Community Journalism – It’s there if the community wants it
2025 National Newspaper Week – Oct. 5-11, 2025
2025 marks the 85th celebration of National Newspaper Week. Since 1940, Newspaper Association’s across the state and nation have sponsored and supported National Newspaper Week, a week-long promotion of the newspaper industry in the United States.
Embracing Local Journalism for a Better Future
Local journalism is the heartbeat of informed communities. It brings stories to light that national outlets often overlook—stories about school board decisions, city council debates, neighborhood events, and local heroes. In a world increasingly shaped by global headlines and social media noise, reconnecting with local news is vital for civic engagement, accountability, and community resilience.
Why Local Journalism Matters:
Informed Citizens: Local reporting empowers people with the information they need to make decisions in their everyday lives—from voting to attending town hall meetings.
Accountability: Local journalists often serve as watchdogs, uncovering corruption or negligence that directly impacts their communities.
Community Connection: Local news fosters a sense of belonging by highlighting stories that resonate on a personal level. Placing your marketing messages in the pages of the community newspapers automatically makes you credible with consumers. Just as newspapers are held to the highest standard when it comes to truth and accuracy in our reporting; so is true with the marketing messages in our newspapers. As a locally-owned company we have the right to refuse an advertising partner that isn’t trustworthy. Do you think social media platforms ever turn away money? Bottom line, newspapers are trusted.
A recent piece on newspapers.org sites this study: “According to the 2024 Trust in Media Study conducted by America’s Newspapers and Coda Ventures, local newspapers are the most trusted news source in the country. Readers rank them highest for transparency, ethical standards and connection to their communities — qualities that are critical in an environment saturated with misinformation and national polarization.”
Economic Development: Thriving local media can support small businesses through advertising and partnerships, strengthening the local economy.
A Call to Action: To build a better future, we must support local journalism through subscriptions, donations, sharing stories, and encouraging young reporters. Schools, libraries, and civic groups can also play a role in educating the next generation about media literacy and the importance of a free press.
Help in employee retention and attraction: Studies find that communities with newspapers are safer, have lower taxes, have a better turnout in local elections and are more connected. Brands that exist is news deserts may find it hard to recruit and retain talent if the community in which talent is asked to live doesn’t feel connected, has high taxes or poor schools.
Associate your brand with smiles: While there are times when the newspapers has to report on bad, sad or what some might consider slightly boring news, the majority of what we deliver to the readers – delivers smiles. Students on a special day at school, young community members enjoying a fundraising event, local artists sharing their works, stories of love, redemption, inspiration and more grace our pages daily. Our readers get a jolt of joy and on the same page they see your brand and associate you with that feeling.
The National Newspaper Week website, “In a world increasingly shaped by global headlines and social media noise, reconnecting with local news is vital for civic engagement, accountability, and community resilience.”
By embracing local journalism, we’re not just preserving the past—we’re shaping a more informed, connected, and empowered future.
Celebrate National Newspaper Week with Us!
National Newspaper Week is a time to reflect on and reinforce the vital role newspapers play in informing, empowering, and uniting our communities.
Make It Local
Your readers care most about what affects them directly. This is an opportunity to tell about the unique relevance of your newspaper. Community Newspapers are a two-way street, we need the committees and community to reach out to the local paper to let us know what is going on. We don’t have time to read everyone’s socal media account, you have to make an effort to reach out to us, so we have a chance to follow up on what you feel is important.
These weekly editions focus on what is happening in each local community, the upcoming city council and school board elections, how the local high school team did on Friday night, how the tax dollars are spent with the legal publications every week, School Events, Church Events, Community celebrations, Let us tell your story.
Regular readers of our local community newspapers already embrace local journalism. Chances are each of you has a unique reason why you love and read the local paper, and that reason changes from week to week. For some it may be as simple as seeing your friends or neighbors featured in our papers. Some may enjoy following high school sports. Others want to know about upcoming events, concerts, plays, fundraisers and more. Parents want to know what is happening in their child’s school and throughout the district. Everyone wants to stay informed about increases in taxes, water bills, street projects and road construction, local elections, ongoing developments and new businesses opening in the community.
Another reason many people read the newspaper is the advertisements. Whether you are car shopping, need your furnace serviced, looking for the best deal on ground beef for the week or wondering what to do this weekend, the pages of our papers are filled with marketing messages from local businesses and nonprofits that inform and reach our readers in a way that no other form of advertising can offer. The local brands that use our newspapers to advertise know this because their print ads deliver results.
The advertisers that invest in newspaper advertising does more than just benefit their bottom line, it benefits the entire community. The community newspaper is supported in large part by adverting dollars, meaning, no advertising, fewer newspapers. That doesn’t mean community newspapers are a charity case. Brands aren’t handing over their hard-earned dollars to keep us in business. I’ll say it again, brands use our newspapers to market their goods and services, because it works. Their print ads attract and retain customers, but the impact is bigger than that.
The Power of the Community Paper
You already know the power of local journalism — Give us a Chance to tell us your story. When we band together, our message carries even further. Supporting National Newspaper Week means supporting the collective strength of newspapers nationwide.
