Connor: Across the country, the landscape of journalism is changing: people are getting their news from new and unconventional sources, newspapers are closing, and small communities are directly affected. Our group is looking at the history and changing environment of journalism right here in Oberlin. My name’s Connor.
 
Abe: My name’s Abe.
 
Michael: And I’m Michael.
 
Connor: And we believe the decline of news has been negatively impacting Americans for years, which is why we’re reporting on the issue. 
 
Michael: Exactly, The fall of local journalism and its effects can be felt nationwide. According to Pew Research Center, the workforce of journalists working at newspapers has dropped by 47% since 2004. One of the impacts of this change is that many small newspapers have had to cut the number of local stories they write each week. 
 
Abe: How have the communities those papers served felt the effects of that?
 
Connor: I think people have observed a loss of interconnectedness with the rest of their community. PEN America, a national writers’ association, issued a report in 2019 describing three case studies across the country that claimed that the “hollowing out” of local newspapers has resulted in what they call a “crisis for American democracy”. 
 
Connor: It’s safe to say that the rise and fall of local newspapers here connects to a larger trend that communities have observed nationwide. 
 
Connor: We wanted to start from the beginning of newspapers in Oberlin, so We went to Mudd Library, where they house archives of Oberlin’s original newspaper, the Oberlin News. We read over papers from as long ago as 1874, keeping an eye out for the role the newspapers played in the Oberlin community throughout the years. I did this both to find out what the town’s original journalists had viewed as newsworthy, but also to see what in those days were the deeper motivations for what made the front page versus what didn’t leave the reporter’s notebook.
 
Abe: so, Connor, what did you find? 
 
Connor: It turns out that in the beginning, journalists of the time thought newsworthy stories generally had to be   about the college or the college’s religious community. Besides that, newspapers in Oberlin were nearly overrun by ads--ads for soap, ads for horses, ads for medicine. It seemed like, for the townspeople, one main goal of the newspaper in Oberlin was to strengthen economic activity within their community. Moving forward, what we found is that the newspaper expanded what it wrote about in all directions sinceafter the 1870s, most likely due to a constant need to incorporate new stories that would attract more readers. 
 
Michael: As Connor said before, local news in small American towns are becoming quite the endangered species.
 
Connor: But it wasn’t always like this. Back when the Oberlin News-Tribune was up and running, its pages were full of different sections to read from and a spread that rivaled some big city papers despite its smaller size. 
 
Abe: However, in 2018, the Oberlin News-Tribune merged with the Lorain County Community Guide, closing its office in town and running shorter stories that are mostly accessed online, and sharing the space with other towns in the area. 
 
Connor: So Michael, you talked to some Oberlin residents about what they thought of the Oberlin News-Tribune back in the day, right? 
 
Michael: Yeah, we talked with two business owners here in Oberlin. When asked about the Oberlin News-Tribune, they were clearly quite fond of how it covered news back when it had an office in Oberlin. This is what Liz Burgess, owner of Ginko Studio and Gallery had to say:
 

• Liz: Well it was actually a comprehensive newspaper even though it was, uh, so small that, you know, it had, um… all the sections that you would expect in a larger newspaper, sports and police blotter and city council meetings and school board meeting[s] and upcoming events and editorials and columns… and, um… letters to the editor, even “man on the street” interviews sometimes. So, even though it was very small, it was pretty comprehensive.

 
Abe: The Oberlin News-Tribune was truly loved by the community. From local news to worldwide stories, it kept the community up to date with everything they needed to read about.
 
Connor: But now, with the Oberlin News-Tribune absorbed into the Lorain County-Community Guide, local information is more scarce and maybe even not as trusted by residents. However, some people, like Liz, have found new sources for news.
 

• Liz: Well, the, um, the old news Tribune still has a Facebook page, and I trust them. Um… the Chronicle Telegram is still in print and they have a Facebook page so, I pretty much trust them. I mean, not every reporter gets every story right or all the details right, but I trust them to try.”

 
Michael: Despite this trust from the residents of Oberlin, there is still a feeling of scarcity of news — especially local news. Jon Grinwald, the manager of the Oberlin College Bookstore, talked about this feeling of scarcity. 
 

• Jon: I feel like most of the news I get, or the large body of the news I get, is national and probably not as targeted or funneled locally as well as it should be for me.”

 

Michael: And, although she uses other sources to stay informed, Liz noticed that same scarcity.
 

• Liz: I think there's a lack on the street. I think, I go out of my way to try to find out what’s going on, um… but I think for the average person who doesn’t make the effort, it’s not easily available.”

 
Connor: This is what really hits home for me. The fact that people cannot access news as readily as before is a major problem, no matter in what location. 
 
Abe: You can tell that the residents and business owners truly care about what occurs in their town, and it’s deeply understandable why. Aside fromBesides the fact that they want to be informed, news in small towns can have strong effects on businesses and even the lives of the residents.
 
Michael: Before we ended our interview, we asked Liz if she wished that the News-Tribune would come back as a full newspaper. Her response speaks volumes and really represents how local news is thought of currently in the small town of Oberlin. 
 

• Liz: “Oh, yes, absolutely. I think I said to someone else that, you know, we used to laugh at the News Tribune because it was so small compared to real city newspapers. Um, but looking back, it was pretty comprehensive and amazingly thorough for a small-town newspaper and I do miss it.”

 

Connor: So, Abe, what does the future look like in terms of news in Oberlin?
 
Abe: Nathan Carpenter, the editor in chief of The Oberlin Review - a student paper -  joined me on the phone to talk about his work with the review:
 

• Nathan: “one of the important changes that happened in Oberlin since I started working at the review is that when I started working at the review, the Oberlin News-Tribune still had an office in the downtown block of Oberlin. Uh, and now that they don't, that office closed.”

 
Abe: Since the office of the Oberlin News-Tribune closed, the Review has been working harder than ever to cover content that is relevant to the community in addition to the College. Again, here’s Nathan: 
 

• Nathan: As editor in chief, one of the things that I'm always asking about with regard to our content is why would we publish this specific piece in the Oberlin review versus in another publication or on someone's personal blog? Like what is it that kind of makes the piece or the article distinctly Oberlin? Um, and so I always want there to be an element to the story that speaks either directly to something that's happening on campus or in the community or has an angle that, uh, the editorial staff feels would be particularly interesting for OberlinOrban community members to engage with.”

 
Connor: In addition to the general considerations of which stories are published, Nathan and the reporters at the Review have found sources who provide the insight that might have gone unreported after the News-Tribune office closed. Nathan mentioned this: 
 

• Nathan: I find it really important to have relationships with people who don't have an explicit connection to the college. They don't go here, they didn't go here, they don't work here. And, uh, so when I'm reporting on a story that has to do with community issues versus college issues, it's easier to have kind of a base of people that I can talk to and bounce ideas off of." 

 
Abe: The rise of digital media, though, brings with it profound opportunities in addition to changing responsibilities. Here's Nathan talking about the future of print news and the Oberlin Review. 
 

• Nathan: Before you could put articles on the internet, you had to, all the content that people were going to read was in the print version. Now you have the option to take an article and if you have too much content in particular, the article doesn't fit in the newspaper. You can put it online and it's still being read. And it's still an important piece of, of community conversation. And that option allows you to be kind of much more flexible with your space, like your literal physical space that you have in the newspaper. And so something that we've started exploring more over the last year or so is, is doing more photo essays because in the past we might not have had room to do that cause we had stories we needed to pack into the layout. Now we can say, okay, we're going to move these two stories to just online and we're going to dedicate a page to a photo essay about the Allen, the project at the Allen or about drag ball or something that's really cool and really, really visual, visually appealing. We did a really cool one about the Climate Strike and we can do that now because we have the flexibility that the digital medium allows us, the flexibility that digital medium allows us to have with the print layout. And I think that's really exciting and is going to be one of the reasons why print is going to continue to be an exciting medium well into the future, I think. 

 
Michael: There are a lot of uncertainties facing journalism right now — new technology, decreasing ad revenue, consumer expectations of “free” media, just to name a few. But, as Nathan said, the exact technologies that present challenges for the industry also present new opportunities. Online news can be more accessible for some readers and give writers and editors new and innovative tools for storytelling. In the face of vast changes to the ways Americans get their news, it is important to remember that journalists are still dedicated to keeping people informed.