Route 66: Print day at a 145-year-old Kansas newspaper
GALENA, Kan. — She wrote front-page stories about changes to the city's animal ordinance and the county's efforts to clean up an illegal dumping site. She laid out the rest of the week's 10-page paper: Obituaries on page two. Columns from local contributors on pages three and four. School news on five. Classifieds on eight. A back-page photo spread on three-dimensional Route 66-themed chalk art in a park along the historic road in nearby Joplin, Missouri.
By 4 p.m. that day, Machelle Smith moved to her next task. Seated at her cluttered desk inside the Galena Sentinel-Times newspaper's office on Route 66 near the Missouri border, she converted each page of the upcoming issue to PDFs to send to the printer before the 5 p.m. deadline.
The paper's masthead lists Smith as the operations manager. The 58-year-old Galena native calls herself its 'jack of all trades.'
'I've done everything,' she said above the crackle of a nearby police scanner.
The newspaper has existed in one form or another in this part of southeastern Kansas since 1880, three years after the town was founded around the discovery of lead in the area. Its current iteration is the result of a 1945 merger between The Galena Times Republican and The Galena Sentinel.
Eighteen years ago, Smith was working at an area restaurant when a friend asked if she was interested in a career change. The friend's brother owned the newspaper, then called the Sentinel-Times, and needed to replace the departing editor.
She had no journalism experience. Still, she took the job.
'For the first few months it was me by myself trying to figure out how to do everything,' she said.
Eventually, she learned how to put the paper together and how to operate the newspaper's print shop in the rear of the newsroom — its services include business cards, invitations, stickers, banners, posters, fliers and the like. For the last three years, the paper has printed posters for the town's birthday festival (called Galena Days) and donated 10 subscriptions as door prizes.
Last December, the newspaper's longtime publisher, David Nelson, died at 72. An engineer by trade, his obituary says he bought the paper in 1977, in part, 'so people at least had a place to publish an obituary free of charge' (they're still published free of charge).
Local business owner Brian Jordan purchased the paper from Nelson's widow.
Jordan, said Smith, 'believes if the newspaper dies, the town dies.'
More than 3,200 U.S. newspapers have folded in the last 20 years, according to a study from Northwestern University's Medill Local News Initiative. At least 3.5 million people live in counties the study called news deserts, places with 'no local news outlet consistently producing original content.'
The Galena paper is, of course, not immune to the pressures facing news outlets across the country. The staff size has remained virtually unchanged since Smith joined. There's proofreader Tia Day, who recently moved to St. Louis and works remotely. Webmaster Shayla Sturgis was once an intern who also works for a Native American tribe in northeast Oklahoma.
Advertising director Aniston Johnson, 22, joined the paper 10 months ago. Sometimes, she'll grab a stack of papers and head to businesses in surrounding communities to see if they'll buy an ad.
'It's a little difficult,' she said.
Like Smith, she multitasks. Last month, she wrote about a state award for a school kitchen manager.
'That one was a tough one for me, because it was my first time doing that,' she said. 'It was a little nerve-wracking.'
She also pens — literally — articles on historical events. At her desk, she has a handwritten draft of an article on an early 16th-century 'dancing plague' in an area of what is now France.
The paper has two freelance journalists who cover sports, Smith said, with plans to add more. They're also planning to devote the middle four pages to more Route 66 coverage as next year's centennial approaches. Kansas has by far the shortest segment of the route of all eight states at 13.2 miles, and two associations dedicated to route preservation: Kansas Historic Route 66 Association and Route 66 Association of Kansas (Smith sits on the latter's board).
Having finished uploading the PDFs of the latest issue, Smith closed the office for the day. The paper, once printed in Joplin, is now printed about 120 miles east near Branson, Missouri.
About 1,200 copies were delivered to the newsroom before 6:30 a.m. Thursday, when Smith arrived. On her to-do list that morning: Take 594 copies to the post office to mail to subscribers and the rest to newspaper racks around town.
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