Newspapers and memories not as compatible as they once were

Washington Court House Record-Herald works to satisfy longtime readers with fewer editions, younger readers on Facebook

By Maggie Fipps

WASHINGTON COURT HOUSE, Ohio – February 3, 1937. The first publication date for the Washington Court House Record-Herald. As with many dailies in the 20th century, the Herald merged with the Record Republican “to serve the merchants and the people of this community in any way which a paper can be of service,” according to an ad in that day’s paper.

Littered throughout that edition, local businesses congratulate the paper on its fresh start. One large ad taken out by the Hotel Washington sticks out. It reads:

“A good newspaper is one of the best assets that any city can have.”

Eighty-eight years later, many people might disagree. According to Pew Research, in the early 1940s, daily newspaper circulation hovered at 40 million. Now, the circulation is half of that at 20 million. Advertising revenue has also trickled down to $9 million industry wide. It begs the question, is a good newspaper still one of the best assets a city can have?

The Washington Court House Record-Herald still thinks so. Much has changed since 1937. The stately brick building they printed out of on South Fayette Street is now a coffee shop. The former daily paper now prints twice a week. Their circulation is around 2,000, dwarfed by their 25,000 followers on Facebook. Tyler Flora, the paper’s regional assistant editor, said their strategy shifted as the rising costs in newsprint cut their print days down to size.

“[Facebook is] where we try to get a lot of our views because people aren’t buying newspapers,” Flora said.

Looking back, Flora never intended to get into a shrinking business fraught with questions of newsprint and digital subscriptions. He wanted to go into education, with his summers spent coaching high school football. But then he came across an ad on Facebook for a reporter position to cover sports.

“It just fell in my lap,” Flora said.

At 29, Flora can handle the social media age. Unfortunately, some of their subscribers can’t fathom the new digital edition.

“A lot of our older subscribers…they were upset that now they can only check the obits twice a week,” Flora said. “It was a transition trying to tell them we’re still seven days a week online. There was a lot of resistance.”

In his interview, Flora kept returning to obituaries and sports, the details that make a community tick. The living and the dying of the community happen between the newsprint pages.

Marjorie See has witnessed a lot of living and dying in Washington Court House. She’s lived every minute of her 85 years there. She remembers the community supporting one another whenever a need arose.

“When I was a little girl, I had a brand new coat,” See said. “My old coat was a red coat, it was beautiful. I remember mother putting me in the car, and we went over on Temple Street, and there were three girls that lived in that house, and mom took my red coat up to those girls.”

Her parents never lectured her on the importance of civic duties or being informed by reading the paper. They just did it. Reading the paper was a part of the routine, like brushing your teeth or making your bed. Her dad read Little Orphan Annie comics to her each night before bed.

Her family fed the homeless that came to the back door, and her dad picked up hitchhikers and brought them home for dinner. See longs for the days when no one on her street locked their door, when everyone could trust each other.

“You need to know what’s going on in your community, and on Facebook you won’t find the truth always,” See said. “Sometimes it’s lies.”

Although See continues to subscribe to the Record-Herald, she said it lacks much of the local news she wants to see. When she was growing up, the paper reported on the local football game and the local parties. Communities now miss the small, maybe trivial, details about what the bride’s dress looked like or where their neighbor traveled on vacation.

The small details are not the only ones missing. See is a collector, painstakingly preserving Record-Herald issues that involved her friends or historic events. Her life has been marked by tragedy and triumph, and the Record-Herald recorded them all.

She kept the edition from May 29, 1976. A picture of Mark Forsythe, See’s son, is placed prominently on the front page. He stands cool and collected, relay baton in hand and sunglasses perched on his nose. The Washington Court House Blue Lions had made it to track and field championships in Columbus, and Forsythe triumphed.

She also kept the edition from June 28, 1982, when her son was killed in a one-car accident on U.S. 22.

“That wreck was right there on the front page of the paper,” See said.

See is giving away these clippings as mementos for others in her community, to remember the past and hold on for the future.

This is what communities miss when a newspaper is no longer printed. When Generation X ages into their 80s, what will they show their grandchildren from the past? Broken links to online articles stuck behind an ancient paywall? A screenshot from a Facebook post?

Editors like Flora are stuck. They must appeal to the younger generation and the itch for fast news. But they also have the older generations yearning for the feel of newsprint on their fingers.

“We’ll have people reach out like, ‘Hey, we saw this online last week, is it gonna run in print?’” Flora said. “There’s still people that scrapbook, and they cut out news articles for their kids, and people still collect that type of stuff and treasure those things.”

In the middle of debates over the death of newspapers and the dawn of the digital age, newspapers are having an existential crisis, questioning their identity and usefulness in communities that barely have time to skim the front page. They need to remember that their real value is the treasured stories they hold in their pages.

“We’re writing stories,” Flora said. “But we’re capturing memories at the same time.”