Longtime area weekly faces likely demise

By Greg Grisolano

ggrisolano@joplinglobe.com

GIRARD, Kan. — For Terri Harley, the Girard Press is more than just a newspaper. It’s a record of her town’s history.

“Over the years, we’ve lost a lot of our history that’s been important,” she said. “And the Girard Press keeps the identity of who we are out there.”

Harley, a librarian and president of the Friends of Historic Girard Society, is one of about 50 people who attended a public meeting last Thursday to discuss the fate of the Press, which is likely to cease operations. The meeting was conducted at City Hall and was led by Stephen Wade, editor and publisher of the Pittsburg Morning Sun and the Girard Press, which are both owned by Gatehouse Media in New York.

“I don’t want to see it go,” Harley said. “It’s really hard for people because it’s such part of who we are. To Gatehouse Media, a company out of New York City, it’s just another paper. But for us, it’s part of our identity.”

Financial meltdown

At a time when major daily newspapers such as the Rocky Mountain News in Denver are shutting down, and the venerable San Francisco Chronicle is fighting to avoid the same fate, the newspaper industry as a whole has been left reeling by the downturn in the economy.

Gatehouse has ceased the print operations for two daily newspapers in Kansas: the Derby Daily Reporter in suburban Wichita and the Kansas City Kansan in Wyandotte County. The Kansas City Kansan continues to publish an online edition.

While the closing of a small community newspaper like the Girard Press may not merit the headlines of major papers, the loss of such can be a blow for more than just the community, said Gene Policinski.

“There’s an important voice that will be lost in terms of a free press if we lose community dailies and weeklies,” said Policinski, vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn. “One of the functions of a free press is to allow citizens to talk to each other.”

Press history

Founded in November 1869, the Girard Press has been publishing a weekly edition serving Girard and rural Crawford County for nearly 140 years. It is one of the oldest newspapers in the state of Kansas and one of the oldest continuously operating businesses in Crawford County. It has survived everything from social upheavals and the decline of the area’s mining boom in the 1920s, to a mob-set fire at the building in its early years, according to historian Randy Roberts.

The Press was known for having a staunch Republican advocate in longtime Editor Elias “E.A.” Wasser, Roberts said.

In 1871, amid a backdrop of unrest from settlers who had begun setting up homesteads in Crawford County, Wasser published an editorial that sided with railroad barons, who were hoping to receive government grants for the land and resell the parcels back to homesteaders. An angry mob set fire to the Press headquarters, then at Buffalo and Summit streets, and burned the building to the ground.

“It got violent at times,” said Roberts, who also serves as curator of the special collections department at Pittsburg State University’s Axe Library. “The Land Leaguers tried to burn them out and silence them.”

The Press also served as a local counterpoint to one of the most widely read publications of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the socialist-leaning Appeal to Reason newspaper. During its heyday from 1910 to 1914, the Girard-based Appeal had a nationwide circulation of more than 750,000.

Roberts said the two papers had an “essentially cordial” relationship until an 1898 editorial in the Appeal suggested that the American flag was “a painted rag on a stick.”

“From then on, the Press almost invariably referred to it as ‘The Appeal to Treason,’” Roberts said.

Roberts also noted that the success of the Appeal to Reason brought benefits for both the city of Girard and for Wasser in particular, who served as the town’s postmaster.

“Here was a third-class city in terms of size, and here it’s got a second-class, and then a first-class post office because of the Appeal to Reason,” he said. “So there’s an interesting relationship there.”

Impact

During the community meeting Thursday night, Wade told residents there is a “90 percent” certainty that the paper will cease production. He reiterated in a phone interview Tuesday that the weekly paper is not profitable.

“It’s not something that we’re taking lightly,” Wade said. “I’ve lost a lot of sleep over it. The paper has been a piece of the fabric of that community for a very long time.”

Wade said Tuesday that no final decision has been reached as yet, and that the paper will publish at least two more issues — one today and one next week. Future coverage of Girard events is likely to be incorporated into the daily editions of the Pittsburg Morning Sun, he said.

“There will be a paper until such time as we make a decision,” he said, adding that there likely would be a transition period before operations were stopped entirely. “We’re not just going to close up shop and walk away overnight. We’re not going to walk away from Girard, period.”

The impact of the potential closing of the Press likely would be felt outside of the libraries as well, as the paper provides resources for local businesses and the Girard School District.

Harold Bryan, executive director of the Girard Chamber of Commerce, is worried that his community won’t receive the same level of coverage it has received from the local paper.

“We don’t have a radio station here, and there’s a good possibility we won’t have the newspaper either,” he said. “To have that communicating arm of the media is very important for businesses. Without it, it just leaves a big hole.”

The Press has had a unique relationship with the Girard School District for decades, and students in Mary Jane Dent’s communication class have been responsible for providing photos and news coverage of the school district for the paper for the past 32 years.

“It’s been a long-standing tradition, and it’s something that the school district has always wanted to maintain,” Dent said. “We want people to know what goes on in this district. We think we owe it to the community to tell them.”

The six seniors in Dent’s class work on deadline to produce a page in the Press dubbed The Trojan Tribune that highlights issues and events affecting students.

“We don’t have a lot here (in Girard), and the newspaper is one thing we can count on,” said senior Rachel Brown. “And this class is beneficial to us because it actually prepares us for the real world. We actually get up and have to be social and have work skills.”

Wade said the Morning Sun would work with the Girard School District to keep The Trojan Tribune a part of the paper if the Press folds.

Future options

Policinski, with the First Amendment Center, said several smaller communities nationwide are exploring options for keeping their local papers alive, including placing ownership in public trusts. Others, such as the Kansas City Kansan, are moving to an all-online format. In some towns, people rely solely on blogs and community Web forums for news.

“In some communities, blogs and Web sites are trying to fill this gap,” he said. “There are independent blogs, but a lot of those are single-issue. They start up around a sewer-rate issue, or a highway issue. They don’t try to provide that broader perspective you get from a community newspaper.”

Girard Mayor Maurice Harley, whose wife is the city librarian, said that if the Press does cease operations, the city will have to designate a new paper of record in which to publish its legal notices.

Maurice Harley said that how the community responds will say a lot about its character.

“Any time you lose something that impacts your entire local community, it’s not a positive for your community,” he said. “We’ll have to adapt to those changes, and how we embrace that and go forward will say a lot about the community of Girard.”

Numbers

The town of Girard, the county seat of Crawford County, has a population of about 3,000. The circulation of the weekly Girard Press is about 1,600.

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