1030390

research-article2021
NRJXXX10.1177/07395329211030390Newspaper Research JournalFinneman and Thomas

Article
Newspaper Research Journal

“You Had to
2021, Vol. 42(3) 330­–345
© 2021 NOND of AEJMC
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions

be Reporting DOI: 10.1177/07395329211030390

https://doi.org/10.1177/07395329211030390
journals.sagepub.com/home/nrj

Constantly”
COVID-19’s impact on
U.S. weekly newspapers’
journalistic routines
By Teri Finneman and Ryan J. Thomas

Abstract
This study examines COVID-19’s impact on the journalistic routines
of U.S. community newspapers during the pandemic’s early months.
Oral history interviews with 22 journalists and state newspaper
association directors indicate weekly journalists discarded
entrenched journalistic routines to better serve their communities
during a crisis. However, structural issues with business models,
internet access and legal definitions of newspapers hinder weeklies
from fully embracing the digital era during a crisis and in the long
term.

Keywords
community journalism, COVID-19, journalistic routines, newspaper, weeklies

T
he COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the U.S. newspaper
industry, which was already in a fiscally perilous condition before economic
shutdowns began in March 2020. Within weeks of the pandemic, some

Finneman is associate professor, William Allen White School of

Journalism & Mass Communications, University of Kansas. Thomas is
associate professor, School of Journalism, University of Missouri.
Finneman is the corresponding author: teri.finneman@ku.edu.
Finneman and Thomas 331

newsrooms closed outright while others laid off or furloughed staff and/or changed
their production schedules and processes (Hare, 2020; Lappas, 2020; Parker, 2020;
Wood, 2020). Across the industry, newspapers experienced 40% or higher declines in
advertising revenue during the initial months of the pandemic (Barthel et al., 2020). In
addition, reporters were forced out of their newsrooms to work remotely, with many
struggling with cut hours and pay on top of health concerns (Graham, 2020; Kovacs &
Terzotis, 2020; Rogoway, 2020). Because of the seismic impact it has had on journal-
ism, and the response it has triggered both in terms of concrete changes and a fraught
industry-wide discussion about its significance, COVID-19 has been described as a
“critical incident” for journalism and for newspapers specifically (Finneman &
Thomas, 2021; Jenkins et al., 2020). Critical incidents typically provide opportunities
for journalists to evaluate and renegotiate “the hows and whys of journalistic practice”
(Zelizer, 1992, p. 67). This begs the question of how journalists reconfigured their
routines in the context of extreme disruption.
This study presents oral histories with nearly two dozen community journalists in
five rural states in the middle of the United States. We focus on journalists at small,
locally owned or family-owned publications. We chose this population because most
research and news stories about the U.S. newspaper industry focus on large daily
newspapers even though most of the nation’s newspapers are weeklies (Ali et al.,
2020; Garfrerick, 2010; Reader, 2018). Indeed, “despite being the dominant sector of
the U.S. newspaper industry in both total newspapers and overall circulation, the com-
munity press is rarely studied on a national level” (Reader, 2018, p. 33). State newspa-
per associations are similarly under-studied, despite the services they provide for their
member organizations (Carey, 2017; Finneman & Thomas, 2021). The importance of
studying local journalism has been magnified in recent years due to the growing num-
ber of news deserts throughout the nation (Abernathy, 2020). Against this backdrop, it
is important to understand the disruptive impacts of COVID-19 on weekly newspapers
to paint a clearer and more specific picture of the consequences of the pandemic for a
class of under-studied journalists and news organizations that play a key role in the
nation’s informational infrastructure.

Literature Review
In the review that follows, we connect the scholarship on news routines, the eco-
nomics of news and weekly newspapers to provide a framework for the research ques-
tions guiding the study.

News Routines
News routines are the “patterned, repeated practices, forms, and rules that media
workers use to do their job” (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014, p. 165). At the organizational
level, routines streamline and simplify journalistic work so that it is manageable and
efficient (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014), while at the institutional level, they help to
legitimize journalism’s cultural authority as an arbiter of what is truthful and what is
not (Tandoc et al., 2021). Routines help bring order to chaos so that journalists manage
the tumult of information and events that might make its way into coverage; to para-
phrase the title of a seminal work by Tuchman (1973), they help to “routinize the
332 Newspaper Research Journal 42(3)

unexpected,” so that it “reaches the factory exit as a consistent, homogenous product”

(Vultee, 2015, p. 833).
As Tandoc and Duffy (2019) note, routinization shapes every stage of newswork,
from access and observation (identifying events that can be turned into news) to selec-
tion and filtering (determining what aspects of an event warrant coverage) to process-
ing and editing (packaging gathered information into a story format and structuring it
in accordance with conventions of newswriting) to distribution (sharing and promot-
ing the story) to interpretation (engaging with the audience post-publication).
Embedded in these processes are normative ideals about journalism ought to be done
and how the final product ought to look, which journalists are socialized into in class-
rooms and newsrooms (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014; Tandoc & Duffy, 2019).
Routines are not static and are subject to change. Much scholarship on the topic has
tended to be framed by incorporation of digital technologies into news routines as part
of an ongoing process of “digital disruption” (Tandoc & Duffy, 2019). This work
emphasizes how journalists negotiate the “tension between tradition and change”
(Mitchelstein & Boczkowski, 2009, p. 575). Such scholarship, Siegelbaum and
Thomas (2016) argue, has tended to be unsympathetic to journalists’ anxieties about
incorporating said technologies at a time when their field is economically atrophying,
reflecting a broader “blind spot” within journalism studies about economics (Pickard,
2017).

Economic Disruption
Equally as disruptive, however, has been the economic calamity afflicting journal-
ism—and newspapers particularly—in the 21st century. Journalism’s economic cri-
sis—pithily described as one of vanishing newspapers, vanishing journalists and
vanishing audiences (Abernathy, 2020)—has been well documented in journalism
studies scholarship (see, for example, Konieczna, 2018; Pickard, 2020). Almost 1,800
newspapers (a very high percentage of them nondaily newspapers in rural and subur-
ban areas) permanently shuttered between 2004 and 2019 (Abernathy, 2020) and the
size of the U.S. newspaper workforce shrank by half between 2008 and 2020 (Grieco,
2020), mostly due to staff cuts at medium to large dailies. In a context where demoral-
ized and exhausted journalists are having to do more with less (Reinardy, 2017;
Siegelbaum & Thomas, 2016), the reconfiguration of journalistic routines is less a
matter of negotiating the tension between tradition and change and more of finding
ways of remaining economically viable. In the context of COVID-19, this shifts the
emphasis away from how journalists routinize unexpected news events to how the
unexpected shapes news routines.

Weekly Newspapers
Within journalism scholarship, weekly newspapers are categorized as a form of
community journalism, which also encompasses small dailies and some elements of
the alternative press (Lauterer, 2006; Reader, 2018). The experiences of community
newspapers and their workforces are distinct from those of other, larger newspapers,
warranting a more nuanced and less homogenizing approach to the topic, as “smaller
publications face their own challenges and opportunities, and they define success and
Finneman and Thomas 333

innovation on their own terms” (Ali et al., 2020, pp. 454–455). Reader (2018), for
example, has bemoaned how sweeping generalizations about “the newspaper indus-
try” are made on the basis of data pertaining only to metro daily newspapers, ignoring
the greater market share that community newspapers—and weekly newspapers in par-
ticular—possess. This speaks to the general treatment of weekly newspapers as
“smaller, low-quality versions of their larger daily counterparts” in journalism scholar-
ship (Garfrerick, 2010, p. 151). Consequently, they are “a silent majority we know
little about” (Ali et al., 2020, p. 454). The research-based Newspaper & Community
Building Symposium, held at National Newspaper Association convention, and co-
sponsored by Kansas State University’s Huck Boyd National Center for Community
Media, starting in 1995, was an exception that proved the rule—although scattered
scholarly research on weekly newspapers reaches back to the field’s beginnings.
Scholarship that has focused on weekly newspapers reveals the role they play in
chronicling “the story of average American daily lives,” such as recording births, mar-
riages and deaths, as well as the accomplishments of students and the activities of local
institutions like businesses, schools, faith groups and government agencies (Garfrerick,
2010, p. 151; see also Olien et al., 1990; Tichenor et al., 1980). The development and
cohesiveness of community is a normative goal of such organizations, reflecting their
embeddedness within their communities (Tichenor et al., 1980). As a consequence,
news that threatens community cohesion tends to be under-reported (Donohue et al.,
1995; Smith, 2019b; Tichenor et al., 1980) except when it can help clarify common
goals and mobilize the community to address them (Hindman, 1998).
Studies of weekly newspaper reporters are few and far between, but a sketch can be
assembled based on the existing research. Reporters often take a solutions-based
approach to reporting rather than see themselves as neutral observers (Ali et al., 2020;
Lauterer, 2006). This is likely because their professional identities as reporters are
intertwined with their personal identities as community members (Smith, 2019a).
Indeed, their personal ties to a community can be what led them to become journalists
in the first place and shapes how they go about their professional work (Smith, 2019a).
These personal ties can mean a greater level of investment in their work because
friends and neighbors are also sources, subjects and advertisers (Lauterer, 2006; Smith,
2019b). It has been said that these journalists wear multiple hats, whether as reporter,
community member or booster, and this extends to their roles within the newspaper as
well; reporters are also photographers, designers and copy editors (Smith, 2019a,
2019b) The strict “church and state” separation of editorial from business departments
that has been a central occupational norm of larger newspapers—what Hallin (1994)
describes as the separation of “sacred” news from “profane” advertising (p. 171)—is
not a feature of community and weekly newspapers, where reporters and editors must,
out of necessity, also find and place advertisements (Smith, 2019b). Smith (2019b)
argues that routinization may be even stricter for weekly newspaper journalists than
their daily counterparts because resource constraints necessitate work being done to a
particular rhythm. Rejecting the idea that small market news organizations are entirely
resistant to digital technologies, Ali et al. (2019) note that their incorporation into
working routines depends on the context and goals of the organization. They catego-
rize organizations into “digital reluctants” (those who make sparing use of social
media and digital technologies), “digital users” (those who are active on social media
and incorporate digital tools into their reporting routines), “digital learners” (those
334 Newspaper Research Journal 42(3)

who embrace digital learning opportunities provided by peers or in trade publications)

and “digital experimenters” (those who are pushing the boundaries by incorporating
cutting-edge tools).
In general, the small-town weekly press has weathered both economic disruption
and waning public trust better than their larger counterparts (Ali et al., 2020; Masters,
2017; Radcliffe & Ali, 2017). This may be attributable to local ownership (Smith,
2019a), though ownership patterns are in flux across the newspaper industry
(Abernathy, 2020) and COVID-19 has had a particularly pronounced effect on the
economic viability of local newsrooms (Hare, 2020). Exploration of its impacts of the
pandemic on weekly newspapers specifically is therefore warranted. Our research
questions are as follows:

RQ1:
How did COVID-19 disrupt journalistic routines at weekly newspapers?

RQ2:
How do weekly newspaper journalists see COVID-19 influencing their future
routines?

Method
This study aimed to capture the upheaval of COVID-19 on weekly newspapers dur-
ing the early months of the pandemic through oral histories with 22 community jour-
nalists and state newspaper association directors in five states in the middle of the
country: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Arkansas. These states
and individuals were selected to counterbalance the national and coastal orientation of
existing journalism history research. The approach pursued here can help provide a
richer picture of the pandemic’s impact on a specific sector of the newspaper industry
to add depth to industry-wide summaries of “death tolls” (Hare, 2020). Oral history
was employed as the method rather than qualitative interviews for the explicit purpose
of naming these journalists and permanently preserving their pandemic journalism
history via their audio, transcripts, photos and issues of COVID-related newspapers in
state historical society archives so they are open to the public to address the gap in
community journalism history research. (Specifically, transcripts and related materials
are housed at the State Historical Society of North Dakota, South Dakota State
Archives, History Nebraska, Kansas Historical Society, and The David and Barbara
Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History.) Immediacy is also a factor; as
Ritchie (2003) notes, “memories of details will be sharper the closer to the actual
events that the interview occurs” (p. 39). There is value in “not only documenting the
perspective of those who have lived through events but also in gathering the experi-
ences of those living through crisis” (Sloan, 2020, p. 199, emphasis in original). Within
journalism studies, oral histories help relate the “working conditions, expectations,
and experiences” of newsworkers at key points in history (Brennen, 2017, p. 132).
Finneman and Thomas 335

Research Design
When selecting journalists to interview, considerations included a range of geo-
graphic locations across each state; varying circulations; diversity of age, gender, race
and newspaper position; the ownership of the newspaper; and input from newspaper
directors on the range of pandemic impacts within their states. This study focused
primarily on family- and locally owned weekly newspapers ranging in circulation
from 500 to 17,000, although a few larger papers are also included in the total sample
for broader state historical preservation (See Appendix). This is due to the significant
news coverage and research already available on national, chain and hedge-fund-
owned newspapers. Furthermore, weekly newspapers are the only steady source of
local news for rural communities (Abernathy, 2020), thereby making their role even
more critical during the pandemic and, arguably, of more urgency to study.
A question list was created for the journalists, with another for the state newspaper
association directors. Questions ranged from gathering background about the journal-
ist and the newspaper itself to inquiring about the financial, production and content
impacts of the pandemic to pondering broader philosophical questions about what they
think this upheaval means for the future of news. State directors are also asked about
specific innovations that they employed to help their member newspapers survive dur-
ing the initial months of the pandemic. Oral history interviews were conducted by the
first author in the opening months of the pandemic when the impact of the crisis was
at its most urgent for the industry due to the widespread economic shutdown in the
United States between March and May 2020. All interviews were fully transcribed
after capturing the audio remotely in June and July 2020 using Zencastr, a remote
audio recording platform. These event-focused oral histories, like the September 11,
2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project (Clark et al., 2011) or the collection
of oral histories about the John F. Kennedy assassination (Sneed, 1998), were specifi-
cally focused on the pandemic’s immediate impact on journalism and each ranged
between 26 and 85 min. In all, the transcripts were approximately 600 pages long.
Transcripts were analyzed qualitatively in multiple stages as part of a process of
transforming raw data into identifiable themes corresponding with the research ques-
tions guiding the study. We followed the three-stage process outlined by Emerson et al.
(1995) for this kind of analysis, a common approach in interview-based studies of
journalists and their working practices (see, for example, Ferrucci & Taylor, 2019;
Ferrucci & Vos, 2017; Jenkins et al., 2018). An initial “memo stage” involved a line-
by-line reading and annotation of the body of data. An “open coding” stage followed,
with a more focused analysis aimed at abstracting codes or themes from the data that
corresponded with our research questions. A final, “focused coding” stage identified
the relationships between and patterns within these emergent codes, structuring these
nascent codes into identifiable themes corresponding with the goals of the study.

Findings
Oral history interviews with journalists and state newspaper association executive
directors indicate how quickly weekly journalists discarded entrenched journalistic
routines to better serve their communities during a crisis, as is discussed in our first
theme below. However, structural issues with business models, internet access and
336 Newspaper Research Journal 42(3)

legal definitions of newspapers hinder weeklies from fully embracing digital tools and
changing journalistic routines in the long term.

“You Had to Be Reporting Constantly”: The Pandemic Changes

Weeklies
Our first research question focused on the disruptive effects of COVID-19 on the
working routines of journalists at weekly newspapers. The biggest impact in this
regard was the chaotic upheaval of switching from putting out a printed newspaper
once a week to becoming a 24-7 news operation. Alaina Beautiful Bald Eagle (per-
sonal communication, June 17, 2020), now former managing editor of the West River
Eagle in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, was
the main reporter for a coverage area the size of Connecticut. Even though she believes
she had COVID in the early days of the pandemic, she worked through it as her weekly
routine erupted into nonstop posting of breaking news and sleeping 4 to 6 hours a
night. At all times, she had her phone and laptop with her in case she needed to quickly
update the website, knowing it was on her to keep her readers informed. “It’s been a
struggle to remember: What did we write? What has happened since the last time we
went to print?” Beautiful Bald Eagle (personal communication, June 17, 2020) said of
becoming a digital-first operation. Cecile Wehrman (personal communication, July
14, 2020), who runs two weekly newspapers in northwestern North Dakota, said she
and her reporter husband worked full days, 7 days a week straight during the initial
months of the pandemic:

It was crazy . . . we have not done a lot of daily reporting. We are a weekly
newspaper. We do share breaking stories when necessary, but that was an intense
period of daily reporting and daily posting and breaking news and people were
really responding to that. We knew that it was very vital what we were doing.

Amy Johnson (personal communication, July 30, 2020), editor of the Springview
Herald in Springview, Nebraska, said she felt like her newspaper that circulates to 700
people needed almost an hourly presence on social media with how rapidly COVID
updates came in during the initial months. Amy Wobbema (personal communication,
July 26, 2020), owner of the New Rockford Transcript in North Dakota, thought simi-
larly, saying she started writing articles immediately after interviews rather than writ-
ing before her regular weekly deadline for her 1,000-circulation paper. “It seemed like
whenever there was a breaking story that was COVID-19 related, it always happened
right after the newspaper went to press,” she said of why it was important to get news
out immediately. In other words, journalistic routines that had been embedded for
decades were immediately transformed, creating a new set of routines within days.
Newspapers used to distribution centered around 1 day a week were now becoming
24-hr reporting hubs, with constant reporting of breaking news.
This transformation of routines occurred, in large part, due to public demand for
immediate news. Like other journalists interviewed in this study, Wobbema (personal
communication, July 26, 2020) saw huge spikes in web traffic, climbing as high as a
600% increase. Bonita Gooch (personal communication, July 29, 2020), publisher of
Finneman and Thomas 337

The Community Voice, a Black newspaper in Wichita, Kansas, also had to make a swift
adjustment from her regular biweekly printing schedule to adapt to website demand:

That whole concept of every two weeks was just—everything was just too stale.
You just had to—you had to be reporting constantly because there was so much
information and people wanted so much information because, again, this was so
new to everybody. It became just like—we had to respond with—we had this
24-hour news cycle kind of thing almost.

Posting original reporting immediately was a significant routine change for Gooch
(personal communication, July 29, 2020) after being used to “saving” content specifi-
cally for print. “Well, now, no, you don’t save stuff for the paper, you know [laughs].
You have to get stuff out there right away. And I—I’m still struggling with that con-
cept,” she said. These journalists instantly transformed to the paradigm of daily jour-
nalism despite having only themselves or a few other staffers to help. This suggests
that journalistic routines may not be as entrenched in weekly newspapers as believed
when a need for change is proven to be critical. However, as is explored next, struc-
tural issues limit the extent to which journalistic routines can be more permanently
changed.

The Future and Survival

Our second research question focused on how journalists perceived COVID-19
shaping the future of their work. We found that the pandemic prompted community
journalists to consider the future of the disrupted industry and what factors are critical
to survival. However, structural issues within the industry that are bigger than any one
individual newspaper—such as a business model still heavily reliant on advertising—
play a significant role in hindering journalists from permanently changing their
routines.

The Business Model Problem

Many journalists said the pandemic enhanced the urgency of figuring out the news-
paper’s business model. Jeremy Waltner (personal communication, June 18, 2020), a
South Dakota weekly publisher, said conversations about whether to shift to nonprofit
or membership-based models were happening before COVID-19 but the pandemic is
an opportunity to make big moves now and begin addressing structural barriers that
place limits on community journalism: “Like, if ever there was a time to look seriously
at a change in model, this is it.” Journalists had differing views, however, on what that
future could be. Wehrman (personal communication, July 14, 2020), who runs two
North Dakota weeklies, is among those who thinks a nonprofit model should be stud-
ied. She didn’t think a subscription-based model would work in small communities,
where subscribers may not be apt to pay enough per year to maintain the newspaper,
and where it’s impossible to cut staff: “I mean, how do you cut, you know, a town from
one reporter to half? You can’t do that,” she said. Dave Bordewyk (personal commu-
nication, June 10, 2020) of the South Dakota Newspaper Association agreed subscrip-
tions alone aren’t a sustainable business model for community journalism. He thought
338 Newspaper Research Journal 42(3)

a donation platform that newspapers adopted during the pandemic would continue, as
well as journalists being more upfront about their financial issues and the need for
contributions to support local news. Yet Letti Lister (personal communication, June
25, 2020), publisher of the Black Hills Pioneer, thought a subscription model could
work for her small daily:

So, the days of us giving our paper away cheap or selling our paper at just
enough to cover circulation costs and then having advertising cover everything
else, those days are probably gone, and I think we were already going towards
that. This just sped it up and is making people make tough decisions right now.
So I’m not gonna apologize about raising subscription rates. I’m gonna keep
doing it until somebody cries uncle ‘cause I’ve got to get the money somewhere,
and I absolutely think our paper is worth well more than what we charge for it.

Carrie Pitzer (personal communication, July 23, 2020), who owns three weeklies in
Nebraska, said addressing the business model issue is urgent because finding the next
generation of newspaper owners is a major issue that the state is facing. “You’re not
gonna find people who want to move there and buy that [newspaper] because they
won’t be able to make a living, especially if they have much debt in acquiring the
newspaper,” she said. Kansas Press Association Executive Director Emily Bradbury
(personal communication, June 25, 2020) said it boils down to newspapers needing
more than one business model from which to choose so they can select what will work
in their community. After years of various journalism organizations and researchers
studying this issue, she feels there are “too many that have their hands in the pot” and
it’s time to come together on one collaborative effort to create an action plan to finally
solve this problem. Bradbury (personal communication, June 25, 2020) said along
with that comes a need to educate the public on the value of news and that it costs
money:

If you are willing to pay $80 a month for internet and you are willing to pay for
streaming services and you are willing to pay for other things that you don’t
blink an eye at spending the kind of money that we spend on that, that the few
dollars that you’re going to send to your local community newspaper can make
the difference between you paying more in taxes or paying less.

Overall, journalists understand that the pandemic is a prime opportunity for a rethink-
ing of the industry’s business model, yet even in a state of emergency, questions remain
on exactly what the result of that rethinking should be and how the industry can move
forward to a more sustainable future. Furthermore, outside of journalism’s control are
additional structural issues that impact their ability to permanently change journalistic
routines.

“We’re a Rural State”: The Need for Print Continues

While going all digital may seem like a cheaper solution to help community jour-
nalism’s bottom line, rural journalists said it isn’t that easy. Both Ashley Wimberley
(personal communication, June 18, 2020) and Dennis DeRossett (personal
Finneman and Thomas 339

communication, July 28, 2020) of the Arkansas and Nebraska press associations said
being a rural state means they have issues with access to broadband internet, making
the printed newspaper important for rural subscribers. Beautiful Bald Eagle (personal
communication, June 17, 2020) also said residents on the South Dakota reservation
that she covered may not have internet:

They may not visit the website, don’t have social media. We live in a very
poverty-stricken area that not everybody has a phone. Not everyone has internet,
and I have to constantly remind myself of that and try to focus on the paper
itself.

Although weeklies were more apt to make use of digital by posting on their websites
and on social media more often during the pandemic, Steve Andrist (personal com-
munication, June 17, 2020), the former executive director of the North Dakota
Newspaper Association, believes the shift away from print will be more prevalent
among daily newspapers, not weeklies. “I think the daily newspapers have suggested
that they have seen a very noticeable increase in the trend toward digital readership—
and to a lesser degree the same is true of weekly newspapers,” he said.
Another structural problem that community newspapers face in moving to digital is
maintaining their official status as newspapers for postal rate and legal notice pur-
poses. Wehrman (personal communication, July 14, 2020), a weekly North Dakota
publisher, said the pandemic should push newspaper associations and state legislatures
to think more about the repercussions of the shift to digital and how to mitigate them.
She said to qualify as an official county newspaper and therefore publish legal notices
in the state, the newspaper must have a printed product:

We only have one paper a week and if we stop publishing it, we lose, you know,
we potentially lose our legal notice income, and we potentially lose that tangible,
physical connection that so many people have to our product. So, it’s not
something that we can—it’s not very likely to happen for those reasons that we
can just abandon print.

Pitzer (personal communication, July 23, 2020), a weeklies owner in Nebraska, said
newspapers in the state inquired about decreasing print production in the early days of
the pandemic but had to be told they can’t:

In Nebraska, you have to publish 52 weeks a year. Not all states have that. Some
states, it’s 50, and 50 would be better because it would give newspapers a break
either at the holiday, for vacation, or midyear for vacation, but, in case of an
emergency or whatever, they would have a break that was covered by statute.
We don’t have that, so we talked about how essential it was to maintain 52
weeks, to maintain the four-page minimum, you know, those things that would
keep them legal.

In South Dakota, Waltner (personal communication, June 18, 2020) said e-editions do
not count toward the 50-issues minimum to be considered a legal newspaper and leg-
islation is also needed there to change it. He said reducing the costs of printing and
postage would help newspapers in the long term if they can retain their status as legal
340 Newspaper Research Journal 42(3)

publications. Therefore, although the pandemic prompted weekly newspapers to

devote more attention to their online presence, the reality of permanently shifting jour-
nalistic routines is complex.

Takeaways From the Pandemic

Still, the pandemic has shown weekly newspapers what is possible if their digital
hurdles can be overcome. Wobbema (personal communication, July 26, 2020), a North
Dakota weekly publisher, said she slowed down posting content online when the pan-
demic eased and then saw a corresponding decline in traffic: “So, if anything, that’s
showing me that I need to figure out a strategy to keep that online reader,” she said.
Similarly, Joey Young (personal communication, July 15, 2020), who publishes week-
lies in Kansas, said his websites had so much traffic in the early days of the pandemic
that “our tech guy had to buy more bandwidth or whatever he does.” Young (personal
communication, July 15, 2020) hopes that these readership and subscription increases
continue once the pandemic ends. Wes Brown (personal communication, June 29,
2020), publisher of The Daily Record, the oldest business publication in Arkansas,
thinks some journalistic routines will change with more remote offices, virtual inter-
views and increased use of technology to complete stories. Gooch (personal commu-
nication, July 29, 2020) in Kansas said another digital tool, Zoom, has greatly helped
her biweekly’s access to state and national press conferences that they never could
have attended before. Cynthia Haynes (personal communication, July 16, 2020), who
owns several small Kansas papers, said Zoom has also enabled her staff spread over
six counties to have regular staff meetings. Bill Blauvelt (personal communication,
July 29, 2020), who owns three weeklies in Nebraska and Kansas, saw more rural
subscribers willing to take an online subscription during the pandemic, saying “it has
far exceeded my expectations.” Bradbury (personal communication, June 25, 2020) of
the Kansas Press Association said newspapers have long ignored a digital presence
and the time has come to analyze and make time for digital products. “I think that it is
interesting that it took an emergency to set it in motion,” she said. In other words, the
pandemic has prompted weeklies to see the benefits of changing their routines and
there’s more consideration of how to maintain them despite knowing the obstacles
involved.

Conclusion
Prior research has posited that the routines at weekly newspapers are difficult to
change because resource constraints necessitate work being done to a particular
rhythm (Smith, 2019b). Our research indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic thor-
oughly disrupted these rhythms. Reporters and editors who were long used to produc-
ing a weekly product and structuring their work week around it found their working
patterns more akin to a daily newspaper or even a 24/7 digital operation. Whereas
reporters may have once “saved” information for the print edition, the pandemic saw
them work to get information out as fast as possible, by whatever means possible.
However, our study also illustrates the challenges that these same reporters faced in
changing their routines, particularly in the context of digital technologies. Lack of
access to broadband is a particularly acute problem in rural communities and
Finneman and Thomas 341

“COVID-19 has demonstrated that broadband is essential for education, commerce,

health, safety, democracy, and quality of life” (Ali, 2020, p. 5998). Our study indicates
that local journalism can be added to that list. Journalists also acknowledged that their
adaptability to digital was contingent on wider issues of fiscal health, demonstrating
that the hold that the broken advertising-based revenue model as an unquestioned
default had over the field is tenuous, creating opportunities for a rethinking of how
news ought to be funded (Finneman & Thomas, 2021). Finally, journalists provided an
object lesson in the legal importance of definitions in journalism (see also Ugland &
Henderson, 2007). Legal definitions of what a newspaper is impact whether or not
journalists can publish legal notices—a source of much-needed revenue—online ver-
sus in the print edition. This is yet another structural barrier to a more lasting embrace
of digitization. Local newsrooms have adopted digitization to different degrees (Ali et
al., 2019). Our study helps to illustrate the barriers that journalists face to these ends.
The pandemic illustrated that weekly newspaper journalists can be nimble in adapt-
ing their ordinary reporting routines to extraordinary conditions. However, there are
wider structural forces at play that will likely prevent these changes becoming more
permanent. Until and unless these structural problems are resolved, it appears that
weekly reporters may end up back where they started—a problem they seem acutely
aware of.

Appendix
The following journalists were interviewed for this oral history collection, with
those who work at weeklies and state associations emphasized in this research study.

North Dakota
Steve Andrist, executive director, North Dakota Newspaper Association
Jill Friesz, publisher, GS Publishing
Kevin Schnepf, sports editor, The Forum
Cecile Wehrman, publisher, Crosby Journal and Tioga Tribune
Amy Wobbema, publisher, New Rockford Transcript

South Dakota
Alaina Beautiful Bald Eagle, managing editor, West River Eagle
Dave Bordewyk, executive director, South Dakota Newspaper Association
Letti Lister, president and publisher, Black Hills Pioneer
Jeremy Waltner, publisher, Freeman Courier

Nebraska
Bill Blauvelt, publisher, Superior Express, Jewell County Record, Nuckolls County
Locomotive-Gazette
Dennis DeRossett, executive director, Nebraska Press Association
Amy Johnson, editor, Springview Herald
342 Newspaper Research Journal 42(3)

Carrie Pitzer, publisher, Pitzer Digital

Kansas
Emily Bradbury, executive director, Kansas Press Association
Bonita Gooch, publisher, The Community Voice
Cynthia Haynes, chief financial officer, Haynes Publishing/Norwest Newspapers
Matt Tait, sports editor, Lawrence Journal-World
Joey Young, publisher, Kansas Publishing Ventures

Arkansas
Wes Brown, publisher of The Daily Record
Lori Freeze. news editor at the Stone County Leader
Jeannie Roberts, reporter, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Ashley Wimberley, executive director, Arkansas Press Association

ORCID iD
Teri Finneman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1356-5815

References
Abernathy, P. M. (2020). News deserts and ghost newspapers: Will local news survive? The
Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, The University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/2020_News_
Deserts_and_Ghost_Newspapers.pdf
Ali, C. (2020). The politics of good enough: Rural broadband and policy failure in the United
States. International Journal of Communication, 14, 5982–6004. https://ijoc.org/index.
php/ijoc/article/view/15203
Ali, C., Radcliffe, D., Schmidt, T. R., & Donald, R. (2020). Searching for Sheboygans:
On the future of small market newspapers. Journalism, 21(4), 453–471. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1464884917749667
Ali, C., Schmidt, T. R., Radcliffe, D., & Donald, R. (2019). The digital life of small market
newspapers: Results from a multi-method study. Digital Journalism, 7(7), 886–909. https://
doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1513810
Barthel, M., Batsa, K. E., & Worden, K. (2020, October 29). Coronavirus-driven downturn
hits newspapers hard as TV news thrives. Pew Research Center. https://www.journalism.
org/2020/10/29/coronavirus-driven-downturn-hits-newspapers-hard-as-tv-news-thrives/
Brennen, B. S. (2017). Qualitative research methods for media studies (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Carey, M. C. (2017). Local press politics: Transparency and the lobbying efforts of newspaper
associations in the United States. Journalism Studies, 18(4), 409–429. https://doi.org/10.1
080/1461670X.2015.1065201
Clark, M. M., Bearman, P., Ellis, C., & Smith, S. D. (Eds.). (2011). After the fall: New Yorkers
remember September 2001 and the years that followed. New Press.
Donohue, G. A., Tichenor, P. J., & Olien, C. N. (1995). A guard dog perspective on the role of media.
Journal of Communication, 45(2), 115–132. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1995.
tb00732.x
Finneman and Thomas 343

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. University
of Chicago Press.
Ferrucci, P., & Taylor, R. (2019). Blurred boundaries: Toning ethics in news routines.
Journalism Studies, 20(15), 2167–2181. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2019.1577165
Ferrucci, P., & Vos, T. (2017). Who’s in, who’s out? Constructing the identity of digital journal-
ists. Digital Journalism, 5(7), 868–883. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2016.1208054
Finneman, T., & Thomas, R. J. (2021). “Our company is in survival mode”: Metajournalistic
discourse on COVID-19’s impact on U.S. community newspapers. Journalism Practice.
Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2021.1888149
Garfrerick, B. H. (2010). The community weekly newspaper: Telling America’s stories.
American Journalism, 27(3), 151–157. https://doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2010.10678156
Graham, A. (2020, April 7). More Wyo newspapers cut amid falling profit, soaring news
demand. Wyofile. https://www.wyofile.com/more-wyo-newspapers-cut-amid-falling-
profit-soaring-news-demand/
Grieco, E. (2020). U.S. newspapers have shed half of their newsroom employees since 2008.
Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroom-
employment-has-dropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008/
Hallin, D. C. (1994). We keep America on top of the world: Television journalism and the public
sphere. Routledge.
Hare, K. (2020, May 27). The coronavirus has closed more than 30 local newsrooms across
America. And counting. Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/locally/2020/the-coronavirus-
has-closed-more-than-25-local-newsrooms-across-america-and-counting/
Hindman, E. B. (1998). Community, democracy, and neighborhood news. Journal of
Communication, 48(2), 27–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1998.tb02746.x
Jenkins, J., Tandoc, E. C., Thomas, R. J., & Westlund, O. (2020). Introduction: Theorizing criti-
cal incidents in journalism across the globe. In E. C. Tandoc, J. Jenkins, R. J. Thomas, & O.
Westlund (Eds.), Critical incidents in journalism: Pivotal moments reshaping journalism
around the world (pp. 1–12). Routledge.
Jenkins, J., Volz, Y., Finneman, T., Park, Y. J., & Sorbelli, K. (2018). Reconstructing collective
professional identity: A case study of a women’s journalist association in the post–second-
wave feminist movement in the United States. Media, Culture, & Society, 40(4), 600–616.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443717724604
Konieczna, M. (2018). Journalism without profit: Making news when the market fails. Oxford
University Press.
Kovacs, P., & Terzotis, J. (2020, March 23). A challenging time for The Times-Picayune, and
for Louisiana. NOLA.com. https://www.nola.com/news/coronavirus/article_b218b9f4-
6d37-11ea-bbd8-aff90e514714.html
Lappas, T. (2020, March 30). An open letter from our publisher. Henrico Citizen. https://www.
henricocitizen.com/articles/a-letter-from-our-publisher/
Lauterer, J. (2006). Community journalism: Relentlessly local. University of North Carolina
Press.
Masters, C. (2017, July 1). How small-town papers have kept community trust. National Public
Radio. http://www.npr.org/2017/07/01/534697865/how-small-town-papers-have-kept-
community-trust
Mitchelstein, E., & Boczkowski, P. J. (2009). Between tradition and change: A review of
recent research on online news production. Journalism, 10(5), 562–586. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1464884909106533
344 Newspaper Research Journal 42(3)

Olien, C. N., Tichenor, P. J., Donohue, G. A., Sandstrom, K. L., & McLeod, D. M. (1990).
Community structure and editor opinions about planning. Journalism Quarterly, 67(1),
119–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769909006700118
Parker, P. (2020) Warwick Beacon suspends Tuesday paper, lays off some staff. Providence
Journal. https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20200325/warwick-beacon-suspends-
tuesday-paper-lays-off-some-staff
Pickard, V. (2017). Rediscovering the news: Journalism studies’ three blind spots. In P. J.
Boczkowski & C. W. Anderson (Eds.), Remaking the news: Essays on the future of jour-
nalism scholarship in the digital age (pp. 47–60). MIT Press.
Pickard, V. (2020). Democracy without journalism? Confronting the misinformation society. .
Oxford University Press.
Radcliffe, D., & Ali, C. (2017). Life at small-market newspapers: A survey of over 400 journal-
ists. Tow Center for Digital Journalism. https://in.pinterest.com/pin/199002877267832029/
Reader, B. (2018). Despite losses, community newspapers still dominate the U.S. market.
Newspaper Research Journal, 39(1), 32–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739532918765467
Reinardy, S. (2017). Journalism’s lost generation: The undoing of U.S. newspaper newsrooms.
Routledge.
Ritchie, D. (2003). Doing oral history: A practical guide (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Rogoway, M. (2020, April 1). Oregon newspapers stop printing, cut jobs and hours amid coro-
navirus crisis. The Oregonian. https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2020/04/oregon-
newspapers-stop-printing-cut-jobs-and-hours-amid-coronavirus-crisis.html
Shoemaker, P. J., & Reese, S. D. (2014). Mediating the message in the 21st century: A media
sociology perspective (3rd ed.). Routledge.
Siegelbaum, S., & Thomas, R. J. (2016). Putting the work (back) into newswork: Searching for
the sources of normative failure. Journalism Practice, 10(3), 387–404. https://doi.org/10.1
080/17512786.2015.1025415
Sloan, S. M. (2020). Behind the “curve”: COVID-19, infodemic, and oral history. The Oral
History Review, 47(2), 193–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2020.1798256
Smith, C. C. (2019a). Identity(ies) explored: How journalists’ self-conceptions influence small-
town news. Journalism Practice, 13(5), 524–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2018
.1544849
Smith, C. C. (2019b). Weekly newspapering: How small-town news workers decide what is
news. Community Journalism, 7(1), 54–75. http://journal.community-journalism.com/
weekly-newspapering-how-small-town-news-workers-decide-what-is-news/
Sneed, L. (1998). No more silence: An oral history of the assassination of President Kennedy.
University of North Texas Press.
Tandoc, E. C., & Duffy, A. (2019). Routines in journalism. In J. Nussbaum (Ed.), Oxford
research encyclopedia of communication. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/
acrefore/9780190228613.013.870
Tandoc, E. C., Thomas, R. J., & Bishop, L. (2021). What is (fake) news? Analyzing news
values (and more) in fake stories. Media & Communication, 9(1), 110–119. https://doi.
org/10.17645/mac.v9i1.3331
Tichenor, P. J., Donohue, G. A., & Olien, C. N. (1980). Community conflict and the press.
SAGE.
Tuchman, G. (1973). Making news by doing work: Routinizing the unexpected. American
Journal of Sociology, 79(1), 110–131. https://doi.org/10.1086/225510
Finneman and Thomas 345

Ugland, E., & Henderson, J. (2007). Who is a journalist and why does it matter? Disentangling
the legal and ethical arguments. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 22(4), 241–261. https://doi.
org/10.1080/08900520701583511
Vultee, F. (2015). Audience perceptions of editing quality: Assessing traditional news routines
in the digital age. Digital Journalism, 3(6), 832–849. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2
014.995938
Wood, S. (2020, March 27). News industry resorts to layoffs, cutbacks as ad revenues plunge dur-
ing coronavirus pandemic. The Philadelphia Inquirer. https://www.inquirer.com/business/
newspapers-coronavirus-stimulus-ken-doctor-jim-friedlich-lenfest-institute-20200327.
html
Zelizer, B. (1992). CNN, the Gulf War, and journalistic practice. Journal of Communication,
42(1), 66–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1992.tb00769.x