by Terry L. Besser
Assistant Professor and Extension Sociologist
Iowa State University
City people love to make fun of the "folksy" qualitiy of small town papers. They chuckle about items like the following: Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Wombe of Lake Mills are the proud parents of a daughter, Lisa Marie. Grandparents are Mr. and Mrs. Delbert Wombe of What Cheer and Mr. and Mrs. Rilley Richter of Keswidk, great-grandparents are... great-great-grandparents are... Jacob Houser and grandsons of Belle Plaine were Monday callers in the Cathy Schmidt home... Eloise Smelser was released from St. JosephÕs Hospital in New Hampton Friday.
However, what readers often don't realize is that by reporting the daily life events of local people, newspapers serve an important function in community life. Small town papers can reflect, affirm and even help build a positive community atmosphere.
Instead of covering national and state news, the niche of small newspapers is to concentrate on local, personal and community events. In the process they help local citizens define what it means to be a member of the local community. In other words, the Jefferson Bee and Herald continuously mirrors back to readers what it means to be a Jeffersonian. On August 4, 1994, readers learned that a Jefferson construction company received an award for outstanding service, that a Jefferson couple had donated a set of Snap-On tools worth about $3,000 to the fire department, that the local hospital was in good financial shape, that several high school softball and baseball players made the all-conference team and that there are five generations of the Conroy family living in Greene County.
These are happenings and situations that local people can take pride in. They restate that extended family, community service and superior achievement are characteristics of people who live in the Jefferson community.
The Nashua Reporter helps define the Nashua community by reminding readers of Nashua's histrory. Each week it runs a page taken from the archives of Nashua newspapers. What Cheer's Patriot Chronicle, as well as many other small newspapers, demonstrates that the communitiy it serves is not restricted to the city limits. For example, in many respects the What Cheer community includes Thornburg, Gibson, Keswick and Delta.
School consolidations and government sharing programs have expanded the "community" of small towns. The Patriot Chronicle reflects this by including news about and special sections for these neighboring towns, and ads and notices from bigger neighboring towns such as Sigourney and Ottumwa.
Big town papers report about the events in important peoples' lives. Small town newspapers report about important events in common peoples' lives. Awards, graduations, college enrollment, military promotions or reassignments, hospital stays, achievements of any kind, reunions, and of course weddings, births and deaths are reported. (Even big city papers have sections to cover these last three events.) This alerts readers of the paper to the significant event in their neighbor's life and allows the community to celebrate with, or comfort and support those involved.
The Patriot Chronicle's announcements about an accident and a hospital stay for a local mechanic who had no health insurance and the birth of triplets to a local couple notified the What Cheer community that these people had special needs. In What Cheer these situations were known by most people before they appeared in the paper. Even so the newspaper account provided a reputable source of detailed information available to all readers and served as a mechanism to rally and corrdinate support.
Most small town papers report not only the good news about local people, but also the bad news. Police, court and sheriff's log sections tell readers who got in trouble and what they did. A certain amount of filtering of bad deeds occurs before they appear in the paper. In spite of less than total truth about who did what, reporting deviant behavior as well as the exemplary behavior re-affirms what is acceptable and unacceptable in the community. In addition, being identified in the police or court log reflects negatively not just on oneself, but also on one's extended family and friends (readers know who is related to whom) and this can act as an additional deterrent to unacceptable behavior.
There are many other ways that small town newspapers strengthen feelings of community. They provide a forum for discussion of policies and issues that affect the community. They can dispel rumors and help to defuse potentially explosive situations. Some print stories, poems, musings and essays written by local writers, giving local talent an audience and enriching and stimulating community dialogue. Reports about public and private organizational meetings can facilitate broad public participation in local affairs.
Newspapers also are a barometer of the health of the community served. When the paper gets smaller and smaller, when the only local retail establishments advertising in the paper are bars, when there are more classifieds for babies to adopt, donors for embryo transplants and nannies for Chicago families than for full time local employment, and when the paper is published by another newspaper in a neighboring town, it's a pretty good sign that the community is in trouble.
Small town newspapers differ from the bigger newspapers in still another way: big town papers tend to report more bad news; small town papers specialize in good news. In big towns sometimes the only way for ordinary people to get their names in the paper is to commit a crime or be a victim of a crime. There are so many peole and so many events to report in big towns and cities, that there isn't enough space to report the small good things that happen in everyday life. It seems reasonable to assume that reading about more good news than bad news can help people have a positive outlook and be more pleasant to each other. Now that we understand the contribution of small town papers to community life, let people chuckle about the kind of news covered. There is some research that shows laughter increases physical and mental health. Perhaps, this is another contribution of small town papers to community life.
Contacts:
Terry L. Besser, ISU
Extension Sociology, (515) 294-6508
Del Marks, ISU Extension
Communication Systems, (515) 294-9807
