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By Walt Wooton & Chandra L. Pierce
Spartanburg News

If you don’t remember newspapers from 20 years ago, you may not realize what you’re missing.

But if you were a newspaper reader then, or you worked in a newsroom, as we did, you probably realize what the hedge fund managers that bought up local media have done to us, and to our communities.

The age of newspapers has passed. But we believe the age of local media is just beginning. We call it “News for a New Age.”

Local media should be about speaking to each other with a human voice, with no corporate surveillance nor invasions of privacy.

If this sounds crazy to you, well, maybe we need a little crazy in this moment. But it’s no news that traditional local news is dead. What is news is that in Hopkinsville, Kentucky; Lafayette, Louisiana; Birmingham, Alabama; and hundreds of other cities across the United States, local media is coming back, with advertising as only one of many revenue sources. Just like the founders of those new local media sites, we are committed to creating spaces where local residents can have conversations about what they want and need.

Meeting community needs

Local support is essential . As “The Roadmap for Local News,” released in February 2023 by a variety of foundations, discusses, “More philanthropy inspires more corporate giving, and even nascent opportunities for public support. In 2021, the nonprofit news sector grew to an estimated $400 million in total annual revenue. And there is powerful evidence that more resources have translated to more community information needs met.”

We believe there are opportunities for local organizations and businesses to sponsor certain services or coverage topics (without influence on their contents, of course). Such sponsorships would be very tangible and visible evidence of supporting our community.

We welcome everyone’s involvement in this process. We are establishing a steering committee to begin the process of creating bylaws, mission and vision statements, member agreements, and a business plan. We’ll also be searching for the various creative people to produce a quality product for Spartanburg that will be worthy of community support.

We’ll be reporting on our progress and our vision for local media. In the meantime, our “From other newsrooms” column will aggregate news headlines about Spartanburg from other sources.

Wooton was the systems editor at the (Spartanburg) Herald-Journal from 1995 – 2013. Prior to that he was the operations manager at the (non-profit) Independent Florida Alligator (Gainesville, FL). He also has been a freelance magazine writer published in The Floridian (former Sunday magazine of the St. Petersburg Times) Florida Trend, Florida Sportsman, Florida Audubon, and elsewhere. He was involved in the startup of online news sites both at the Herald-Journal and at the Alligator. In 2005, he won first place in enterprise reporting from the South Carolina Press Association for his account of a 1967 collision of a small plane with a Piedmont airliner above Hendersonville, N.C.

Pierce was the news research manager at the (Spartanburg) Herald-Journal from 2000 – 2004. In 2004, she won the Judson Chapman award from the South Carolina Press Association for uncovering failings in the state sex offender registry. She has an M.L.I.S. from the University of South Carolina and is the Director of Learning Resources at Sherman College of Chiropractic.