Earlier this year I launched a blog to share some short, informal reflections about my life in local news and newspaper publishing. It's called stumble.press. Since it's where I've done almost all of my limited personal writing lately, I thought I should mention it here on my main personal blog.

My posts so far have covered everything from newspaper finances to pet obituaries, from how we went about increasing our subscription rates to stepping away from Twitter/X, from how our metered paywall works to adventures with U.S. Postal Service mail delivery, and from how much disk space a newspaper issue takes up to hiring and management practices. I also occasionally link out to other articles and resources I find useful.

If you're interested in following along on this adventure, you can visit stumble.press, subscribe to the RSS feed, or sign up to get an email notification when there are new posts (just check the box next to "Email about journalism and newspaper publishing posts"). And of course I welcome your feedback and comments.

The artwork for this post was generated by DALL-E 2 from my prompt "a drawing of someone who appears to be drowning in a pile of newspapers."

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It's been about four months since I became owner and publisher of my community's local print newspaper. In the spirit of transparency and working out in the open, we recently shared our first report to the community about our operations, health and future plans. I also geeked out a bit with a blog post on some of the tools and technology we're using to run the paper.

I'd like to say a little more about what it's been like for me personally.

To sum it up: I'm loving it!

As I said when announcing this adventure, "this is a thrilling opportunity to continue exploring my interest in the questions of where and how people get their information, and what informs the decisions they make about their lives, values and communities." It has been exactly that. From the people involved to the details of getting the paper out the door each week to the writing, editing and publisher decision-making processes to the bigger questions of our role in the community and how best to meet people's information needs, it's all been thrilling.

One thing that's surprised me a bit is how much love there is for the Western Wayne News newspaper.

I knew that our team and the paper's previous owners Brenda and Jim had built a lot of goodwill in the community over the years. And I knew that the paper had a loyal readership that takes the paper very seriously. But I had no idea just how strongly people feel about the paper as an important part of their lives! They call us just to say how much they like the paper. They write the nicest notes to accompany their renewal payments. If it doesn't show up in their mail, they call us right away. They fawn over stories. They notice little changes. They ask about our health and growth, and wonder about ways they can help get the word out. Not just once in a while..almost every day. It's amazing and humbling.

(I will admit that after several years in my journalism degree program of studying the declining public appreciation for the value of journalism and local news, I may have brought some cynicism with me about this. I was ready to work hard to make the basic case for the existence of a local newspaper and quality news reporting. But so far, I haven't had to; people seem to get it. There are a lot of things contributing to this and I'm sure there are still many folks out there who might benefit from some persuasion in that regard, but it's been a relief and a wonder to feel like I'm swimming with the current instead of fighting against it.)

The weirdest part of the whole experience is when I'm talking to someone or wandering around town and I see or think of something that might be interesting, useful or newsworthy to the community, and have the thought "somebody should get the word out about that." Then, I realize that the "somebody" is probably us. 😃 It's also been surreal to be at this particular moment in the history of our local news ecosystem, where the daily Gannett paper that I have read, contributed to, analyzed, criticized (reminder to self: buy Jason, Bill and others a beer soon) and closely followed for so many years has effectively paused its news coverage indefinitely. Barely a day goes by without a call from someone lamenting its decline and subscribing to our paper to try to fill that space.

A few people have asked me about how much of an investment this new venture has been. I think the question behind their question is about the sustainability of newspaper ownership, both financially and personally. A few things about that:

I'm not sharing the price I paid for the newspaper as that gets into parts of the story that aren't mine alone to tell. I was told that I paid more than "the market" might strictly suggest this particular newspaper is worth. If so, I did that because after a significant amount of due diligence work, I felt confident in the paper's value, its importance to the community and the opportunities it presented as a foundation for growth over time. Not just growth in revenue, but growth as a hub for community health and civic engagement, To me, as someone who cares deeply about the future of this place, that is worth a lot.

Is it profitable?

If you look at the numbers we shared in the 2022 Q4 community report, you'll see that at a basic level we have more income than expenses. Yay, right? For now, this is possible because I'm paying myself the lowest wage of any of our regular employees, and because our employees, contractors and contributors work incredibly hard for the wages they are paid. I have already made some progress on raising compensation, with plans to further increase that over time in a way that's sustainable for all of us. Beyond that, the purchase price financing terms also affect what happens to any remaining profit, at least for a while. So a snapshot of one quarter indicates that we're in a good place, but there are a lot of other factors that will determine if we can be profitable in the longer term.

Have there been challenging parts?

Oh yes. I enjoy working with my colleagues but going from a fully distributed/remote work life to one that involves an hour of commuting each day has been a big change. Our newspaper production process alone is currently spread across all 7 days of the week, let alone all of the other business management and growth tasks I'm handling, so I've given up a fair amount of family and personal time. As much as I feel at home managing a business and a team, there are the stresses and worries that come with that. There are days when I just want to get one particular thing done and instead end up working on a plumbing or power or rodent issue. And so on. But, I'm fortunate that these are mostly all challenges of my own choosing, and that I do not have to tackle them alone.

Speaking of, there's a lot of gratitude to express:

To the team at the paper that I get to work with every day, who have navigated a time of transition and uncertainty by doing their best to welcome me with kindness, embraced the opportunity to try new things, and made sure I know what their work and the paper as a whole mean to its readers and subscribers. To the long-time readers of the paper for being open to the idea that new ownership could actually work out okay. To Brenda McLane for all of the time she spent making sure this "succession" and transition went smoothly, and continuing to cheer us on after. To my family for being understanding and flexible as I figured out a new schedule, routine and work life, and for being excited for me at every step of the way. To my friends and wider community for cheering me on and offering their support. And to the many others who have shared a kind word. Thank you all.

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I’m excited to share the news that I’m diving fully into the world of community newspaper publishing. As of October 1, I’m the owner and publisher of the Western Wayne News here in Wayne County, Indiana.

If you’re not familiar with it, WWN is a weekly print newspaper that covers news, events, sports, government meetings, businesses, organizations and so much more from (despite its name) across the entire county. The paper was founded in 1991 and under the leadership of Janis and Ed Buhl and later Brenda and Jim McLane, has grown to reach thousands of people every week in print and online, powered by a wonderful team of reporters, designers and administrative staff. You can read more about the paper’s history and team.

My path from technology entrepreneur and software developer to print journalist and newspaper owner is nontraditional to be sure, but this is a thrilling opportunity to continue exploring my interest in the questions of where and how people get their information, and what informs the decisions they make about their lives, values and communities.

As I’ve talked and worked with the McLanes in recent years while also completing my Masters of Arts in Journalism, we found that we share so many ideas and hopes for what it means to provide quality news reporting to this area, and I’m honored that as they began to consider their business succession plans, together we found a path forward that will hopefully keep this essential community resource thriving and growing for many years to come. Now, I’m elated that I will be able to build on what the paper’s staff and supporters have done for Wayne County and its residents, while bringing my own ideas, skills and experience to bear as we inform, inspire and hopefully improve the communities we serve.

I could wax poetic about some of those ideas and what they might look like in action at a local, independent newspaper, and in time I’ll plan to share more of my thinking on future possibilities. But for now, my primary focus will be on supporting our staff, readers and subscribers as we continue to do what we’re already doing: covering the news and what’s happening in the community so that people feel informed and connected.

As a part of this new venture I’m launching a media and publishing company, Civic Spark Media LLC. The Western Wayne News will be its primary publication but I’ve also moved my “WayneCounty.info” project under its umbrella as well. In the months ahead we’ll be launching new projects that expand on this work. You can sign up for occasional email updates here. We're also hiring.

Here we go!

Frequently Asked Questions

Will there be any changes in staffing, office location or print edition production schedule?

It’s business as usual. I’m delighted that everyone on the team has accepted my invitations to continue on, and I look forward to working with them. While the Cambridge City newspaper office may not remain our only location for long, for now it will continue to be our headquarters. The print version of the paper will still come out 51 weeks per year.

Um, you know newspapers are dying, right?

The newspaper industry is changing to be sure, and communities across the U.S. are losing a heart-breaking number of news organizations every year. But at the same time we’re seeing a surge in innovation and experimentation in local news business models that is not only leading to some local news organizations avoiding closure but actually thriving and providing new kinds of connection and service to their communities. I’m not investing in a local newspaper because I think it will be profitable, but because I think a strong local news media presence is important for the health of a community, and I want to help avoid Wayne County and our region becoming a news desert any more than it already is.

What makes you qualified to own and run a newspaper here?

I’m sure I still have a lot to learn, but I think have a good foundation:

• I have significant experience as a founder and leader of various local businesses and organizations. You can check out my résumé, projects, and past affiliations for details.
• I have a Master’s degree in Journalism from Ball State University.
• I’ve been involved in creating or strengthening various local media, news, and community information projects over the last two decades.
• I’ve done consulting for the Western Wayne News over the last several years and have become very familiar with their operations, subscribers, advertisers, challenges and opportunities for growth.

It also means a lot (at least to me) that the outgoing owners of the paper have expressed their excitement and confidence in my ability to build on what the paper has already achieved.

What about your past political involvement? Will the paper have a political point of view?

My past volunteering in local politics has been a small part of my overall community involvement, but some may reasonably wonder what that means in the context of this new venture.

I’ve thought a lot about this and weighed the serious concern for journalistic ethics and perceptions against the desire to apply my passions and skills locally in this new way. While I will not pretend that I don’t have personal political opinions or biases, as we all do, I am committed to the practice of journalism that leaves out any political or ideological agenda, and focuses on providing diverse perspectives while meeting the community’s information needs. I believe the news media has an important role to play in informing community conversations about political happenings and strengthening democracy, but I do not believe a journalistic publication should try to influence votes or advance any particular political viewpoint. I know that my staff and I have the training and professionalism to be intentional and careful about that distinction in all of our work.

A specific commitment is that I will remove myself from any material decisions, discussions or coverage involving the 2022 local elections, as well as any future election coverage of political candidates where I have been directly involved in the past. I will also be updating our paper’s policies on transparency to include detailed and regularly updated disclosures about our reporting team members` affiliations and financial interests, to ensure that readers can make informed decisions about any potential or perceived conflict of interest as we carry out our reporting.

I want to celebrate this but I already have (or don't really need) a subscription. Any options?

If you want to support local journalism and help me celebrate this milestone beyond subscribing to the paper, consider becoming a supporting member with a financial contribution of any amount.

If you still have other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

The post So, I bought a newspaper appeared first on Chris Hardie.

This week I'm turning forty-five years old.

To mark that occasion along with my graduation, some friends came out to tackle an invasive species removal project at a local city park:

A tradition started five years ago as a gift from my wife Kelly and the friends who participate, I like celebrating with an activity that feels useful and that hopefully benefits the wider community. This year's project was cut a bit short by a sudden downpour, but we managed to clear out a good section of tree line, which will in turn help protect a reforestation project happening nearby. Afterward we gathered with still more friends at a local restaurant to continue the celebration.

It was a good day and I felt fortunate to be surrounded by folks who are, as one of them put it, "glad I exist and have survived this long." 😀

I'm coming up a bit short on deeper reflections about this birthday milestone. A lot has happened for me personally in the last five years — losing a parent and a number of other people dear to me, starting and finishing my journalism degree, awesome world travels, some big professional shifts, navigating a pandemic, all that goes with parenting a wonderful seven year old, and more — and yet the time has also flown by, sometimes in a blur.

So life as a whole continues to be about figuring out what's actually important, what's just, where I can make a difference in the world, how I can challenge myself to learn and grow, and, in any given situation, how to find and experience whatever truth, beauty, joy and/or love there might be. Thanks to all who are and have been a part of the journey.

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This month, July of 2022, I completed the master's degree in journalism program that I started in 2019 at Ball State University.

My diploma is not yet in hand but all course work is completed and all credit requirements are satisfied. I'm quite proud to be at this milestone, and I'm grateful for what I've learned and experienced along the way. Here are a few highlights and reflections:

The courses

My program focus was on "reporting and storytelling," which covered a range of topics and disciplines including reporting and storytelling itself, a lot of theory and analysis work, developing and practicing my academic research skills, learning data journalism tactics and tools, exploring past, present and future models of journalism, thinking about what voices and perspectives are missing or under-represented in local news, and more.

Here's a full list of the courses I took:

• Studies in Journalism and Communication Theory
• Social and Cross-Media Storytelling
• Journalistic Judgments
• Data Journalism
• Emerging Technologies
• Diversity & Media
• Intro to Statistical Methods
• Media Audiences and Content Strategy
• Social Media Analytics and Engagement
• Capstone Creative Project (2 semesters)
• Evolution of Remote/Distributed Newsrooms

That list represents three years of study, hundreds of book and article chapters read, hundreds of pages written for various papers and assignments, hundreds of hours of lectures and presentations, various articles, podcasts, websites and videos completed, and a lot of time and energy.

For the first half of the program I took one class at a time and that worked well for my professional schedule and for the first year of pandemic living. In 2021 I bumped it up to two classes at a time and that pace was a bit hectic, but I'm glad I did.

Capstone creative project

For my final creative capstone project, I collaborated with the folks at the Bloomfield Information Project, a community news service in Essex County, New Jersey that launched in March of 2020 to respond to that community's need for news and to help it be more informed, engaged and resilient. Like some of my own efforts in the community where I live, they are focused on helping residents have the context and information they need to make good decisions for their lives, families and neighborhoods, and to be more engaged and involved in the life of the community.

I reached out to them for my project after hearing founding director Simon Galperin on the It's All Journalism podcast because I saw an opportunity to contribute to their "news harvest" process with my own blended interests and skills in journalism, software development and civic engagement and to hopefully further their efforts while adding something broader to the world of local news. The end result was several software tools and workflow improvements that I created or contributed to, a project website documenting all my work, several open source software repositories and a 45 page paper that brought together my research, work and projects in one place.

One of my faculty project advisors said it was among the best creative projects he had seen in his time at the University. I'm also excited to be continuing my collaboration with Simon, his team and the project as a volunteer well beyond the end of my degree program.

Asynchronous and remote studies

One of the reasons I chose the Ball State program was that the program was offered both online and in person. I thought I would be able to mix those together since I live fairly close to campus, but the Covid pandemic hit soon after I started the program and I ended up doing it all online.

If I have any critique of the journalism program at Ball State and their approach to online education, it's that there's still a lot for them to figure out in creating interaction and community within and between students in a given course or program cohort. I rarely interacted with other students and most of the interaction with faculty was done via assignment feedback or formal office hours. There were a few great exceptions to this but for the most part I found a big gap between my hopes for building connections with others throughout this learning process and the reality of a mostly isolated and self-directed student experience. My positive experiences in other distributed organizations and teams where we did find ways to successfully build cohesion and connection over a distance perhaps amplified my disappointment here.

Still, I'm thankful that my studies were not significantly disrupted by the pandemic and that I had the flexibility to pursue them from wherever I was at the time.

What to do with my degree?

If you've been following along, you know that studying journalism and completing this degree is more about a trajectory I've been on for a while than it is some kind of sudden shift in my interests or profession. I've already been applying this learning in a few places; I certainly include the capstone project described above in that, along with my work on the WayneCounty.info community news aggregator website as well as in my consulting work with the Western Wayne News local newspaper. I suspect some of my personal news consumption, analysis and sharing habits have changed along the way, too.

Looking forward, I'm pursuing some new ideas for ways I can weave together this experience with my other interests in software development, civic engagement, entrepreneurship and local community building. I'll have more to say about those plans soon.

Appreciation

There are a lot of people who contributed in some form to my reaching this milestone, through their encouragement, support, excitement, time, questions, expertise, mentorship and more, including:

Kelly Burk • Ava Hardie-Burk • Erin Martineau • Bill Engle • Brenda and Jim McLane • Dr. Robin Blom • Dr. Natalee Seely • Dr. Gabriel B. Tait • Dr. Nancy Green • Eric Marsh • Steph Yiu • Emmett Smelser • Mickey Johnson • Andy and Barbara Miller • Laura and Mike Pulfer • Simon Galperin • Davis Shaver • Len and Mary Jo Clark

While she was no longer living when I started this particular journey, my mom Cynthia Hardie also contributed much to it, from her own early work as a journalist to perhaps naming me based on how my byline might appear 😀 to modeling thoughtful questions, great writing and tough editing at every turn.

Thank you, all.

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As we start the new year, a big question on my mind is: what will become of our relationships with people we don't know, people who aren't like us?

It's tempting to feel like the social contracts in place to ensure we aren't blatantly reckless with each other's lives, health or humanity have started to untangle just recently. But I suppose that would be my privilege talking.

If I get a little too bummed that it feels like people are no longer bothering to balance their self-interests with the greater good, I try to remember that Black people, people of color, women, poor people and many other populations have been affected by of some version of that imbalance for generations, and have often suffered greatly because of it.

Still, there's nothing like being headed toward a preventable year three of a pandemic to crystalize the ways  in which so many people seem to be saying an active "screw you" to any notion of addressing a public health crisis through even minimal personal sacrifice. And I too often feel a great big "screw you back" welling up inside of me in response, as much as I wish it weren't so.

I'm working on that, but I'm not always sure if working on it means embracing that energy and letting it inspire me to action, or suppressing it in favor of more diplomatic responses. (You know, for the greater good.)

I guess these are all versions of the questions I asked in June 2020:

• How can we get people to care about and act on problems that don’t seem to immediately or directly affect them?
• How can we get people to care about making the distinction between what’s verifiably true and what’s not?
• How do we make change happen fast enough to matter?
• What should I do?

There is a great deal of good in the world, and a great deal of good in my own life. I have so much to be thankful for.

But I used to believe that People are, on the whole, good and wanting good things for each other. Now I'm not so sure, and I don't like that uncertainty. It feels like it could poison the future. My future.

I'd like to raise my daughter with an optimistic outlook about the nature of humanity, but I may need to scale that back a bit. An optimistic outlook about the good she can create in her own life and for those around her? An optimistic outlook about next week's dinner menu?

Happy New Year.

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