Storm Lake Times Pilot

Editorial: We need your support 



The newspaper industry was taking on water before the pandemic nearly submerged it. Advertising evaporated overnight. Several Iowa newspapers closed last summer or were folded into larger publications. We managed to stay afloat through donations from readers and the Payroll Protection Program. 

Pandemic or not, the first quarter of the year is always bad for newspapers. It was worse this year largely because of the coronavirus. We lost a fair amount of money. We are not eligible for another round of the PPP because of the generous donations (nearly $30,000) we were able to raise last spring. Fair enough. We’re not complaining. Yet it does leave us in a fiscal hole. 

Anticipating all of this, last year we began work with our friend Doug Burns, whose family owns the Carroll Times Herald and Jefferson Herald, on creating the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation as a permanent way to raise funds for independent, family-owned community newspapers. Much of the advertising lost to social media is not coming back as Amazon sucks the life out of local retailing. Our potential audience is not large enough amid declining regional population to rely on subscriptions alone to support our core mission of providing the facts with informed analysis. We concluded that, like public broadcasting, we will have to regularly ask for donor support to replace lost advertising revenue. Other publications, from the Salt Lake Tribune to the Seattle Times, have adopted similar models. Earlier this year, the Internal Revenue Service approved our application for tax-exempt status as a nonprofit. The website is up: www.westerniowajournalismfoundation.com. 

Another spring has sprung, and we are asking for your help to seed our fund. Please consider a tax-deductible donation that will directly support The Storm Lake Times. 

We need and are deeply grateful for your subscription. We are delighted to report that through the pandemic, our paid circulation steadily increased. Our digital circulation has grown by at least 500 subscriptions in the past six months. That’s heartening, but we are still falling short of our basic needs in the near term while we build a new online community journalism web presence. 

A couple of foundations associated with Google and Facebook have expressed interest. We hope the check is in the mail. We believe it will be. Meantime, we have bills to pay and employees who deserve a raise. We’re working like the dickens trying to put out the best paper we can. Jamie Knapp is there every Friday on the sidelines, rain or shine, getting photos of your grandson playing football. Dolores Cullen is out there reporting the heartbreak of Covid among local families who lost loved ones. Tom Cullen is asking all the necessary questions of the city council, board of supervisors and school board. They work long hours for low pay but are dedicated to the notion of an informed citizenry. We all love journalism and Storm Lake. 

We keep our opinions to this page and welcome those that take us to task. For that, we were honored to win the Pulitzer Prize. That is the standard to which we aspire, and that’s worth something. 

We like to think that having a locally-owned newspaper, like local banks, helps make Storm Lake strong. It helps us work through complicated issues in a moderated way that does not parrot the confusion and distortion of facts in social media. Professional journalism commits itself to honesty and fairness. We reaffirm it today. 

The Storm Lake Times and the Carroll Times Herald are respected voices for rural Iowa in Des Moines and Washington. When Tom Vilsack granted his first interview after being nominated for agriculture secretary, that first call was to The Storm Lake Times. On this page we feature an interview with Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, talking about agriculture’s role in climate policy. Burns has been able to engage Rep. Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley in creating new partnerships with community colleges creating local jobs in the information economy. That is community advocacy at its best. 

We also have the county fair results, your uncle’s obituary and a picture of your pet on its birthday. Those little threads weave a community’s lives together in a way that helps us forge ahead through the worst of times. We’re proud to be a hometown paper. 

We can’t do it without you. We ask your support, first to keep on subscribing (print and online both for just $7 per month!) and to consider a tax-deductible contribution to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation. Please tell a friend. We know from the tremendous donor support we received last spring, and continued gains in paid subscriptions, that Iowa values strong community journalism. We pledge to use the finds frugally, as always (we don’t dress this way because we are profligate) while having the resources to fully reflect The City Beautiful and Buena Vista County. Thank you. 

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