Of the 200 or so newspapers in Kansas today, only a handful can boast of being owned and operated by the same family over multiple generations, Doug Anstaett said Wednesday.
The Iola Register is one such publication.
Anstaett, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, spoke during an Allen Community College ceremony Wednesday honoring the Register’s 150th anniversary.
“What’s different about these family-owned local newspapers?” Anstaett asked. “Community.”
Being a community paper doesn’t equate to simply being “rah-rah” cheerleaders, he continued, “but it does mean that the community’s overall success is paramount.”
How significant has the Register been in the world of community journalism?
Anstaett noted that Charles F. Scott, great-grandfather of current publisher Susan Lynn, her great-uncle Angelo Scott, and her father, Emerson Lynn Jr., — her predecessors in running the paper — are all in the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame.
“Community newspapers help residents uncover the facts. In today’s world, unfortunately, there often is disagreement on what the facts might be. It’s the role of the newspaper, and its journalists, to ferret out the truth so that everyone — OK, almost everyone — can agree on the same set of facts.
“Will the printed newspaper survive for another five, 10 or 50 years?” he continued. “No one knows for sure. But what we do know is this: our nation will still depend on journalists to help citizens distinguish between facts and opinion and fake news.”
Anstaett pointed to comments from former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who noted sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant, that the more facts exposed to the populace, the better equipped people are to making decisions.
“The Iola Register has, for 15 decades now, been providing that kind of coverage to its citizens.”
ALLEN PRESIDENT John Masterson noted his first job as a youth in Iola was as a paperboy, delivering the Register each day to the front doorstep of hundreds of homes, and it started one idle day when he told his mother he was bored.
Masterson said his mother, rather bluntly, suggested he get a job. He had one that day after visiting the newspaper office.
“She could have just taken me to the park,” he quipped.
Masterson, too, said he relies on the Register to print good news when it’s warranted, “but if I mess up, I expect to see that on the front page, too.”
