Newspaper in danger of closing
Johnson County Graphic increases rates, adds reporter
CLARKSVILLE — Ten years since it last saw a profit, the weekly Johnson County Graphic has alerted subscribers that the newspaper is in danger of closing, if increased rates for advertising and subscriptions don’t put it back in the black.
A blank front page on Jan. 31’s edition and an editorial, “The Johnson County Graphic, 1877-2024?” drove home the gravity of the situation.
“For 146 years, The Graphic has served the community through the triumph and tragedies of tornadoes and fires, championships and celebrations, with our reporting of local news, sports, births, deaths, engagements, weddings, and anniversaries,” it read. “For more than a century, we’ve partnered with local businesses to help them grow by introducing them to our readers through advertising.”
“Newspapers serve as a check on power by their very existence,” the editorial said. “We humbly plead with you to partner with us on this endeavor so we can continue to serve the community we love. We will be working as hard as we can, as long as we can. But ultimately, the future of The Graphic, the community’s future, is in our hands.”
The Graphic has invested in a new reporter, Stephanie Baker, in order to give subscribers more bang for their buck.
Managing Editor Megan Wylie, who grew up in Lamar, said she never saw herself in the journalism trade, but she married Matt, the son of publishers Ron and Margaret Wylie. She took the job last year when her father-inlaw retired and hasn’t taken a salary since New Year’s Day.
Things have to change by
the summertime, she said.
Changing publishing software has allowed The Graphic to save on licensing fees. Advertising rates have increased, though rates are discounted for longer commitments. An annual subscription is now $65 for local delivery, up from $45. An annual online subscription is now $50, up from $35. The price per printed copy is $1 now, up from 50 cents, the first increases in more than 20 years.
Assistant Editor Janice Penix said The Graphic’s notice that the publication is in peril sparked a burst of community support, with new and renewed subscriptions even after the price increase took effect. The paper is soliciting donations and selling subscriptions on racks, online and inside the paper with printed QR codes linking to PayPal, Venmo, Cash App and the website, thegraphic.org.
“We just need enough to keep serving the community,” Wylie said. “It’s not just a small business: it’s a public service.”
The Graphic intends to keep focusing on a printed product.
“Our strategy is to increase our content and as much coverage as we can and try to build up how many pages we have and original content with features and things,” Wylie said. “We’d like to continue to print as long as we can, because a lot of our readers prefer the print. And I think even the younger generation is starting to like print again.”
They print as much as they can afford to run. Wylie says they will wait to see if there’s meaningful improvement by the summertime before making a decision about whether or not to continue publishing.
The Graphic goes to bed (journalism jargon for being ready to print) on Tuesdays, and The Courier’s presses print it in Russellville.
Advertising Manager Gerald Sanders picks up the printed editions each week in Russellville and delivers them to news racks on his trip back to Clarksville. Subscribers also get their printed editions via the U.S. Postal Service.
“A lot of people say, ‘Well, we just get our news on Facebook now.’ It’s not verified by a reporter, and the information is not necessarily true,” she said. “They also don’t archive anything,” she said. “We think it’s important to have a newspaper in town, and we’ve read about what happens to small communities when they don’t have a newspaper.”
Newspaper closures have been linked to decreased voter turnout and civic engagement, misinformation spread, and increased public corruption, government waste and political polarization, especially as a local news focus fades.
Penix noted recent coverage of the local utility company’s audits and The Graphic’s 2022 investigations of the Lamar School Board superintendent’s and county prosecutor’s handling of sexual assault and harassment complaints, which culminated in the board leader’s resignation that summer.
“We were able to tell a good story, versus what people were seeing on Facebook,” Penix said. “TV covered it, but TV only gives you three minutes.”
Penix said she was the only reporter for a county of around 26,000 people for a long time, finding herself having to report meetings from written minutes or after-the-fact phone interviews when she didn’t have time to attend. Baker, a recent Arkansas Tech University graduate who studied journalism there, has been learning the beats since she started.
“I think I had to do a little more digging, a little bit more looking on Facebook. Now, I have a relationship with people in the community where I’m getting sent things,” she said. “They’ll come to me at a city council meeting and say, ‘Hey, did you hear about this? This is going on in our community.’ It’s less effort now, because they know where to find me, they have my information, and they know that they can trust us with the coverage.”