A nameplate reading THE COURIER: Freeman, South Dakota
YANKTON, S.D. (WNAX) — Most newspapers are facing difficult times, with rising costs and dropping subscriptions and revenue. That’s really hit home with small-town papers.
Jeremy Waltner, the publisher of the Freeman Courier, is taking a different path and moving toward memberships, where readers choose what to pay to read the paper.
Waltner said the new model is a leap of faith for him and his community.
“If I can be honest with people, be vulnerable with people, be transparent with people, I felt like that messaging would come through,” Waltner said. “I’m seeing that is, in fact, the case.”
Waltner said while the paper is a community resource, he thinks most people realize they are also running a business. He said postage and printing costs are rising, which add to the strain brought on by decreasing advertising revenue and a dwindling subscriber base.
Waltner said the paper has no plans to stop its print edition. As the legal paper for the City of Freeman and Hutchinson County, they have to print at least fifty issues per year and maintain at least two hundred subscribers.
(Jerry Oster, WNAX, contributed this report.)
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