Eric Meyer, writer and proprietor of The Marion County Record in Kansas, reads the newest version of his newspaper. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

John Hanna/AP

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John Hanna/AP

Eric Meyer, writer and proprietor of The Marion County Record in Kansas, reads the newest version of his newspaper. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

John Hanna/AP

After police raided their newsroom, journalists at The Marion County Record spent all week coping with its aftermath: interviews with nationwide and worldwide information organizations, conversations with their lawyer about authorized motion, makes an attempt to get their tools again.

Last week’s raid drew wide condemnation as a press freedom violation — and it diverted the Record‘s 5 full-time staffers and 7 part-timers away from their typical reporting.

“The story we should be writing this week is not about us; the story we should be writing is about the budget of the city of Marion,” stated Eric Meyer, the paper’s writer and proprietor.

That’s the way it rolls for Meyer and the Record. Founded in 1869, the paper is thought for its hard-hitting protection of native authorities selections and holding individuals in positions of energy accountable.

As the world watches his paper for press freedom violations, writer is raring to show his consideration to the town’s funds

Now, Meyer is raring to look into the town’s latest funds proposal, which he stated elected officers haven’t but mentioned. He worries about how taxpayer {dollars} shall be spent.

And if the Record would not concentrate, no one will. The weekly newspaper is the only publication protecting Marion, a metropolis of about 2,000 in south-central Kansas.

It’s this sort of reporting that is drawn the ire of native officers — together with the town’s police chief, whom the paper was investigating earlier than he raided their newsroom.

Back in 2004, the Record uncovered Marion’s metropolis administrator, who’s now its mayor, for permitting the town to make use of a reservoir contaminated with blue-green algae for consuming water, regardless of a ban on the water as a consequence of toxicity considerations.

“You shouldn’t ask those questions”

And final 12 months, the Record reported on irregularities within the location of a housing improvement challenge supported by the town. Meyer stated officers summoned him to a gathering, throughout which he demanded solutions to excellent considerations about the place the homes have been being constructed on agricultural land.

Their response? “You shouldn’t ask those questions,” based on Meyer.

“We’re controversial in the community,” Meyer stated.

The Record was thrown into the nationwide highlight final week after Marion police raided its newsroom and his mom’s house, seizing computer systems, cell telephones and different reporting supplies. The raid prompted nationwide outcry over violations of federal legislation and First Amendment protections. All the seized materials will now be returned, based on the county legal professional.

A family-owned publication

The Record has been family-run for nearly its whole 150-year historical past. The Hoch household, identified for his or her prominence in Kansas politics, owned the paper till 1998.

Meyer’s father had labored on the Record for the reason that Forties; his mom, for the reason that Nineteen Sixties. It was a part of their household historical past and the material of their group.

So when the paper’s possession was up within the air, the Meyer household determined to purchase it.

“We just couldn’t see it falling into the hands of a chain, because we have a very strong belief that local news organizations work when they are run for and by local people,” Meyer stated.

Meyer’s mom, Joan, labored for the paper till she died at age 98, simply sooner or later after Marion police raided her house, the place he was staying on the time. Meyer believes the stress of the raid contributed to her demise.

Meyer, a long-time journalist at The Milwaukee Journal and journalism professor on the University of Illinois, moved again to Marion when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Shortly after, he retired from his educating job to run the paper full-time.

The Record prints one version every Wednesday. It has three separate circulation lists with a complete press run of about 4,000 that reaches readers throughout Marion County.

“There’s still a need for local news,” Meyer stated. “I’m kind of doing this to try to prove that.”

“It’s an increasingly small club”

The Record‘s function locally has put a highlight on the operate of newspapers as native watchdogs. An knowledgeable public is on the coronary heart of a powerful democracy, however with the disappearance of native information organizations, many small cities have misplaced the flexibility to get details about native governance.

The Record is “a little more aggressive” than some day by day newspapers in close by counties, Meyer stated. It information each police dispatch, for instance, and publishes a column about police exercise each week.

Meyer likes to level out that different newspapers dedicated to accountability journalism in japanese Kansas do nonetheless exist, like The Iola Register, about 100 miles south-east of Marion.

“There are others who do it, but it’s an increasingly small club,” Meyer stated.

Emily Bradbury, government director of the Kansas Press Association, stated Kansas has maintained a sturdy community of native newspapers: 190 papers protecting the state’s 105 counties. She pointed to The Harvey County Now, simply south of Marion, as one other instance of a locally-owned newspaper.

But the Record, Bradbury added, is “kind of an outlier” by way of the dimensions of its employees and its investigative focus.

A paper protecting a similarly-sized group in Kansas sometimes has a employees of about three individuals, Bradbury stated. That’s in comparison with the Record‘s 5 full-time staffers and 7 part-timers.

According to Bradbury, 82% of Kansans learn a neighborhood newspaper, partly due to comparatively restricted web entry in some elements of the state. A 2023 ranking of states’ broadband protection positioned Kansas towards the underside of the listing, in forty eighth place.

Though Kansas has a “strong culture” of household possession of newspapers, these publications began to say no a few decade in the past, Bradbury stated. The Kansas Press Association is making an attempt to coach Kansans to work at native papers, in recognition of the function native newsrooms play in communities throughout the state. Pay at small papers is comparatively low; based on Salary.com, the typical wage for a newspaper reporter in Wichita, Kansas is lower than $40,000.

“It is a lack of knowledge and a lack of engagement that happens when a community loses their newspaper,” Bradbury stated.

Local papers play an important function of their communities, figuring out issues and highlighting options

Every week, a median of two newspapers disappear within the United States, based on a 2022 report from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. The nation has misplaced greater than a fourth of its newspapers since 2005 and is on observe to lose a 3rd by 2025.

Penny Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill who wrote the research, stated weekly papers like The Marion County Record play an important function of their communities, figuring out issues and highlighting options.

“When you see the loss of weeklies, that is a loss in quite frankly what has been the lifeblood of our democracy,” Abernathy stated.

Family-owned newspapers, Abernathy stated, usually present stronger accountability than chain-owned publications.

“You’ve got somebody in the community, eating at the local diner, going to the same church,” Abernathy stated. “They pick up on things that chain-owned newspapers, who tend to cycle publishers and editors in and out of a market, don’t.”

Papers just like the Record bear witness

Small papers, in Kansas and throughout the county, provide transparency on day-to-day native authorities affairs, Abernathy added — together with metropolis budgets, which the Record is hoping to cowl as soon as the turmoil inflicted by the raid dies down.

Victor Pickard, a professor of media coverage on the University of Pennsylvania, stated papers just like the Record serve the operate of bearing witness.

But native newspapers — not to mention these with the sources to report in-depth investigations — are more and more uncommon, due largely to the collapse of the promoting income mannequin that newspapers have lengthy relied on.

The results of this decline, Pickard stated, are damaging.

“Levels of corruption rise, civic engagement declines, people are less likely to vote. Even taxes go up — there’s more financial waste in local communities,” Pickard stated. “There’s so many of these costs that occur whenever we lose a newspaper.”