Whiteout Campaing draws attention to the importance of local news

As you can tell, we have a drastically different front page this week for Minnesota Newspaper Week and the Minnesota Newspaper Association’s 150th  anniversary.
The whole idea behind the mostly blank front page is to offer a sense of what it would be like without a local newspaper.
I suspect a few readers will pick up the paper and look at the blank front page and think we had screwed up in some way. But no — we did this on purpose, as did over 200 newspapers across the state this week.
I am proud to be a part of this business, and I am particularly proud to be part of an industry that produces the local weekly newspaper.
I’ve been working at a weekly newspaper for almost 30 years, and nearly every facet of our business has changed except one thing — weekly newspapers live and breathe everything local.
I started in the business in the mid-1980s as a sales rep at the Worthington Daily Globe when it was still a daily newspaper.
My next gig was publisher for 15 years at the Redwood Gazette, which was and still is a locally owned twice-weekly newspaper.
From Redwood Falls, I was referred to the Star Herald here in Luverne for the general manager’s position, and the rest is history.
It’s no secret that our industry has had issues with the changing times, but local weeklies have weathered the storm far better than our daily counterparts.
Southwest Minnesota is fortunate to have a number of locally owned weekly newspapers dedicated and committed to keeping up with local news.
Those papers included the Cottonwood County Citizen in Windom, the Jackson County Pilot over in Jackson, up the road to the north in Pipestone is the Pipestone Star, and of course here the Rock County Star Herald and the Hills Crescent.
These locally owned and operated weekly newspapers continue to provide their readers coverage of local news and sports and provide the local business community with a cost-effective way to get their message to the local consumer.
Luverne is currently celebrating its 150th anniversary, and for most of those years the local weekly newspaper has been covering and reporting the news that has shaped Luverne into the community that we have today.
The Rock County Star Herald is committed to doing that very thing — not only today, but well into the future.