Thursday, April 25, 2024
After being hired in January 2018 to write for the Liberty Hill Independent, a community newspaper in Williamson County, Mike Eddleman and his publisher Shelly Wilkison became a winning team in an industry that sometimes seems to be fighting a losing battle.
The newspaper, founded in October 1987 and owned by Wilkison since 2010, has always had a small staff. At the time Eddleman was hired, it was just him, Wilkison and a salesperson.
Liberty Hill, northwest of Austin, has only about 2,400 residents, but it is a high growth area, and the school district is growing at a rate of 400-500 students per year. In addition to Liberty Hill, the Independent serves the Bertram community in eastern Burnet County.
Eddleman is now managing editor there. Within about a year and a half of his arrival, his and Wilkison’s ideas – and her willingness to try new things – brought in enough revenue to hire several additional staffers.
They employed an office manager and last summer, right before football season, they had enough money to bring a sports editor on board. In November, a reporter was hired, and Eddleman and Wilkison started thinking about maybe adding a second sales rep.
“We were starting to get into a pretty good grove,” Eddleman said.
But then COVID-19 hit.
As with many businesses affected by the pandemic, the Independent experienced a financial plummet. The little newspaper that could seemed stopped in its tracks.
The recently hired staff members were laid off. This week, for the fourth consecutive week, Eddleman worked from home, at reduced pay.
The global pandemic has given the idiom “Stop the presses” a whole new meaning.
Newspapers are in the highrisk category for the coronavirus. Many already had weakened immune systems from years of declining subscriptions and advertising sales. Readers have turned increasingly to Facebook for news that oftentimes isn’t, at least not in the factual sense, and some advertisers have moved their pitches online.
Eddelman feels that many people don’t give their community newspaper a second thought, though they might think about how their life would be impacted if their favorite restaurant closed.
“Some people love it, some people want to hate it, some people are indifferent to it, but everybody expects it to be there,” he said of local newspapers.
Luckily for Liberty Hill and Bertram, its newspaper doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.
In fact, its sports editor was back at work this week, and Eddelman hopes the other staffers will be returning soon.
Seems the ever-resourceful Wilkison wasted no time applying for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) offered through the Small Business Administration when government shutdowns began.
The newspaper was accepted into the PPP, which is why Sports Editor Scott Akanewich is now back at work. There isn’t much to report these days where sports are concerned, but Akanewich is helping out with other stories.
At a time when many businesses can’t afford to advertise, the Independent has found ways to put a few coins in its piggy bank while also banking on future ad sales.
The paper is offering an advertising grant program to help businesses get back on their feet and a Shop Local Bingo game. Modest fees are charged to businesses that want to be listed on the Bingo card, and winners must show proof that they made purchases from those establishments.
Eddleman, who was once a publisher and dealt with the financial side of the business, said he used to find it hard to tell people, “We’re a business, too” when they expected their local paper to support the community by providing free services.
He has no problem with it now, though, and makes such comments frequently.
“We’re not a public service that’s funded with public money,” Eddleman said. “I think it’s important for people to understand that if we don’t make money we can’t tell you about the soccer game, we can’t advertise your festival. When they give a check to the Booster Club at school, they want you to come take a picture, so they’re telling you that they think what you’re doing is important.”
Eddleman noted that with the pandemic, there is more talk than ever before about the importance of local newspapers. The Independent saw “a huge amount of traffic and response” on its Facebook page over the past several weeks, he said.
Due to the public health crisis, Eddleman and Wilkison made a decision to share the newspaper’s information free of charge. The Hood County News and other publications made that decision as well, temporarily taking down their paywalls.
That means that information that costs money to gather, write and publish is being made available for free.
“I don’t know how that’s going to serve us all in the long-run,” Eddleman said.
No one does, really.
