vonnahme, the executive director of the foundation. “This is helping people to stay connected and helping a community stay visible and relevant.”

The foundation was formed in late 2020, she said, as publishers of small-town community newspapers came to realize that the old model of supporting local journalism via ads from mom-and-pop retailers on the main drag had disappeared due to the closing of such businesses and an exodus of advertising to Facebook and other digital platforms.

Vonnahme said that philanthropic support is necessary for small papers because it’s unclear, at least so far, whether online subscriptions can sustain a newsroom into the future.

Research has shown that when a town loses its local newspaper, many “bad” things happen, she said, including a decline in voting and political candidates, disengagement from community affairs and an increase in corruption and political partisanship.

“This really is the last line of defense for rural Iowa, rural America. No one is coming in to talk about Breda, Iowa, or Carroll, Iowa,” Vonnahme said.

Bev Puhalla and her husband, who took over the 157-year-old Pawnee Republican in 1990, were forced to return to the paper after a new owner, who bought the paper in 2019, quit suddenly. But they’re both in their mid-70s and want to get back to retirement.

Puhalla said she had watched how Flatwater had grown via donations, and floated the idea of doing something similar during a community meeting a few weeks ago.

She asked if those in attendance would serve on a board to oversee such a journalism trust. The response, Puhalla said, was “overwhelming” and “heartwarming.”

The Sunrise Publications Journalism Trust Board includes the heads of the local hospital and school district, a local lawyer and accountant and a local banker.

“They understand the important role the newspaper plays in the community,” Puhalla said.

LINCOLN — Bev and Ron Puhalla came out of retirement 18 months ago to save their local paper, the Pawnee Republican, from closing down.

Now, the Puhallas and community leaders in southeast Nebraska’s Pawnee County are launching an effort to ensure the future of the Republican, the oldest, continuously published weekly paper in the state.

A recent meeting in the community led to the creation of the Sunrise Publications Journalism Trust, a nonprofit foundation aimed at gathering financial support, via tax-deductible contributions from individuals and organizations, to keep the paper operating.

The effort in Pawnee County, population 2,500, is a rural duplicate of what has happened in many urban areas across the country, including Omaha, where the nonprofit Flatwater Free Press has built a newsroom that rivals the for-profit Omaha World-Herald via philanthropic support.

The pathway to finding financial support in rural areas can be much more difficult, given fewer organizations and less population, but it can be done, according to the head of a journalism trust in western Iowa.

The Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, which is based out of a farmhouse outside Breda, Iowa, now hands out more than $300,000 a year in grants, helping 11 community newspapers add and retain staff and fund the transition to digital publication.

“We just need to educate people that this isn’t a failing business that you’re just propping up,” said Becky Vonnahme, the executive director of the foundation. “This is helping people to stay connected and helping a community stay visible and relevant.”

The foundation was formed in late 2020, she said, as publishers of small-town community newspapers came to realize that the old model of supporting local journalism via ads from mom-and-pop retailers on the main drag had disappeared due to the closing of such businesses and an exodus of advertising to Facebook and other digital platforms.

Vonnahme said that philanthropic support is necessary for small papers because it’s unclear, at least so far, whether online subscriptions can sustain a newsroom into the future.

Research has shown that when a town loses its local newspaper, many “bad” things happen, she said, including a decline in voting and political candidates, disengagement from community affairs and an increase in corruption and political partisanship.

“This really is the last line of defense for rural Iowa, rural America. No one is coming in to talk about Breda, Iowa, or Carroll, Iowa,” Vonnahme said.

Bev Puhalla and her husband, who took over the 157-year-old Pawnee Republican in 1990, were forced to return to the paper after a new owner, who bought the paper in 2019, quit suddenly. But they’re both in their mid-70s and want to get back to retirement.

Puhalla said she had watched how Flatwater had grown via donations, and floated the idea of doing something similar during a community meeting a few weeks ago.

She asked if those in attendance would serve on a board to oversee such a journalism trust. The response, Puhalla said, was “overwhelming” and “heartwarming.”

The Sunrise Publications Journalism Trust Board includes the heads of the local hospital and school district, a local lawyer and accountant and a local banker.

“They understand the important role the newspaper plays in the community,” Puhalla said.

 

One member of the new board, Todd Evans, superintendent of the Pawnee City Public Schools, said a local newspaper is a “key component” in preserving the quality of life, and civic engagement, in a small town.

“Newspapers celebrate successes, mourn losses and report important local events,” Evans said. ”I am very appreciative of the focus of the City of Pawnee that embraces small-town living. The local newspaper contributes to, supports and defines our community.”

The number of newspapers in Nebraska has declined in recent years from 146 to 133 due to some closings but also due to mergers to create a single, county newspaper. Nine counties in the state have no newspapers anymore, including suburban Cass County, which sits between Omaha and Lincoln — though a Plattsmouth-based newsletter, the Cass Gram, provides a wrap-up of local news.

Small-town newspapers face headwinds besides the loss of local advertisers, including uncertain mail service, difficulties in hiring staff and trouble finding a press to print a newspaper.

Dennis DeRossett, the executive director of Nebraska Press Association, said he was glad to see the Pawnee City community come together in support of the local newspaper. He said the Press Association is looking at transitioning its existing foundation to duplicate what the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation has done — to provide grants to sustain Nebraska newspapers. Currently, the Nebraska Press Association Foundation is focused on providing scholarships and education.

He said that instead of paying a $50 subscription, a reader could provide a larger donation to a foundation.

“This is a way to keep a local newspaper and do it through a tax-deductible gift,” DeRossett said.

In Pawnee City, the Sunrise Publications Journalism Trust has already gotten a “sizable” contribution from a local booster club, Puhalla said, and is beginning to solicit other donations. A Flatwater staffer, she said, has pledged to help their effort.

In Iowa, the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation was aided by a national documentary about one of the area’s newspapers, the 3,000-circulation Storm Lake Times Pilot. Despite winning a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017, the paper was struggling financially and short of staff.

Vonnahme said that the PBS documentary focused on the plight of community newspapers — small staffs that fill a variety of jobs — while also posing the question, “Does democracy survive” without local journalism?

The documentary, she said, helped kick-start donations and led a California philanthropist to make a five-year pledge to support two to three reporters at the Times Pilot. It allowed the Storm Lake paper to cover city council, school board and county board meetings it couldn’t cover previously, as well as do enterprise stories that had to be set aside for nuts-and-bolts reporting, according to the paper’s award-winning editor, Art Cullen.

Vonnahme said that getting donations requires telling the story of how the business model of local newspapers has been decimated by the shift away from print to digital advertising, and that with some partial support from donors, local journalists can stay on the job.

“It just takes a lot of education to show why it’s so important to keep that local news source,” she said.