The journalism industry has had its share of struggles over the last two decades. I learned about them firsthand when the first newspaper I ever worked for was forced to close.
The Bolivar Commercial in Cleveland, Mississippi, closed permanently after publishing its final issue on April 29, 2020. The newspaper that had been around for 104 years has now been defunct for more than five.
The paper’s managing editor, Denise Strub, hired me about a year earlier. I had earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Memphis, but as I have learned in the years since, the only way to learn journalism is to practice it. That includes writing, re-writing and talking to people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
When I joined the BC, it had been in decline for some time. Management had recently cut its weekly output from three days a week to two: Wednesdays and Fridays. The newsroom was composed of only three people—Denise, myself and Sports Editor Andy Collier. My desk was on the other side of Denise’s office, separated by a glass window. She had been with the BC for nearly 30 years and regularly gave me advice on writing, photography and reporting. Like most reporters early in their careers, I needed a lot of coaching.
It was a newsworthy year. One of my earliest stories involved driving out to Winstonville, a microtown in Bolivar County, to speak with a man who claimed he saw a bald eagle near his home. I wrote about the consolidation of West Bolivar Consolidated School District and the permanent closure of Ray Brooks School in Benoit. I met then-Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann and Jay Hughes during their campaign for lieutenant governor. I attended a trial involving allegations of election fraud in a county supervisor case. In a single year of working with The Bolivar Commercial, I learned more about Cleveland and Bolivar County than in all the years I lived there.
Research by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism has found the U.S. has lost more than a third of its newspapers since 2005. In Mississippi, the number of journalists has declined 55% from 2005 through 2022.
The Bolivar Commercial met the same fate in 2020. After years of struggling with finances and advertising, the COVID-19 pandemic was the knockout blow that forced owner Walls Newspapers to announce it was permanently closing the paper. Several of my colleagues had devoted multiple decades to the BC and were now forced to find new jobs or new careers.
The pandemic put my life on hold for about a year and a half. It wasn’t until November 2021 that I started my next journalism job with The Greenwood Commonwealth.
I’ve grown a lot since those early days, but I knew then and appreciate more now how important trustworthy news sources are to a community. Newspapers are historically community resources and people invest in them just as they would any other public resource in the town or county. But Medill’s report has found more and more newspapers—called “ghost newspapers”—with no local journalists on staff or so few that the ability to report critically and provide important news to readership has been curtailed.
I’ve been with the Mississippi Free Press for less than a month, but one of the things that excites me is the team’s ambition to cover all corners of Mississippi, including the Delta. The Delta has plenty of good newspapers in healthy shape, but there is plenty of room for more journalism and more reporting.
The Mississippi Free Press team understands the importance of journalism focused on Mississippi by Mississippians. The mission of storytelling is the same, even if the stories are published digitally instead of on broadsheets. It is the biggest team I’ve been a part of in my short career. With these resources available, I have a couple of goals in mind.
The first is to help tell more stories in the Mississippi Delta. It is a region struggling with poverty and population loss, but those traits are not defining features. We have a responsibility to acknowledge and analyze these systemic issues that continue to challenge the region. But there are also stories of triumph, persistence and success to be found.
My second goal is to encourage participation in our Voices section, where writers can write about Mississippi stories from different perspectives. We want to hear from people in the Delta, the Golden Triangle, Jackson, the coast and every area in between about the issues and stories in your corner of the state. I invite you to email voices@mississippifreepress.org if you have ideas to share. Journalism is a collaborative process and we want you to collaborate with us.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
