Wyoming is lucky to still have a newspaper in every county. But last year, the Casper Star Tribune stopped producing a daily newspaper, going to three a week. Now there are no more daily papers in the state, and that qualifies Wyoming as a news desert.
“For example, Fremont County is bigger than the state of Massachusetts, and if you get [a newspaper] twice a month, how much news are you actually getting?” asked Cindy Price Schultz, the head of the journalism department at the University of Wyoming.
She’s been studying the economic factors behind Wyoming’s declining news environment, and sat down with Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards to talk about her findings.
Editor's Note: In this interview, Cindy Price Schultz is using the Pew Research Center's definition of a "news desert," which is a community with limited access to credible and comprehensive news and information.
Much of this conversation is in the context of print newspapers, which have weathered declines in Wyoming and nationally in recent years. While digital and broadcast news outlets have picked up the slack in many areas, many towns and communities lack dedicated local news coverage.
Several listeners have reached out to us pointing to Jackson Hole News & Guide, which prints a weekly edition and a daily published six days a week.
Schultz says, "You could say, six days a week isn't a news desert and that could definitely be possible. Therefore, Jackson could not be in a news desert. Additionally, how does digital media fit into this? Wyoming is a leader in the country in digital news organizations. However, from a rural perspective, is YOUR community covered? That is the basis of a news desert and it could depend on the community whether they feel like they are in one."
Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
MELODIE EDWARDS: I wonder if there is a way in which social media is filling a void? Some of these online news sources might be kind of partisan or they might be printing press releases without any sort of editing whatsoever, and I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that?
CINDY PRICE SCHULTZ: I've done some research related to the Pew Studies and Pew does a very great job of national interpretation of how people are getting their news, and many people are getting their news from social media. They just make their decisions without really screening for if it is true or not. More people are not getting the more traditional journalism screening of information and trying to balance information and give people things to think about.
When I was brought up to learn the traditional objectivity of journalism, it's giving the people what they need to know rather than what they want to know. Like, here you can have your oatmeal for breakfast because you need it. But people are often more attracted to the more interesting, fun-type stories. There's been a lot of studies recently about people being attracted to the news that they are already interested in and kind of reinforcing their current belief system. It would make sense in a state like Wyoming that, since a lot of people have similar belief systems, that they would gravitate towards a news outlet that would give them those types of news stories.
Wyoming is the most cynical state in the United States against traditional journalism. And usually what they say is, ‘We don't dislike the journalists in my town, but we just don't like the national journalists.’ Journalism in general then kind of gets a bad rap. But they're like, ‘Well, local journalism isn't so bad.’
ME: It seems like one of the things that is getting lost as newspapers are getting smaller and smaller, staff are getting reduced, and their pay is getting reduced, and one of the first things to go is the editor position. It feels like there might still be somebody who is putting out some news, but there isn't necessarily somebody who's going to play that role of asking the hard questions of that reporter and getting them to think outside the box when they find themselves making assumptions as a reporter.
CPS: It's really all based on money because, if a person is higher up in the chain of management, then they get more money. So it's cheaper to hire just a reporter than it is to have an editor. That reporter may be really new out of college and doesn't really know how to edit themselves, and then that isn't good. It’s not necessarily the fault of that person because they're still learning their job. People oftentimes don't have that mentorship like they used to.
ME: I know that one of the other issues that some small town newspapers are dealing with is just the cost of printing the papers. That is one of the problems that you're hearing from small town newspapers. I wonder if you can just talk a little bit about that.
CPS: The cost of the actual paper itself has gone up, and then the cost of printing has gone up, and then also the cost of postage. There's been a lot of discussions at the national level about how these issues are affecting, specifically, newspapers, and how that is a detriment to democracy. Now we see smaller sizes of the papers because they can't do the big broadsheets anymore. So maybe they're just doing the smaller papers because that costs the same now as maybe a broadsheet did 10 years ago.
ME: One of the things that it seems like that is causing a lot of the reduction in staff at a lot of these news organizations is consolidation. I wonder if you can just talk about what you have noticed over the years, and how it has affected the size of staff, and how much they're able to pay.
CPS: Some background: my doctorate dissertation was partially related to budget cuts, and that was back in the nineties. So in the nineties, they were starting to do a lot of these consolidations.
Then in 1996, when they did the Telecommunications Act, because there was a limit on the number of stations that you could own, or TV stations, or that a TV station could own a newspaper. There were limits on that. Well, they took away those limits. Now, you see really big companies like, say, TownSquare Media or Clear Channel on the broadcasting side, or you'll see some others like Gannett, Lee and some other very large newspaper groups. Instead of becoming news, which was defended by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and the freedom of the press and free speech, all of those things that we hold dear in the United States, it's becoming a commodity. The commodity then is news, rather than news itself being important. Therefore, it's all about money.
There are still places in Wyoming that are owned locally, and they still really care about the news in their communities. I'm not saying that doesn't exist, because it does. But it's just less so than it used to be, let's even say 30 years ago when we started to see some consolidations. Now the consolidations seem to get more massive.
Then on the other side, some journalists who are running a newspaper but can't get someone else to take over for them when they are trying to retire. That has become an issue in many parts of the U. S., especially more rural areas, where maybe the money that you could make as even, say, an editor of a paper isn't enough where you could live in that community, and where you couldn't even rent an apartment, hardly. Several of the mountain towns in this state are very expensive and if you're not even making enough money where you can hardly pay rent, is that a place that you're going to get somebody else to be able to live there? Then that becomes another issue of we can't get a human that wants to take over. That's really unfortunate for the communities and for the future of journalism in those areas.
