EUDORA, KANSAS —
For about a decade, Eudora, Kansas, counted itself among the many small towns across the U.S. that no longer had their own newspapers.
The recession marked the end of its local paper in 2009, turning Eudora into what is known as a “news desert” — a region that has no dedicated media coverage.
Then Teri Finneman, a journalist-turned-media professor at the University of Kansas, stepped in. Her solution: , a student-led outlet that has brought news back to this town of 6,500 people.
“A lot of the coverage that we do wouldn’t be considered newsworthy with a capital N,” Finneman told VOA. But that doesn’t matter to because that’s not the point of the outlet, she said.
“We very much want to be a service organization and a partner with our community,” Finneman said. The paper’s focus: covering what matters to residents.
The is a rare good-news story at a difficult time for the industry. By bringing back local news, the paper helped to reinvigorate the community while pioneering a road map that may help address news deserts elsewhere.
“Before we had , I didn’t know really anything that was going on in the community, other than things a customer would come in and tell me,” said Kathy Weld, owner of Zeb’s Coffeehouse in Eudora. “Before I opened the coffee shop, I didn’t know anything.”
Finneman, who is from a small town in western North Dakota, wanted to fix that.
After some newsy social media posts, the first article was about the 2018 opening of Weld’s coffee shop — named after her dog, Zeb.
Once the article was written, Finneman realized she needed a website to put it on.
“I would get an F in business school for this business plan,” she told VOA as she recalled the paper’s early days from the coffee shop that was first featured. She used online software to create a website within five minutes. "I’m like, that sounds good. And then we just put it online.”
Lucie Krisman, one of the paper’s founding reporters, said that from that small start, the idea “sort of ramped up.”
“We realized what kind of potential there was to create an honest-to-God newspaper here,” she said. “It grew from literally nothing.”
The outlet’s slow beginnings belie its significance not just for Eudora but for local media across the country.
Around a fourth of local and regional newspapers — or 2,500 — have closed since 2005 and one-third are expected to shutter by 2025, according to a report by the Northwestern Medill Local News Initiative.
The hard work is paying off. A member of the Kansas Press Association, has won several awards, including for its reporting on government and education.
But there are far more communities that will remain or become news deserts, and that’s something that worries Finneman.
“It’s not just the current crisis that needs to be addressed, but it’s the pending crisis,” she said, particularly in the Midwest. “It’s going to be disastrous.”
With the closure of local media outlets across the U.S., more than 14 million Americans are getting their news from student reporters, according to the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont.
Like the , those outlets cover everything from local government and politics to school board meetings and high school sports.
“That’s not Watergate-type of coverage,” Finneman said. But it is the kind of coverage that breathes life into towns that are often ignored by the media and are at risk of being left stagnant as a result.
“People want to feel that community connection,” Finneman said.
Her approach appears to be working, with several Eudora residents telling VOA they have noticed a clear difference since the came to town. Eudora is a case study in what happens when a town loses its newspaper — and what happens when the news comes back.
“There’s so much divisiveness in our country. Local news has a way of bringing us together,” Weld, the coffee shop owner, said.
People had relied on getting information “through the grapevine,” said Laura Smith, who helps in-need residents access resources as the town’s community resource navigator.
“With , they’re everywhere, and they do such a phenomenal job of covering things, that everyone just feels connected,” she said.
For Krisman, now a reporter at the in Kansas, the paper helps people “be proud of their community.”
“It creates a sense of connectivity that you just can’t really get without having your own news outlet,” Krisman said.
Studies show that the decline of local news often contributes to a rise in polarization and government corruption, the spread of disinformation and misinformation, and a decline in civic engagement.