The Eureka Herald has been selected to participate in a national initiative to strengthen community journalism in rural America. The initiative brings together newsroom staff, management, readers and advertisers to help shape a sustainable future for local journalism. The Eureka Herald is among only a limited number of newspapers nationwide given this incredible opportunity, which has already strengthened newspapers in North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas.
“The business model most newspapers still rely on was developed in 1833, when Andrew Jackson was president,” said Teri Finneman, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas and co-author of Reviving Rural News. “It assumed news should be dirt cheap and endlessly subsidized by advertising. That model no longer works. No other business could survive on a 200-year-old structure. Newspapers have to change.”
Finneman, a native of North Dakota, will guide The Eureka Herald’s process after meeting with editor/publisher Robin Wunderlich. The project is supported by KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities.
“It’s clear that Robin is committed to serving this community and helping save local news,” Finneman said. “It’s critical for us throughout this process to hear from readers and nonreaders about how we can better work together to ensure the newspaper is viable for years to come.”
Over the coming weeks, The Eureka Herald will ask for your help to put the Eureka area community on the map as an example of how to save local news. This includes focus groups and surveys of readers who are both subscribers and nonsubscribers, as well as businesses that are advertisers and those that are not. The project will include people from different professions, backgrounds and perspectives.
The goal of participating in this initiative is not to change what you’ve come to love about The Eureka Herald,
but to figure out a way forward that keeps Greenwood County’s communities covered. The majority of newspaper closures last year belonged to smaller chains and independent owners – 136, up from 130 the year before. The Eureka Herald celebrated its 158th year of serving Greenwood County this past July.
“I am excited to be a part of the Reviving Rural News initiative, and I look forward to working with Teri to help us navigate through the process,” Wunderlich said. “We, at The Herald, are committed to covering news that impacts Greenwood County and the surrounding area,” she continued. “We hope that our readers will join the process by participating in the readers’ survey that will help give us critical information going forward.”
At a time when many rural newspapers are disappearing, Eureka has been given an opportunity to help shape what the future of community journalism could look like locally and nationwide.
The readers’ survey is now available at tinyurl. com/EurekaHerald or the QR code in the ad on page 3. Your input matters as we work to strengthen the newspaper and ensure it stays open for years to come.
Please complete the three-minute survey by Oct. 18.
