Be Thankful for Local News Reporters

For all the ways delivering news is changing, we still need dedicated reporters, especially in small Iowa towns

Laura Drummy, managing editor and reporter for the Anamosa Journal-Eureka and Linn News, during a pleasant cool drink at a Hiawatha coffee and soda shop Oct. 1, 2025. (Photo by Lyle Muller)

The Anamosa City Council and Jones County Board of Supervisors were in dispute over a 137-year-old bridge last year.

It started when the council voted to hire an engineer for $60,300 to inspect the old Dillon Military Bridge. Foul, the supervisors claimed. The city needed to collaborate with the county to make the hiring decision. It says so, county officials said, in the 28E agreement between elected bodies in the county.

Sitting through the technical, legalese talk about the 28E agreement was Laura Drummy, now 27, of Hiawatha. Drummy was covering the meeting for the Anamosa Journal-Eureka and Linn News out of Central City, two small community newspapers in Iowa for which their readers ought to be thankful this Thanksgiving Day season.

You try sitting through a discussion about 28E agreements, so named for Section 28E of the Iowa Code that defines how connected governmental agencies such as city councils, boards of supervisors and school districts use their power jointly. Drummy did and wrote about it for her newspapers, where she is managing editor, reporter and photographer. Her hours are long and sometimes do not make sense to people in other professions but she has a vision.

“Why I do it isn’t for me. It’s for the people around me,” Drummy said as the two of us talked on a warm October day about things she does to fulfill her role as reporter and editor of all things north Linn County and pretty much all of Jones County in eastern Iowa. “This community deserves to know the truth and what is going on.”

Spoken like thousands of editor-reporters-do everything journalists who exist across the country, including here in Iowa. Like Drummy, they may be married and fresh out of college. Others are long-time leaders who want to keep their communities informed. Ron Slechta of The Kalona News and four other newspapers comes to mind — In 2020, Slechta repurchased the paper he and his wife, Helen, had sold many years ago to keep the papers from folding. Ron, the editor and publisher,is in his 80s.

My brother, Richard, was one of these people in Ohio after leaving Iowa and serving in the Navy and Coast Guard. He could regale you with tales of the local yocals who made life colorful in the towns he covered for the now-defunct Barberton Herald, which served Akron suburbs. One of Richard’s colleagues, in his 70s, responded to the Herald folding by creating the Barberton Gazette. Some people just don’t quit.

A typical starting annual wage for a reporter or copy editor is around the lower 25% of salaried pay at around $38,000, with the median sitting at $57,500 for reporters and $48,000 for the copy editors who save reporters’ bacon by correcting errors or typos. News photographer pay starts around $32,200, with median pay at $40,700.

Yet, the importance of local newspapers is supported by studies showing that having a strong local paper in town affects a community’s health and increases voter interest and turnout for public matters. “When there’s less coverage, whatever that is, we see more polarization, we see fewer people voting,” said Susan Patterson Plank, a former Iowa Newspaper Association executive director who now is with Rebuild Local News.

Patterson Plank made the comment during an October Iowa Ideas Conference session hosted by The Gazette, one of Iowa’s two largest newspapers and covering the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City corridor. The Gazette holds the online Iowa Ideas conference to keep audiences engaged.

The Linn News newsroom in 2024 after Nelson Media Company saved it from closing when purchasing it. The photo was taken by publisher Chris Nelson.

BEATING THE ODDS

Why chose journalism? I asked Laura Drummy. “That’s a good question,” she said. “I think it stems, partially, from being told no a lot when I was a kid.”

Drummy grew up in Ryan, Iowa, with dyslexia and often heard that she would be lucky to get out of high school. She graduated from Iowa State University in 2022, got married in November that year and has been with the newspapers since graduation.

She is grateful that Nelson Media saved the papers from closing. She points to the first story she wrote about Dillon Military Bridge, on May 2, 2024, that came out of the April 22 Anamosa City Council Meeting. One of the Jones County supervisors asked colleagues at a May 7 supervisors’ meeting if they had seen her story.

“Green me, I thought, ‘what did I do wrong?’” Drummy said. Turns out, no one else had seen the story, yet. That led to the supervisors’ complaint about the city not following the agreement on joint decisions. Drummy had done the opposite of something wrong. “The city had had a misstep,” she said, and she had shone light on it.

“These articles were published nearly three months after the paper closed and reopened under Nelson Media Company. I often wonder what would have happened if our paper had permanently closed, and where the board and council would be today regarding the bridge,” she wrote in a follow-up email after our coffee chat.

“The reason why I do this job is that I truly believe everyone has a story worth sharing, and our communities need a source of truth and accuracy. I do this job to serve the community’s needs and push boundaries, and have persistence. The more transparency, good or bad, is what helps sustain a successful community. Being told ‘no’ makes me fight more for our readers and citizens who call our communities home.”

READ MORE: THE GAZETTE’S NEW TASK: MAINTAIN LOCAL CONFIDENCE, JOURNALISM

THE NEWS LANDSCAPE

Even though the United States population is growing this country has 75% fewer journalists now than in 2002, Rebuild Local News reports. An average of two-and-a-half U.S. newspapers are shutting down every week.

To save on expenses, newspapers are cutting the days they deliver a printed paper. The Gazette publishes Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays. It still lays out an e-edition but has not returned to later deadlines for evening and nighttime stories. Later deadlines could give that e-edition the morning newspaper feel with relevant stories from the night before, when public bodies make decisions about taxes, roads, transportation, utilities and social services, that were published in the paper 30 years ago.

Read more: We’re learning about AI in journalism while AI learns about journalism

Later deadlines also would mean spending more money on reporters, editors and designers and newspapers have pulled back on that kind of spending for some time as revenue sources like advertising dry up. Lee Enterprises, which owns five Iowa newspapers, plus the Omaha World-Herald that goes into Iowa, has laid people off while University of Nebraska researchers are studying news deserts, where local newspapers no longer serve people with vital information about their communities.

Meanwhile, people say they starve for accurate, truth-telling, trust-worthy news about their communities. They want to know about their taxes, roads, recreation, utility services, mounting repair work, how many people are involved and at what cost.

“We are seeing a growing understand of the difference between local media and national media,” current Iowa Newspaper Association President Debbie Anselm said during the Iowa Ideas session in which Patterson Plank spoke. In other words, local media are invested in the communities where they exist. Their employees see people on the street, at school and community functions, recreation sites. They are connected with their audiences.

“Local newspapers do not have an audience problem. What they have is a business model challenge,” Anselm said.

KEEPING UP ON THE BUSINESS SIDE

Solutions to the business problems include new funding sources like initiatives the Knight Foundation provides, and projects you might not have heard about like Press Forward and Report for America. At the state level, Anslem said potential solutions include having a strong message on the urgency to fund local news, partnerships with college journalism schools, and a third leg to a stool that has subscriptions and advertising as the other two.

The University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the independent The Daily Iowan purchased the Solon Economist and Mount Vernon Sun in 2024, although two of Iowa’s fastest growing small cities — Tiffin and North Liberty — lost their local papers a few years earlier, leaving each without an independent local news outlet.

Non-profit news organizations try to fill the gaps but they only go as far as funding takes them. The big non-profits get bigger and attract more funding because they are big while the smaller get smaller and eventually no longer can make it, just like what happens in the for-profit world. The Iowa Capital Dispatch has strong enough funding to cover state government and populate legacy newspapers with its stories by well-seasoned, experienced journalists. Iowa Starting Line and Bleeding Heartland have good reporting and lean politically left but are hanging in.

IowaWatch, of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism that lasted more than 12 years, finally gave in to financial pressures and was acquired in 2022 by its long-time partner, Investigate Midwest, which also was facing financial pressures that the two non-profits successfully sought to overcome together with the acquisition. Investigate Midwest has grown in the last two years.

I was IowaWatch’s first full-time executive director and editor until retiring from the job in 2019 and am on Investigate Midwest’s board of directors. Investigate Midwest, meanwhile, has an IowaWatch reporter in Des Moines who is supported with money from Report for America and Iowa donors who care about covering Big Ag and agriculture-related matters that affect their lives. We are in a NewsMatch fund drive in which your donation between now and the end of this year will be matched, up to $1,000.

Some reporters are building their own audiences without being part of any news organization but that is not easy work, either, and the rate of success is tiny.

Marisa Kabas is one of the few making a living as her own boss. Kabas runs The Handbasket, her solely owned news website where she developed a strong audience of 40,000 subscribers writing about federal government employees losing their jobs since Donald Trump returned to the presidency. “There is a clear appetite for fact based truth tellers who call it as they see it,” Kabas, who writes out of Brooklyn, New York, said during an Oct. 8 talk at Grinnell College, where I caught up with her.

Marisa Kabas during her Oct. 8 visit to Grinnell College. (Photo by Lyle Muller)

One-person outlets that work have audience buy-in. “Journalists are now so accessible that people take advantage of that access. And when you’re independent, the access is typically even greater,” Kabas said. The flip side is that a lot of jerks who abuse access. It’s neither excusable nor a price journalists have to pay, Kabas said.

“Subscribers to my site and people who follow me online will send everything from snide comments to outright threats,” she said. “But the other side of the coin is the kind notes you receive. The acknowledgement of how important journalism always has been and remains. The ability of words to make people feel seen. That’s what keeps me going.”

Of course, there is the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, with a wealth of expertise and talent covering and analyzing Iowa news stories that otherwise may not be covered. I was a paying subscriber before being invited to join as a writer in late August.

For all of these efforts to cover news, though, perhaps you have figured out what all of them do not cover.

THOSE WHO CONNECT THE MISSING LINK

They do not regularly cover your local government, which affects you greatly.

City councils put up stop signs, build recreation fields and regulate development. County supervisors plow county roads and run the county park. School boards build school buildings and — this often is forgotten but is important — educate kids in your community. Don’t have any kids? So what? How smart do you want people to be when they grow up?

The Thursday, Oct. 2, Fredericksburg Review’s front page tells people in my northeast Iowa hometown about a ceremony to rededicate the town’s veterans memorial, the school district’s early discussions for a bond issue and who is in the Homecoming court. Upcoming events and local high school sports are part of the paper’s coverage.

In Mount Myr, Record News reporter Jeff Snyder recently got to listen to the City Council discuss whether or not an intersection needed a stop sign. “They spent 20 minutes talking about a stop sign — that’s the issue,” he said. Must be important, I told him. “They tabled it,” he said.

Snyder, 68, is learning about small town papers after spending a career holding several executive positions in sales. Now living in the Mount Ayr area, he said he was interested in writing for the newspaper because of the need for local news and because it fits his current interests. One of his big lessons is the need to wear a lot hats, he said.

That certainly is the case for Drummy at the Anamosa Journal-Eureka and Linn News. Nelson Media’s announcement of the purchase after Woodward Media announced the papers’ closing showed a staff of four people.

Drummy says they hired another person to help Linn News cover four school districts, seven incorporated towns and one unincorporated community. The Journal-Eureka covers three school districts, a similar collection of incorporated and unincorporated communities, with its emphasis on Anamosa.

Hope exists. More than 900 students attended the annual Iowa High School Press Association conference in Iowa City in late October. Professionals and academics led workshops that instilled in these youth journalism’s principles and ethics. Many of these staffs, notably in Iowa City’s public schools, have robust staffs taking high school journalism as a class. Smaller staffs at schools that do not have the same resources work just as hard.

So, yes, I am thankful that so many people are dedicated to reporting and writing about their communities because something in them tells them this work is important.

But, we also need to find ways to give these journalists a living wage with decent life balances. We, as news consumers in a system that needs an informed citizenry, need to make sure the pressure we put on journalists in our communities to be accurate, fair and ethical continues to exist but with the necessary support they and their work require.

Iowans living in our towns and cities should not rely on a journalist’s passion and personal drive alone.

I am a proud member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Meet our writers here. And, join us Wednesday, Dec. 17, at the Harkin Institute in Des Moines for the annual Iowa Writers’ Collaborative holiday gathering. The Collaborative’s paying subscribers get to attend free but non-subscribers may attend, too, with a $35 a ticket. RSVP HERE by Friday, Dec. 5.

Order here for: A Messy Church: An Iowa Church’s Journey Through United Methodist Celebrations, Controversies. I will send it signed, if you want.