A NEW NEWSPAPER REALLY? Burke County natives say their locally-owned weekly can dislodge the incumbent daily.

• Author: Ellis, Kevin

Publisher Allen VanNoppen and Editor Bill Poteat smiled like proud papas as they waited for the first run of their new baby, The Paper, to come off the press on the first Friday in February.

As newspapers shut down at an alarming rate, VanNoppen, a marketing executive, decided to launch the weekly in his hometown of Morganton, a Blue Ridge Mountains foothills town of 17,500. He pulled Poteat out of semi-retirement to help.

"It's something that I have thought about doing, dreamed about doing and talked about doing for four years," says VanNoppen, while waiting at The Charlotte Observer printing site as 3,000 copies rolled off the press. "My wife finally said to me, 'If you don't do this now, you're going to regret not doing it.'"

The Burke County natives would each grab 150 papers before leaving Charlotte for the twilight drive home. Starting at 8 the next morning, they began distributing their allotment of The Paper at places where locals hang out like Timberwoods restaurant and Sain's Barber Shop in Morganton's downtown.

The two describe their venture as a "Back to the Future" attempt to bring an old-fashioned newspaper into a world dominated by digital media. Since 2005, the country has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers (2,500) and is on track to lose a third by 2025, according to a report published last year by the Northwestern/Medill Focal News Initiative.

Forty-one North Carolina newspapers have shut down during that time, says Penny Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, who led the Journalism and Digital Media Economics program at UNC Chapel Hill from 2008 to 2020. The most recent closing was The Belmont Banner in Gaston County, which last printed Nov. 10 after 86 years of publication.

"It was the best paper in the land. Everyone was very sad when it went out, me included," says former Banner Managing Editor Alan Hodge. "I poured my heart and soul into it for 16 years. Now there's a huge void of local news in this community."

The country has 6,380 surviving papers: 1,230 dailies and 5,150 weeklies, but they are disappearing at a rate of more than two per week, the Northwestern report states. Newsroom staffs have declined 60% in that time. Circulation numbers have decreased significantly as revenue and profits evaporate.

Three things will help a newspaper to survive, Abernathy says. The paper's leadership must be able to respond quickly to its community, the circulation area...