Local newspapers are disappearing left and right. Even when they still exist, they’re increasingly owned by private equity firms or subject to corporate consolidation, making them local in name only. This is a problem. It's a problem for democracy. Research has found that after private equity takes over local papers, voter turnout drops. People are more likely to vote straight ticket for the party they like, instead of voting based on local issues. Political polarization goes up. There’s more corruption in government and business. And people trust the media less overall. (See Paper Cuts to learn more.)

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Martinsville, Indiana, population 11 thousand, has a new paper in town. It’s a print newspaper. The Morgan County Correspondent. It started in August 2023. And it’s doing pretty darn well. Stephen Crane is the founding editor. And publisher. And reporter. I went up to the Correspondent’s offices a couple weeks ago to talk with him.

He told me what happened to the newspapers in Morgan County, where Martinsville is the county seat. Martinsville had a newspaper, and so did Mooresville, in the north of the county. They still do. In theory at least. Today’s headline in The Reporter-Times, which was Martinsville’s city paper, is about the Princess Theatre building’s new owner. The Princess Theatre is in Bloomington. Looks like most of the other articles are also about Bloomington. Stephen and I also talked about how he got into journalism – he says he had some authority issues when he was younger, and his decision to start a paper two years ago is not unconnected. We talked about the differences between locally-owned papers and corporate-owned, the experience of reading a print paper vs online, and why he doesn’t care too much about attracting readers under 40.