The Morgan County News in Morgan, UT, now in its 87th year, is run by a team of able caretakers.
Don and Anne Anderson may own this newsprint octogenarian, but one might conclude that they simply adopted the paper and are committed to nurturing it and to helping it thrive in an uncertain media environment.
“Our newspaper’s life is part of community life,” Don said. “We are invited into a couple of thousand homes every week, and we are grateful to our readers for sharing a part of their lives with us.”
The Morgan County News, located in the county seat of Morgan, is tucked into Utah’s little northeastern nook, nestled up against Idaho and Wyoming, in arguably one of the most picturesque parts of the U.S. It is located about 30 miles from Park City and is a reasonable drive to Salt Lake City.
The newspaper was started in 1923, and unlike many community papers that have been passed from generation to generation, The Morgan County News turned over several times until it landed in the hands of the Andersons.
Doug Johnston, the paper’s managing editor, has a history with the newspaper, actually owning it twice before turning over the reins to Anne and Don. He long harbored an interest in the written word.
“I have always wanted to be a writer,” he said.
Doug got hooked on writing after winning contests in high school, but like many kids who dream of converting their talent into a career, he went to work in the corporate world.
For years, Doug worked for Kimberly-Clark, making diapers—Huggies to be exact.
Eventually, he made his dream come true when he started the Morgan Valley Weekly to compete with The Morgan County News.
Morgan County is not known for its dense population, boasting 9,000 residents and not a single traffic light. Yet Doug maintains there was plenty of room, news and advertising for two weekly newspapers. The two papers co-existed for a couple of years, before Doug’s mother bought The Morgan County News, which absorbed the Morgan Valley Weekly.
Doug managed the paper in a way one might expect a weekly paper in a small town to be run.
“We ran it out of my mother’s variety store,” he said.
When his mother’s health began to fail, Doug sold the paper to a local attorney so he could spend more time taking care of her. By then, it was 2007. The new owner had failed to make payments on the mortgage, and within two years, Doug foreclosed on it. As much as he loved the newspaper, he was more interested in writing than management.
As luck would have it, Anne and Don Anderson had moved to Morgan County after living in England, where they worked for Convergence Communications, a company that provides customer service and technical support to a variety of businesses on a contract basis.
Anne had business and management experience, and Don came with technology expertise. Together with Doug, the three formed a perfect trio. Don and Anne bought the paper and hired Doug as the managing editor.
Morgan County’s climate attracts a higher level of vacationers and tourists than business and industry, and that suits the newspaper’s owners just fine. With a loyal readership and plenty of good news to tell, the newspaper is thriving on local retail ads. On the hunt for a new ad salesperson, the Andersons hope to attract advertising from businesses in towns outside of Morgan.
“We have always loved the beautiful community, and Doug is so motivated, everything has fallen into place,” Anne said.
Doug agreed.
“I wanted to work for the paper, but not own it,” he said.
The team relies on good community support and the good journalistic legacy the newspaper brings.
“We feel confident The Morgan County News is a good business, but at the same time we feel pressure to keep it running since it has run continuously since 1923,” Don said.
The residents of the town also have a vested interest in the newspaper’s success, Don added.
“People see it as a community asset and want to support it,” he said.
The trio has made the paper part of their lives. They run it along with one student writer.
The Morgan County News is published on Fridays, and has a circulation of 1,300.
For Don, the newspaper is a part-time job. He spends the majority of his days in Salt Lake City where he is the senior vice president for FamilySearch, a genealogical research center run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He helps individuals searching for ancestors using the resources of FamilySearch, and the Family History Library. He also manages software and services found on FamilySearch.org. The genealogy site attracts 600,000 visitors a year and has a presence in countries all over the world.
Don’s family history column in The Morgan County News is wildly popular, providing advice and search tips to those seeking genealogical information, and the technical expertise he brings to the newspaper has helped it develop a strong online presence.
“Our web site is an added value,” Don said. “It allows our readers to interact with the content, and they like that.”
The long debate over whether to provide online content for free or to charge for it is ongoing.
“When we developed our web site, we sat down, went through the newspaper and itemized everything to determine what to put online for free and what to charge for,” Don said. “Over time, we will adjust the balance to make sure it draws traffic but doesn’t cannibalize the newspaper.”
Access to the web site is free for print subscribers. Several stories are published outside the paid wall, yet others are inside the wall and available to online subscribers.
A web presence proves to be a good fit for a newspaper devoted to providing local news. “Our obits are updated regularly,”
Doug said. “A lot of people in our community use the Internet, and this gives people an opportunity to get news in a timely way.”
People who move away from the area like to stay connected through the web site as well. Embracing social media, Doug has created a new Facebook fan page and has a newspaper presence on Twitter.
Online advertising is merely a value-added product for print advertisers, but with the addition of a new ad salesperson, the Morgan County News team hopes to increase online advertising.
Through it all, the Andersons and Johnston remain committed to community service, and the newspaper reflects this commitment. People of the community are the newspaper’s best resource for news and feature stories.
“Sometimes people just come into our newspaper office, sit a spell and talk to us,” Anne said. “A lot of great stories come out of this. We have one reader who is our biggest fan. He’s always dragging people in to tell their stories.”
Anne favorite readership story involves a local man who doesn’t read his Morgan County News until Saturday, the day after it hits the streets. He has created a ritual around it. “He gets up on Saturday morning and sits at the kitchen table with his coffee and his newspaper and reads it cover to cover, and then he gives it to his wife, and she reads it from cover to cover,” Anne said.
The newspaper’s life is part of the community’s life, and even though the team is new to the business, they have come to embrace the responsibility and huge role that the weekly plays in the everyday lives of their readers. They do not take this lightly.
Doug expresses his life’s work simply: “Since I came back to this newspaper, there has not been a single day that I haven’t loved being here.”
© Teri Saylor
2010
TERI SAYLOR is a journalist living in Raleigh, NC. She edits VYPE, a local magazine covering high school sports and practices freelance writing through her fi rm, Open Water Communications. Say hello to Teri at terisaylor@hotmail.com.
The Details: Newspaper Name: The Morgan County News
Caretakers: Anne Anderson, Don Anderson and Doug Johnston
In Business Since: The Morgan County News was established in 1923 by C.B. Wallace. He published the newspaper until December 1925. From January 1926 to February 1946, S.D. “Dad” Perry published the paper. In March 1946, Albert W. Epperson took over the paper until December 1955. In January 1956, H.C. “Mac” McConaughy purchased and ran the paper until 1976. That November, Dick and Susan Buys of Heber City, UT, bought the newspaper. Dick stopped publishing it in 1982, but he remains in the newspaper business as owner of The Wasatch Wave in Heber City. Ken and Marie Adams were The Morgan County News’ next owners. The Adamses sold the newspaper to Howard Stahle, who also owned (and still does own) the Magna Times newspaper. He ran the paper until 2002, when he sold it to a publisher who had started a competing newspaper in town. Joan Clark Smith started the Morgan Valley Weekly in 1999 to compete with The Morgan County News. After purchasing The Morgan County News, she merged the two papers and hired her son, Doug Johnston, to run it. He had already been managing the Valley Weekly. Johnston ran the newspaper with his mother until her health deteriorated to the point that she was not working at all. They sold it to Chris VanCampen, who had done work for The Morgan County News. VanCampen published the newspaper from November 2007 until November 2009. Johnston acquired the paper again, after his mother passed away. He sold it to Anne and Don Anderson. The Andersons jumped on board with Johnston and agreed to buy the paper as long as Johnston would run it as managing editor.
One Thing We’d Never Change: Even with the changes in ownership, one thing has remained constant. The Morgan County News has been, and continues to be, an excellent record of the history of Morgan County.
Why This Newspaper is Important: The current staff pledges to continue the traditional newspaper format. Forms of media have changed rapidly in the Internet age. The Morgan County News staff will honor the community paper’s past, but use the most current tools in media for keeping readers informed and updated on their local news. After 10 publishers and almost a century of publication, the newspaper’s history is as rich as its contents. Going back through the newspaper’s archives is like taking a trip back in time.
Newspaper’s Mission: The goal of the current staff of The Morgan County News is to honor the history and traditions of the paper over the years while making continuous improvement to it. The staff hopes that future publishers will look back and find an accurate reporting of the news in Morgan County at the onset of the 21st century.
Phone: 801-829-3451
E-mail: News@MorganNewspaper.com
Post a Comment