We Need Our Storytellers Back: The Case for Reviving Rural Newspapers
- Hallie Shoffner
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
In small towns, a newspaper is more than a paper. It’s where we read our kid’s name on the honor roll or hear about the last speaker at the rotary club. It’s how we know when the levee board meets or who won the girls' high school basketball game. It’s the memory keeper, the watchdog, and the thread that ties us together.

But rural newspapers across Arkansas and the country are reducing publication frequency or disappearing altogether. More than 2,500 local papers have shut down since 2005. And when that happens, something breaks. It gets a little easier for corruption to take root. A little harder for people to show up. A little lonelier in towns where the front page used to carry our names.
Without a local paper, we don’t just lose information—we lose identity.
I grew up in a place where the newspaper, The Newport Daily Independent, mattered. Generations of my family’s names (since 1904) appeared in it for births, harvests, basketball games, school board meetings, and business ventures. When we had a story to tell—good or bad—it was printed in black and white. And everyone saw it. That kind of shared truth? It matters.
Today, misinformation travels faster than the truth, and our rural communities are left in the dark. That’s not by accident. When corporate media pulls out and political agendas fill the vacuum, rural America gets talked about—but rarely spoken to.

We need to bring back robust rural journalism.
We need public funding, nonprofit models, and community investment to keep our stories alive. We need local reporters covering school boards and soil conditions—not just national drama. We need storytellers rooted in the place, who know the roads by name and the people by heart.
Because when we stop telling our own stories, someone else will tell them for us—and they’ll get it wrong.
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