Author Archives: Shannon Cunningham

Is It The Best Option We Had? Absolutely.

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A Nonprofit Grows in Chicago

May 21, 2021

About a year and a half ago, four weekly community newspapers in the Chicagoland area began the transition from a for-profit business called Wednesday Journal Inc. to a nonprofit called Growing Community Media.

I talked with editor and publisher Dan Haley this week about how the transition has been going, and what lessons others can learn from his company being perhaps the first for-profit, legacy print community news publication in the country to make the switch to a nonprofit model.

First, some of the backstory.

Haley was one of several founders of Wednesday Journal Inc. in June 1980. They didn’t have the luxury of relying on what Haley calls “family money,” so they quickly realized they needed to find a way to fund their journalistic endeavors. To do that, they got creative, and sold shares of stock in the company to people in the community. About a year and a half later they had about 70 to 80 shareholders who ponied up about $1,000 each, and the publication found itself on solid ground and rooted in the community.

Eventually the company grew to seven weekly newspapers and several other publications, including Chicago Parent magazine.

But, as is the story for many community newspapers across the country, things changed. Print advertising shrunk, digital revenue wasn’t enough, staffing diminished and by 2019 the company was down to four weeklies.

Something had to change.

“We were either going to run it down to the ground over the next couple of years, or we were going to reinvent it,” Haley said.

Luckily for the communities they cover — Chicago’s West Side, Oak Park, River Forest, Forest Park, Brookfield, Riverside and North Riverside — they chose the latter.

After researching options, Haley landed on the nonprofit model. From there, the first thing Haley did was go to the remaining shareholders in the company and explain the situation. The company has done well over the years, it made money and it paid dividends. Now he was asking them to donate their shares to the new nonprofit entity.

“To their credit, all of the dozen shareholders signed on to that,” he said, adding that they did receive tax benefits from the donation of the stock.

Then came the inevitable task of getting the nonprofit status from the IRS. After receiving a lot of advice from accountants and lawyers on the paperwork (and one math error on the application that had to be fixed), it took about four months to get approved.

From there, it was all about figuring out how to reimagine the business model for a nonprofit newsroom — and, of course, doing so during a pandemic.

The nonprofit status gives Growing Community Media another revenue stream to tap into. They are focused on selling more ads, increasing paid print subscriptions, creating more digital revenue opportunities (they do not have a paywall and do not plan on adding one), and now they’ve added philanthropic donations. Those donations range from someone adding an extra $2 to a current print subscription renewal to up to $1,000. There are also some high-level benefactors who have added much to the bottom line.

Haley said having that additional revenue stream was critical for the organization over the past COVID-impacted year.

“Is this going to work? I think so. I’m not positive. Is it the best option we had? Absolutely,” Haley said. “We had a considerable amount of success stabilizing ourself and growing our newsroom after years of declines. We can invest more money in our newsroom. That’s been the pitch all along to readers and donors. That’s certainly the message that people want to hear.”

And that’s a message Haley and his team are trying to get better at conveying to the community, especially if they want to double the number of folks who can make an annual donation and increase support from community foundations.

Haley has been the one to make a lot of the calls to ask for contributions. He said it is a huge cultural change to be comfortable enough and passionate about what his team is doing to ask someone to make a donation.  But, he added, he’s been “surprisingly comfortable” doing it.

“I certainly have sold a lot of ads over the years and sponsorships,” he said. “I’ve been comfortable making the asks. My failing is that I’m not always sure how much to ask for. That’s something I need to get better at. Asking for 20 bucks or 20,000 bucks. I will get better as I go along.”

Along with the uneasiness that comes along with an entirely new business model comes the realization that the move appears to have paid off. In fact, he said some local journalism funders in the Chicago area have been intrigued by Growing Community Media’s hybrid approach, since it combines advertising, subscriptions and philanthropy and is not overly reliant on donations alone. 

So far, that diversification has been a source of strength.

“We’re stable. We are operating this year at a little better than break even. That’s great and better than anticipated,” Haley said. “I think this model is going to work.”

Id Like You To Meet Someone

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A NewStart Introduction

May 14, 2021

Today we’d like to introduce you to another member of our second cohort of NewStart fellows. 

Larry Graham spent the majority of his career leading sports departments in newsrooms across the country. He’s worked at ESPN.com, The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Kansas City Star, to name a few. Most recently, he served as deputy director of local news transformation at the American Press Institute where he built the tablestakes.org website. He is also on the board of directors for the APSE Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering diversity in sports departments, and co-chairs its flagship program, the Diversity Fellowship. In addition he is a faculty associate at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant for Loyola University New Orleans School of Communication & Design.

As part of his NewStart research, Larry wants to help community newspapers survive and thrive. There are significant diversity issues within news organizations across the country, as documented in articles like this one from earlier this year. If a newsroom isn’t diverse, it doesn’t represent the community it covers. And if the community doesn’t feel connected to the newsroom, it will look elsewhere for its news and information and leave that legacy publication behind.

I invited Larry to share some of his thoughts on diversity, his goals in the NewStart program, and what it means to all of us in the industry. Take it away, Larry…

A series of incidents stand out in my mind from when I was performing some consulting work in addition to a full-time job. I shared a couple of those incidents with my respective supervisors. One involved borderline racism and the other implicit bias. They both dealt with the color of my skin, and the reactions were completely different.

One organization offered me hope for what journalism could be. The other, unfortunately, reminded me of what journalism still is.

That’s one of the many reasons I’m building a company that helps identify and destroy barriers to advancement for diverse journalists. We’ll support their career growth and help journalists find a home with the right organization.

I can’t do this alone. Through the NewStart local news ownership initiative, I’ll gain a better understanding of the business side of journalism, and I’ll learn more about the thousands of small, local newsrooms that remain profitable and welcome the help in diversifying their newsrooms.

One of the longest stints in my career was at The Lee’s Summit Journal, a small, bi-weekly newspaper outside of Kansas City, Missouri. It was also one of the most inclusive organizations I’ve ever been a part of, and where I developed lifelong friendships.

Now, this isn’t an overnight endeavor. This is an uphill climb with a boulder on your back, barefoot in the rain and mud, with no time for breaks.

But so what.

We already know some of the specific hindrances to diverse newsrooms. We’ve all heard the phrase, “I don’t know where to find diverse candidates.” Oftentimes, that’s the end of the story.

Instead, it fuels my desire to build a company that helps organizations find the most qualified diverse job candidates. We’ll solve the diversity pipeline problem while erecting new systems for mutual learning between job candidates and the hiring managers.

In short, we’re going to change the world.

Thanks, Larry, and welcome to the NewStart program! If you would like to see how Larry can help your organization set and reach diversity goals, or if you would just like more information about what he’s doing, feel free to send him an email at [email protected] or on Twitter @ByLarryGraham.

If you’d like to join Larry in our second year of the program and earn a master’s degree in Media Solutions and Innovation from WVU’s Reed College of Media, there’s still time to apply. Our next cohort will start learning virtually at the end of June, so if you want in, check out the program details here, and then follow the instructions here to apply.

PREVIOUS NEWSTART INTRODUCTION: Maggie McGuire

Paying For Your Audience Isn’t A Bad Thing

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Paying For Your Audience (Isn’t a Bad Thing)

Apr. 16, 2021

If you’ve worked in a newspaper newsroom at any point in your career, the following quotes may seem familiar to you:

“We don’t want to be perceived as promoting ourselves.”

“If we ask our readers for money, they won’t trust us.”

I’ll admit, after spending a good amount of time in local TV newsrooms, and then returning to the newspaper world, the distain for self-promotion of any kind at print publications boggled my mind. 

Thankfully, the unwillingness to promote stories or asking people to pay for the journalism they read is fading away along with that wall between the business side of publications and newsrooms.

But that simple idea of self-promotion may not be enough for most publications to stay afloat. That’s where the Journalism Growth Lab comes into play.

The Lab started out as a side hustle for Phillip Smith, but is now, well, an actual thing for Smith and Emily Zajac.

What is it? The Journalism Growth Lab focuses on paid acquisition — the process of growing audiences and finding new subscribers by using online advertising on platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter and others.

Because I love funnels, I’ll say that it’s a way to get new people into the top of your funnel, or helping move existing folks down the path to a digital subscription or membership. 

“This is something I’ve been watching some publishers do for a very long time,” Smith said. “It’s amazing that more haven’t looked into it.”

Some of that has to do with that innate ability in some journalists to avoid promoting themselves. Some of it is the absence of knowledge about social advertising. But it also has to do with that ever-popular duo of “lack of time” and “lack of resources.”

“Moderately well-staffed newsrooms don’t have the time to take this stuff on,” Smith said. 

So Smith and Zajac offer up their in-depth knowledge and skillset to do it for them.

What levels of publications are the right size to work with the Growth Lab? As Smith describes it, an outlet like the Philadelphia Inquirer would be too big, while a single founder/owner startup is too small. The smallest organizations Smith works with have about six to 12 people in the newsroom, and the largest have about 50.

Smith said he doesn’t advise paid acquisition for startups, telling them to put in the legwork to build their audience organically.

“Most startups have a natural early momentum from friends and family and word of mouth,” Smith said. But after about six to 12 months, they might run out of steam. That’s when they need to think about how they are going to raise awareness and get more folks into the top of the funnel.

Smith has published a lot of research on paid acquisition — two good examples are here and here in case you want to go in depth on the subject (which you should).

But Smith offered up some simple advice for anyone who wants to dip their toes in the paid acquisition space.

No. 1: Do you homework first and understand how much you can pay for a new newsletter subscriber or a new paid subscriber, member or donor.

“So many publishers come to us and say they ran a campaign for two weeks, and got newsletter subscribers for $2 each, and ask if that’s good,” Smith said.

If you have to ask, that means you didn’t put in the effort up front to understand what you can afford.

“Do the homework to know how much you can spend and what a good campaign looks like,” he said.

Here’s an example from research Smith did with Lenfest in 2019:

No. 2: Be straightforward with your ad copy, not misleading.

Smith said he’s heard from publishers who have worked with bigger agencies that brought in lots of newsletter subscribers, but the engagement numbers were terrible. In those cases, the agency may have used misleading campaigns, like a personality quiz or survey where people had to give an email address to find out the answers. That’s … not good.

“Just be straight with people,” Smith said. That means tell people what they can expect from you. Make them curious about your content and then deliver.

No. 3: Habit is key.

Don’t just think about acquiring email subscribers. Also think about the folks who have interacted with your publication in the past, and get them to do it again … and again.

In other words, build brand affinity. 

“Try to bring people back quickly as a way to make them more aware of the brand or the funnel,” Smith said.

If any of this sounds interesting to you and you’d like more information about what Smith and Zajac are doing, you can check out a few case studies on the Growth Lab site.  You also may want to tune in to their podcast via the Journalism Growth Club.

Cashing In On Viral Stories

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Cashing In On Viral Stories

Apr. 9, 2021

Our friends over at LION Publishers provided an interesting look at how Block Club Chicago made $100,000 thanks to a rogue alligator.

Here’s how it went down:

Pulling in $100K is quite impressive. This shows how a little bit of outside-the-box thinking can led to a new revenue idea. Imagine how many fun, viral stories your newsrooms have published over the years that you didn’t capitalize on. Well, actually don’t think about that too much or else you’ll start pounding your head against your desk once you realize all of the money you left on the table.

You might be laughing, but seriously… did you know there’s a company out there that is dedicated to finding viral sports moment and memorializing them basically overnight on t-shirts? Yep, and it’s very successful. Oh, and the company president used to work for Gannett. 

If you’re looking for a more newsy example, well then you should check out VancouverIsAwesome.com, which started out as a lifestyle website and transitioned into a local news. It is currently run by Glacier Media Group, and earns revenue by selling Vancouver-related merchandise. (If anyone wants to buy me a Chinatown Otter shirt I will not refuse it…)

At one point they struck a deal with the British Columbia Provincial Health Officer’s very popular sign language interpreter on a series of prints. Nigel is no Chance the Snapper, but the prints were still a hit with the locals.

In any case, if your community is anything like every other community in the world, the people who live there (and used to live there) are proud of where they’re from. And they probably would love to show their hometown pride on their clothes.

Now who is going to help me print up some shirts for THIS GIANT FRICKIN’ SNAKE that is currently hanging out in the trees in my neighborhood?

Searching For Small-Town Heroes

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Searching For Small-Town Heroes

Apr. 2, 2021

Poynter published a very interesting article this week that builds a strong case for the importance of small-town newspaper editors — the kind of community-focused people we are identifying and training through the NewStart program.

In John W. Miller’s article entitled “Looking back at a day when small-town newspaper editors could be heroes,” he focuses on the life of newsman Walter “Buzz” Storey and ponders what role people like Storey can and should play in America today.

The Buzz Storeys of the world are slowly disappearing, and so are many of the outlets they ran for decades. Miller discusses members of the next generation of journalists who may fill the void, but more are needed. And these journalists will not just have to worry about filling space in a printed product, but running the entire business and serving the needs of their communities in as many ways as possible.

Programs like NewStart can help. If you missed our announcement earlier this week, we are expanding our Media Solutions and Innovation program. Folks who are interested in ensuring that local journalism not just survives, but thrives, will be able to earn an online master’s degree through WVU’s Reed College of Media, or they can go the non-degree route and join our Executive Training Program. 

The results of both programs are the same — training in how to make a local news outlet sustainable for years to come.

If this interests you, check out the details for both programs here. And if you have additional questions, send me an email and we can find a time to chat.

We would like nothing more than helping the next Buzz Storey become an integral part of a local community.

An Engaging Idea To Help Your Publication Thrive

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An Engaging Idea To Help Your Publication Thrive

Mar. 26, 2021

We’ve got a surprise in this week’s Alliance newsletter. Bridget Thoreson, the Engagement Manager at Hearken, is stopping by to talk about network mapping. Don’t know what network mapping is or what it has to do with journalism — especially at your local news publication? Well then this newsletter is for you.

So without further ado, please give a warm welcome to our very special guest star, Bridget Thoreson!

Making your outreach roadmap with network mapping

by Bridget Thoreson, Engagement Manager, Hearken

One of the first questions newsrooms ask me when they’re considering engagement journalism is where to start. Today I’d like to share a simple but powerful exercise to provide a roadmap for reaching out to specific audiences to inform your reporting.

First, a word on engagement – I work at Hearken, an engagement consultancy serving newsrooms, and we define engagement as a feedback loop with your audiences. This goes beyond getting likes on social media to providing pathways for audience members to ask questions that directly inform your reporting.

On to network mapping!

This exercise is included in the Citizens Agenda guide for engaged elections reporting (available for free download here), and was part of the Election SOS training taken by 134 journalists from 63 newsrooms last year. One of our participants was such a fan that she wrote a Nieman Lab piece outlining the impact this approach had for her own newsroom and others.

First, on a piece of paper or on your computer, put the topic you are interested in covering in a circle in the center. If you’re interested in pursuing engagement outreach for all your coverage, your news outlet can go here.

Next, start drawing stakeholder groups connected to the central circle. These groups can be defined any way – by demographic info, by interests, by platform usage. Audience members can belong to more than one circle.

You can also use visual cues as you map – if this is an especially large part of your audience, give them an especially large circle. If they’re superfans, put them close to the center, etc. Use cues that make sense to you. Here’s an example of the start of a network map from the Citizens Agenda guide: 

Next, keep going! Keep adding circles even after you start running out of ideas. This is where things get really creative. 

Last, look at groups that are not on your map. Who are you not currently reaching who may want to connect to your news coverage on this topic? List them on the side. You can find ways to reach them.

Once you’ve drafted your map, take a look and identify just one group to start reaching out to. Think of existing platforms where you could connect with them, both those run by your newsroom and external platforms. 

You can revisit this map and add to it as often as you like. By identifying stakeholders for your coverage, you’ll have a better sense of who you’re trying to reach, what you can offer them and where to go next with your engagement work. 

If you’d like to learn more about network mapping, or other ways to approach engagement and build trust with your audiences, please join us April 7 for our free virtual summit. 

Thanks to Bridget for joining us this week! I’d be interested to see what kind of network mapping you all can do for projects you are working on, or for your publications in general. Just reply to this email or tap here and let me know how it goes.

I’m sure Bridget would enjoy hearing your experiences with network mapping, as well. You can reach out to her on Twitter @BridgetThoreson.

Meet a New Local News Owner (And NewStart Fellow)

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Meet a New Local News Owner (And NewStart Fellow)

Mar. 19, 2021

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing the stories of new fellows entering our NewStart program as part of our second cohort.

If you follow us on Twitter, you may have seen mentions from several folks who have already been accepted.

That includes Maggie McGuire, who dropped some big news on Wednesday:

The deal to acquire the Moab Sun News has been in the works since November, and the paperwork for the deal was signed March 1.

It’s a quick rise for McGuire at the weekly publication. She was hired in 2019 as managing editor after spending time as a freelancer.

Now, she’s the owner.

“I’m really excited to quit being a back-seat driver and take my idea and put it to the test,” she said.

Journalism seems to be in McGuire’s blood. Both of her parents worked for their hometown paper in Michigan. And her great-grandfather also ran a newspaper.

Now, McGuire will learn via WVU’s NewStart program how to carry on that tradition in new ways, including through the diversification of revenue sources and by engaging new and existing audiences.

“With fewer and fewer newspapers, that sense of community and the ability to draw on others’ experiences and not have to go it on your own is in danger,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to engaging with people who know how to run a newspaper and small business in the communities we’re serving. It’s probably not dinner table talk for everyone. … I’m really jazzed about sharing the nuts and bolts and sharing the experience with them.”

Until Year 2 of the NewStart program starts, McGuire is getting acclimated with the business side of the Sun News, and is looking for new ways to connect with her Moab community. For example, she donated years of leather-bound editions of the paper to the public library, where they are now available in a local history section for the community to explore and learn from.

“Being able to share that with the community in general, and increase their awareness of what’s gone on over past 10 years, I just love it,” she said. “That’s been, overall, the thing that has excited me the most. I’m excited for all the ways the paper can expand the sense of the community, (showcase) itself as a viable business, but that it also is a social good and serves a social purpose. It’s really cool. We’re not just selling burgers, so that’s rad. I’m 100 percent getting to live my values, and that’s awesome.”

Feeding Fred the News

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Feeding ‘Fred’ the News

Mar. 12, 2021

As we reached the one-year mark of the pandemic shutdown in the United States, you probably read many pieces that looked back over the past year. From the tragic loss of loved ones to empty shelves at grocery stores to a completely new way of living our lives, COVID-19 impacted everything.

Brian Wilson, news editor of The Star News in Medford, Wisconsin, has been documenting this tumultuous last year in the pages of the weekly publication in a unique way.  I’ll let him explain:

“Last spring when the pandemic hit, I started writing columns as letters to a future reporter named ‘Fred’ (after Fred Rogers, because the world needs hope) with the concept that ‘Fred’ was a cub reporter in 2120 and was given the job of doing a story on the 100th anniversary of COVID-19,” he said.

For the first couple of months he penned his “Fred” columns weekly as coronavirus updates were fast and furious. Since then he’s done occasional dispatches for “Fred” on things like the cancellation of the county fair, the start of school and the impact on the holidays.

Wilson said the columns aren’t just a way to document history, but also serve as a reminder to people that, no matter how they feel about it, we are living in historic times.

“Overall they have been very well received,” Wilson told me. “One reader commented to me that she especially enjoyed reading those columns because they gave her a new perspective that people in the future would care about what was going on.” 

He said he planned on writing one this month for the one-year anniversary of the local emergency declarations and see how things have changed.

“There is a lot of optimism right now in the community,” Wilson said, “which is a far cry from the fear that was there a year ago.”

Is This the Future of Public Notices?

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Is This the Future of Public Notices?

Mar. 5, 2021

Hopefully you saw the link in last week’s newsletter about three newspaper chains striking a deal with a company called Column to streamline their public notices.

As the article mentioned, Column has grown significantly in the past year via deals with the Washington Post and numerous state press associations.

By now I hope you know how significant the money generated from public notices is for many newspapers’ bottom lines. And I hope you know about the constant push from lawmakers to end requirements that certain legal notices have to be published in a printed newspaper. 

West Virginia Press Association executive director and NewStart founder, Don Smith, is currently in the midst of his yearly battle to save the requirement in his state. And due to a Republican super majority in his state legislature, that battle is quite intense, to say the least.

The alternatives that are proposed by lawmakers are less than ideal. It’s not that they just want to open it up to online publications because that’s where public eyeballs are trending. They want to house these on their own government websites where few people may ever visit, providing less transparency into what is happening in communities across the country.

State press associations have been fighting the good fight for their members, and some, like West Virginia, have created their own websites to help satisfy requirements for a digital presence and improve the experience.

Column is another tool for publishers and state press associations in the battle to keep public notice transparency alive. The company is a public benefit corporation that was started by Jake Seaton, who comes from a long line of newspaper publishers in Kansas.

I got a tour this week of Column and wanted to share some of the details for anyone thinking about upgrading their public notices systems — both individual publishers and press associations.

First of all, let’s start off with the price, because we all know publications are strapped for cash. 

It is free for press associations to join the platform, and it is also free for individual publications to use the service. There are no initial costs or maintenance fees. 

So … how does Column make money?

It charges a processing fee on all transactions done via the service. Column suggests passing that on to those placing the ads, so publications do not have to absorb that cost (credit card fees are baked into that processing fee, BTW).

What does it look like?  Here’s an example of how the Colorado Press Association uses Column for public notices.

The statewide database is searchable via date, location, publication and notice type.  Users also can sign up to get email alerts based off of search queries daily, weekly or monthly.

Individual publishers can have a similar look. The Washington Post went as far as to add a mapping feature, allowing people to locate trustee sales, for example, across the D.C. region.

Column can also help publishers manage their notices and streamline the process. 

There is a self-service option for those placing ads. Column can help create custom affidavit templates for the public to use, provide rates and show a preview of how it will look in print. It can even help paginate notices as they come through the system. 

I could see Column creating some additional tools down the road so publishers could insert legal notices into their existing editorial newsletters, or exporting the data in a format that investigative reporters could use to find story ideas or track trends over time.

Joey Young, majority owner of Kansas Publishing Ventures, said his company has enjoyed its experience with Column so far.

“We have had very little trouble with clients adapting to it, and when we have had issues the Column staff have been super easy to work with in getting those issues fixed,” he said via email. “We have most of our customers converted to using Column, as we took a slow and steady uploading process approach. Our hope is to get to about 90 percent adoption for our three legal newspapers.”

There is one other Column feature to note — a donation platform.

Column offers a set of out-of-the-box donation tools that the foundation arm of an association can use to send donations to newspapers. Column can help foundations customize the page, keep track of donations and email receipts to donors.

Here are a few examples from the New York Newspaper Foundation and the Florida Press Foundation.

The Orlando Sentinel is one newspaper that has benefited from this arrangement. You can read about the publication’s efforts here.

As long as newspapers still have public notices, they will have to find a good way to make the entire process of acquiring and publishing them happen with as few pain points as possible. In general, turning over valuable content to a third party is a risky proposition, but if your newspaper or association can’t do it alone, Column may be a good option. The terms seem to be solid (for now). And hopefully efforts like this will help in the battle to ensure that government agencies continue to be transparent for years to come.

No Power? No Problem. Grab Some Coffee and News.

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No Power? No Problem. Grab Some Coffee and News.

Feb. 26, 2021

A year ago Max Kabat and Maisie Crow were featured in the New York Times after purchasing two West Texas newspapers, including the Big Bend Sentinel, and opening a cafe and cocktail bar in the middle of the town of Marfa.

A lot — and I mean A LOT — has happened in the year since that article was published. That includes some terrible things, like a global pandemic that has caused turmoil for the newspaper and service industries (and humankind in general). But some great things have happened, too, like the premiere screening of Crow’s documentary film, “At the Ready,” last month at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

A few weeks after that screening, however, the couple was forced to meet yet another challenge head on — a rare Texas winter storm that knocked out power to a large portion of the state.

Marfa, which is in the high desert of West Texas, is prone to significant temperature drops overnight, but that’s nothing like the sustained below-freezing cold front that swooped in Valentine’s Day weekend. 

A significant portion of Marfa lost power. That meant no heat for many who live in homes that aren’t well insulated. It also spelled trouble for those with electric stoves and hot water heaters. It also meant no high-speed internet. On top of that, cell phone service also was knocked out for the major carrier in the area, making it extremely difficult for people to get life-saving information.

That’s when Crow, Kabat and their teams at the newspaper and the cafe went into action.

“We thought, ‘How can we do this? What does the community need right now?’ Kabat said. “People need warmth, smiles, and they need to know that others are going through the same thing.”

The cafe didn’t have power, but it did have a gas stove. All of the food there had to be used right away or else it would spoil. So the cooking (and coffee making) commenced. They offered it up to everyone in town. Pay what you want, or don’t pay at all. The community was grateful.

Meanwhile, Crow, Kabat and the newspaper staff had to find a way to cover the storm and its aftermath, both online and in print. They found a friend of a friend in town whose house still had power and internet, so they packed up their computers and made that the newspaper’s new headquarters for a few days. 

They were able to produce the first half of that week’s paper there. They drove around town, when it was safe, to talk to officials and residents, but the roads were not good.

Eventually, ground zero for the newspaper transitioned to the local school, which was also ground zero for residents since it still had power. The school was turned into a warming station for the community. Local grocery stores donated food that was turned into free meals for anyone who could make it there. It was also a hub for information, both from officials and the Sentinel staff.

Speaking of the newspaper, the staff turned the teachers’ lounge into a makeshift newsroom and was able to update the website from there and finish putting together that week’s print edition.

Did they meet their print deadline? You bet. And remarkably, the printing company they use still had power, so in between snowstorms Kabat made the 2.5-hour trip to the press in his 4×4 to pick up the papers, drove them 2.5 hours back to Marfa, stuffed them and started making deliveries. Those who receive the paper via the postal service might have received the paper a little later than usual, but Kabat said the Sentinel was the only paper in the region that was delivered that week.

“It took a little longer to get it to some places,” Kabat said, “but people expect it.”

Kabat said he was glad the newspaper and the cafe was able to be there when the community needed them the most. And he knows how important the community is for them.

“We need them as much as they need us,” he said.