Twentieth Century Weekly Community Newspapers in the United States

This study is an examination of community weekly newspapers in the United States during the twentieth century. In this work, the weekly “community” newspaper is defined as a newspaper operating in small towns and rural areas that placed an emphasis on local news. This study analyzes the nature of the weekly community newspaper and how it reflected American society throughout the twentieth century.

Despite all of the problems that faced the weekly newspaper industry throughout its long and proud history, the constants that remained were survival tactics in terms of reactive versus proactive responses to content, commercial, and professional concerns. Several times throughout the decades an obituary had been written for community weeklies. But they always found a way to fight back and happen upon a means, a method, or a message that resonated with audiences and advertisers enough so as to allow them to keep their doors open for another business day.

Community weeklies told the story of average American daily lives more thoroughly and in a more personal manner than the big-city dailies. In essence, the weekly publisher-editor served as author of his community’s life story.

I am extremely grateful to Butler Cain, Ph.D., and the late Jim Martin, Ph.D., for reviewing my book and offering helpful suggestions and edits. The publication of this work would not have come to fruition without the assistance of Madeleine Liseblad, Ph.D., who ushered me through the book proposal process. And finally, a special note of gratitude to my academic adviser and mentor, Wm. David Sloan, Ph.D., for instilling in me a love and appreciation for media history.

Historical works on American journalism have given little attention to weekly community newspapers after the period when most newspapers in this country fell into that publication category. Despite the rapid rise of the daily metropolitan newspaper in the early twentieth century, weekly community newspapers continued, although many historians viewed them as insignificant and hard to label. Critics considered weekly newspapers, also referred to as “grassroots journalism,” the “country press,” the “rural press,” or the “community press,” as nothing more than smaller, low-quality versions of their larger daily counterparts. The terms “weekly,” “community,” country,” “rural,” and “grassroots” are used interchangeably throughout this work to describe the small-town community weekly newspapers referred to in this study.

Perhaps the problem comes in defining a weekly community newspaper. An obvious category would be newspapers that published only once a week. But the term “community” separates those into further categories, because some weeklies served a small geographic area, while others, such as labor and religious publications, reached out to a special-interest audience. These special-interest weeklies served readers who shared an interest or a cause but not a geographical community concern. Some weeklies were published in suburban communities and urban neighborhoods, so they would not qualify for the designation of “country” or “rural” press. For this study, attention will be given to weekly “community” newspapers in small towns and rural areas that placed an emphasis on local news, exploring the nature of the weekly community newspaper and how it reflected American society throughout the twentieth century. Community weeklies told the story of average American daily lives more thoroughly and in a more personal manner than the big-city dailies. The tonal writing of most of these weeklies was that of a family member or friend, providing encouragement and support to their community family. Sensationalism was largely avoided; and a community’s life story was told through birth, marriage, and death announcements, the comings and goings of the social elite, the accomplishments of local students, and the gatherings of community clubs, business and professional organizations, and church groups.

The period under consideration in this study begins in the year 1900, when a clear separation began between the daily and non-daily publishing communities. By the 1970s, offset printing and the advent of computerized, desktop publishing changed the face of the publication industry and made it possible for the explosion of specialized and issue-oriented non-dailies, such as “shoppers,” that took on some characteristics of the community weekly. A “shopper” was usually tabloid in size, designed specifically to display classified and retail advertising. Some newspaper operations printed their own separate shopper, but most shoppers were in direct competition with general-news weeklies for advertising revenue. A majority of the shoppers were circulated free of charge, relying heavily on advertising revenue for profits.

The twentieth-century community weekly encompasses the cultural, political, and technological changes taking place in other aspects of American life. This work incorporates the business, technological, and governmental considerations of owning a small business and operating a weekly community press. It explores politics and the important role of the crusading editor. Throughout this work, references to a weekly publisher and/or editor are most often referred to in terms of “he” or “him” to reflect a large majority of the articles written by or about weekly publishers and editors during a period in which males held a high percentage of those positions.

As some community weeklies grew in circulation and advertising revenue, they merged with other weeklies to become daily newspapers. But others, despite expensive and problem-prone equipment, small staffs, and revenue shortcomings, continued publishing as community weeklies. From a business standpoint, profit appeared to become the dividing line between dailies and community weeklies, as dailies entered the world of big business and profit motive while community weeklies focused on public service and idealism in the face of financial uncertainty. However, new business practices introduced in the latter half of the century allowed more community weeklies to become profitable enterprises.

During the twentieth century, small-town weekly newspapers connected with more small towns and villages on a regular basis than did the country’s metropolitan newspapers. For example, in large sectors of the country the nearest metropolitan newspaper was located hundreds of miles away. A decade into the twentieth century, only 51 percent of Americans lived in metropolitan areas. The weekly newspapers of small communities played an important role in keeping the citizenry informed on local and national news. While a growing number of rural residents subscribed to both metropolitan dailies and their community newspaper, it was the weekly community paper that contained the news most relevant to those in the immediate geographic area. The introduction of radio, television, and mega-merged metropolitan dailies with “community news” inserts did not supplant the weekly community newspaper as the main source for local news.

Because of the inherently “localized” tone of the community weekly, the accepted standards of “professional” practices in journalism do not apply in full to community weeklies. They differ in content, context, and purpose from daily newspapers, responding to the specific needs of residents in sparsely populated regions. Their tone could often be described as “optimistic” and “informal,” easily dismissed by critics as unprofessional and inconsequential. But despite the fact that most journalism historical works have considered weeklies and dailies together when referring to newspapers, this study separates weekly community newspapers into a category of their own, emphasizing the importance of attention rather than avoidance when it comes to explaining the role of newspapers in everyday lives.

As privately owned businesses, weeklies and dailies shared similar day-to-day operations and duties, although the differing size and scope of their readership, business relationships, and operational concerns dictated differing responses and problem-solving measures. There were many commonalities among weeklies and dailies in terms of general standards of practice in newsgathering and revenue-generating models. However, small and large newspapers differed extensively in their tonal approaches to editorial content and community activism. Weekly publishers and editors were often under the threat of government intervention in such areas as postal, pricing, advertising, antitrust, and censorship regulations. But they also served as a valuable government partner to distribute war propaganda and to support various elected officials and their partisan politics.

Despite numerous threats to its existence, the weekly community newspaper survived and continued to play a prominent role in a community’s quality of life, growth, and development.

Community Weekly Newspapers as Reflected in Journalism Historical Works

Only a select number of journalism historians devoted entire works to the subject of community weekly newspapers in the United States. Comprehensive works in journalism history tend to mention the weekly field only briefly, perhaps in a chapter, but mostly in occasional paragraphs within topical chapters. However, two 1948 works by Thomas D. Clark stand out in the literature of the community weekly press because they emphasized the rural press of the South. The Southern Country Editor focused on the region’s sectional problems, such as race, a one-party political system, and one-crop agriculture that were prominent in both news and editorializing in the region’s community newspapers.¹ In The Rural Press and the New South, he asserted that the southern country press served as a guide to the common man’s thinking because its readers could easily understand the writing style in which community, state, and national problems were presented.²

Two decades later, former weekly newspaper editor-publisher and University of Minnesota journalism professor John Cameron Sim published The Grass Roots Press: America’s Community Newspapers. He explored the viability of the community newspaper press and considered its long-range prospects in terms of chances for survivability in the future. Early chapters discussed the beginnings of the weekly press to its heyday in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Later chapters considered the perception of the weekly’s role, the rise of weekly suburban newspapers, the impact of new technology, and the role community newspapers would have in the future.³

Considering perceptions of the weekly’s role, Sim pointed out that many community newspapers followed the guidelines set by Houston Waring, who retired in 1966 as editor of Colorado’s Littleton Independent and was a recognized leader in the community newspaper field. He outlined these functions of the community newspaper: (1) community newspapers make a community’s economy work by advertising; (2) all sides of a question can be debated by permitting expression of public opinion through interviews and “letters to the editor”; (3) the press has a decision-forcing function with massive publicity requiring citizens to take a stand and no longer ignore an issue that has become a topic of conversation; (4) the press has a status-conferring function because those picked for mention are recognized as standing out from the crowd; (5) the press acquaints community leaders with the activities of other leaders; (6) the newspaper helps the reader understand his environment, i.e., when to pay taxes, where to register a child for school, etc.; (7) newspapers can assist citizens in crusading for improvement; (8) the press is a sounding board for policy; (9) the press strengthens moral resolution because tempted men fear newspaper publicity and thus are better able to resist temptation, making the press unwittingly a community chaperone; (10) the press is a medium of entertainment; (11) by devoting so much space to sports, the press encourages readers to think more about sports than war, focusing on the glories of basketball and horse racing instead of victories in combat; (12) the press attends to small and basic needs of readers through classified advertisements; and (13) the press gives Americans a sense of identity and belonging to a certain community.⁴

The important tie between the residents of a small town or agricultural region and their local community weekly was chronicled in Robert F. Karolevitz’s From Quill to Computer: The Story of America’s Community Newspapers. His 1985 work was published in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the National Newspaper Association (also known for 80 years as the National Editorial Association). The association was founded to serve America’s community press and continues to do so from its headquarters in Pensacola, Florida. Karolevitz noted that during the period just prior to the heyday of the Penny Press before the Civil War, gazettes were generally short-run editions, limited by the printing process and populations. But with the emergence of metropolitan areas and the improvement of power presses, a marked division began to occur in the size and target of newspapers. It was also during the latter half of the nineteenth century that an emphasis in the writing and teaching of journalism history shifted heavily to the big names and the big dailies and away from the hometown press. Big-name editors and publishers of large-circulation newspapers from that period on dominated the story of American journalism.⁵

John Tebbel gave more attention to country weeklies in his general history of U.S. journalism than previous works. Published in 1963, The Compact History of the American Newspapers included a chapter titled “The Rise and Fall of Country Newspapers.” He went into much detail on the earliest traditions of the small-town paper, with special attention given to technological challenges. He stressed that in the 1900s, the country press was still operating as if it were in the colonial stage, if viewed from a technological standpoint. By the 1940s, influences in big-city publishing permeated the country press as well. As metropolitan newspapers became big business, country papers became small business. A decline in the number of country newspapers began in the 1920s with mergers and suspensions, which accelerated during the depression years.⁶

Other journalism histories make only brief mention of the weekly press and incorporate it in general discussions of technological and developmental changes and innovations, including mergers and consolidations that affected both the daily and weekly press. They also discuss, in some detail, the evolution from weekly or non-daily to daily publication of the country’s major metropolitan dailies. Also mentioned is the advent of ready-print and its utilization by papers of all sizes throughout the country.⁷ Ready-printed pages, a system introduced in this country by Wisconsin weekly publisher Ansel Nash Kellogg, were usually two, inside, preprinted pages sent to smaller newspapers to help fill a four-page newspaper. The material on these preprinted pages contained general news and features of a regional interest. The other sides of these preprinted pages were left blank to be filled with local content. Ready-print was also referred to as “patent insides” or “printed service pages.”

The controversy surrounding the use of patent medicine advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and particularly in weekly newspapers, was addressed fully in Frank Presbrey’s The History and Development of Advertising.⁸ These topics were also covered in James Playsted Wood’s The Story of Advertising.⁹

Because of a heavier involvement in their respective state press associations, the historical accounts of these associations tend to provide more details about small-town and rural newspapers than the larger, comprehensive journalism histories. State press association historical works included dates and frequency of publication of the states’ member newspapers, providing a chronological record of the numerous weekly startups, consolidations, sell-offs, and closures. Some of these works are no more than collections of minutes of the associations’ annual conferences and meetings of governing officials, but they reflect changes in the newspaper field, from a financial, technological, and ethical viewpoint.¹⁰