Hold the Phone, Print Newspapers Are Not Dead

Published on TheOdysseyOnline

There is something alive and running in the mountains of North Carolina. The Transylvania Times in Brevard has been around for hundreds of years, and although there is talk that print media is on a decline, they are showing no signs of stopping. The Transylvania Times is a local paper with a small team of five writers who cover local news topics that are continuously relevant to community readers, such as education, outdoors, and art. It even accepts personal submissions from town residents themselves, further connecting them to each other and the town of Brevard as a whole. This small paper is setting the stage for the way content is created within all printed media across the country.

Think about it: National news is broadcast, streamed, and published on websites, television and apps that can all fit into your sleek smartphone. Because of this, fewer people feel the need to physically sort through the pages of a clunky newspaper to find updates on national news stories. Newspapers are published once a day, at most, so there are no hourly updates on stories like there are on your phone in the form of pop-up notifications. It is so much easier to pull out your cell phone and turn on ESPN or CNN app notifications to get breaking news rather than wait for the morning paper.

This brings us back to the reason small, local newspapers have the right idea when it comes to their printed paper. The majority of these community-focused papers, including The Transylvania Times, do not print hard news topics like economics, federal politics, and war unless they are directly relevant to the distribution town. Those types of hard news topics are best received quickly through national news channels or apps, but the smaller papers print topics that will continue to be relevant to their readers for an extended period of time. The Transylvania Times, for example, prints travel stories, coverage of local events and features on important figures in their community. These stories are relevant to readers for a long time after they are written.

People reading the paper in Brevard find a sense of community and belonging in The Transylvania Times, as it directly involves individuals and their family and friends. It pulls in residents to be included in the paper, whether they are featured or are contributors. People find it pleasant to read about news like Fourth of July festival activities or the latest successful, student-led scientific research. This news is not focused on the often discouraging stories that you may find light up your phone screen in the form of sad headlines.

The idea is that you need to consider the audience and timeliness of your message. The national news is best consumed in the form of online media. However, local newspapers that are focused on the community and printed each week have remained relevant to people who live in a specific town. As I sit in my small desk in the corner of The Transylvania Times editor’s office each morning, I often converse with the editor about the future of printed news in this world of multiplying screens. We have come to a consensus that we should hang out in the mountains for a little longer.