Nebraska newspapers in Ainsworth, Valentine slated to close unless buyers are found

‘It’s time to step back,’ says longtime owner, who is still hopeful the papers will survive
For more than 40 years, Rod and Kathy Worrell faithfully covered the news in the Ainsworth...
For more than 40 years, Rod and Kathy Worrell faithfully covered the news in the Ainsworth area, and owned other weekly newspapers in Valentine and Gregory, S.D. But until recently, they had little prospect of selling the two Nebraska papers.((Courtesy of Rod and Kathy Worrell))
Published: Nov. 24, 2024 at 1:59 PM CST
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LINCOLN, Neb. (Nebraska Examiner) - A week ago, Rod Worrell wrote a newspaper headline he hated to type:

“Ainsworth Star-Journal to Cease Publication on December 25.”

A similar headline proclaimed the impending demise of the Midland News of Valentine. Worrell and his wife, Kathy, own both newspapers.

“It is time to step back and enjoy life,” Rod Worrell wrote about what he called “a very tough decision” to shut down newspapers in two Sandhill communities where he’d spent most of his professional career.

But at age 69, with the approaching departure of their veteran pressman and with only himself and his wife staffing the Brown County paper, it’s time, as he wrote, “to pack it in.”

Since April, advertisements seeking new buyers went mostly unanswered. While some potential buyers have stepped forward recently, after the grim headlines appeared, there’s still no guarantee that two towns that have had local newspapers for more than a century will continue to have them.

“I can almost equate it to losing your school. If you lose your paper, you lose your identity,” Worrell told the Examiner.

Squeeze on community newspapers

The Worrells are not alone.

A combination of higher production and mailing costs, a shift by advertisers to social media and other outlets and the difficulty in hiring staff to cover night and weekend community meetings and local ball games have put a squeeze on community newspapers.

Nationally last year, an average of 2.5 newspapers a week closed, according to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. More than 211 counties across the country now have no newspapers, creating “news deserts” – as could occur in Brown and Cherry Counties. The journalism school predicted that 228 counties across the country are at risk of losing their paper.

If the Ainsworth and Valentine papers close, they would join 10 other weekly and daily Nebraska newspapers that have shut down during the past four years. Nine counties in Nebraska have no newspapers at last count, and some daily papers no longer publish every day.

But there are some bright spots.

Dennis DeRossett, the executive director of the Nebraska Press Association, said that he’s seeing some Nebraska newspaper owners stepping up and buying publications in neighboring towns and counties, saving them from closing.

To address the difficulty of recruiting journalists to rural areas, the Press Association has begun offering an online crash course to train local writers and photographers. Fifty people have signed up to take the course, DeRossett said.

“That’s a good step toward getting local people working at local newspapers,” he said, which is a key to their survival.

In Winner, South Dakota, members of a local economic development corporation recently purchased the 114-year-old Winner Advocate, avoiding the end of the newspaper there. And in Genoa, Nebraska, Kendra Knopik, a 2007 graduate of the Humphrey St. Francis School, bought the Leader-Times, which had faced an uncertain future after its publisher died.

Newspaper ties a community together

Alarming headlines about closings, DeRossett said, tend to convince local leaders that they might lose local news coverage.

“The local newspaper is the thread that holds a community together,” he said. “Once it’s gone, you lose that.”

The Worrells took over the Ainsworth newspaper 40 years ago after operating the Edgemont (S.D.) Herald Tribune and, before that, helping Rod Worrell’s brother run the Gregory (S.D.) Times Advocate.

They later purchased the Gregory paper, which is in the process of being bought by some of its current employees. But the Valentine Midland News, which they bought in 1996, hasn’t generated a buyer yet, and like the Ainsworth paper, will cease publication on Dec. 25 unless one is found.

Both Ainsworth, population 1,616 in 2020, and Valentine, population 2,621, are ranching communities on the edge of the Sandhills, miles west of Norfolk on Highway 20.

Local sports and school news are big, main-street stores feature western wear, espresso, lawyers and insurance agents, and local motels host hunters and paddlers on the nearby Niobrara River.

Both towns hold the courthouse of their respective counties, generating not only court news but also revenue from legal advertising.

However, as local ranches have gotten bigger and more mechanized, there are fewer potential subscribers.

Rural population declines

Ainsworth has lost about 29% of its population since 1990, and Brown County as a whole has declined by 33%, Worrell wrote. Meanwhile, circulation of the Star-Journal has held fairly steady at around 900. The Valentine’s paper circulation is about 1,200.

Worrell said it’s discouraging to see longtime advertisers and area residents holding garage sales posting their products and events on Facebook instead of buying ads in the newspaper.

“You put your heart and soul into something like this,” he said, “and then Facebook shows up and people forget about the work you put in.”

Postage rates to mail the newspaper have risen 40% in recent years, Worrell added, and mail service has become sporadic, with subscribers sometimes getting two or three papers on the same day.

The “straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said, was the departure of his longtime pressman, who ran the four-unit News King press in Ainsworth.

So, instead of walking the sidelines at Ainsworth Bulldogs football and basketball games, shooting photographs and detailing their wins and losses, and covering city council and school board meetings, the Worrells’ future will be spent watching a couple of grandkids play high school sports down by North Platte.

“We’d like to be able to go and see them play instead of always checking the calendar to see if we can get out of town,” Worrell said.

Still viable

Both Worrell and DeRossett said local newspapers are still a viable business.

“When you have local stories, local names and local photographs, businesses want to be there and support a newspaper,” DeRossett said.

Running a newspaper isn’t a “9-to-5” job, Worrell said, but it has its rewards.

A community newspaper is the local historian, he said, chronicling things like the 2012 wildfires that scorched portions of the Niobrara Valley, the horseshoeing world championships held in Ainsworth, or the dramatic climb up an 1,100-foot-tall television tower in 2002 in an unsuccessful attempt to save a worker who had fallen.

Worrell said covering the recent successes of the Ainsworth high school football team – which lost only one game in each of 2022 and 2023 – will be a lasting memory.

Now he’s hoping that someone else will find that same fulfillment. Time is running out, Worrell added, because to retain their status as legal newspapers and keep the revenue from legal advertising in their respective counties, the Ainsworth and Valentine papers cannot skip a weekly publication.

“I’m guardedly optimistic we might be able to keep them open,” he said.

Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on Facebook and X.

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