A Case Study in Saving the Local Paper: The Kingsbury Journal
On April 1, 2020, residents of Kingsbury County, South Dakota, opened their local newspapers to a shocking headline: "This is it." The De Smet News and The Lake Preston Times, which had collectively served the region for 140 years, were shutting down. The owner, 75-year-old Dale Blacken, had spent a decade trying to sell the business. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, advertising revenues plummeted, turning a historically marginal business into an unsustainable drain losing thousands of dollars per week.
Faced with the sudden threat of becoming a "news desert," local economic development boards and passionate residents refused to let their community’s heartbeat quiet down. Just seven weeks later, they launched the Kingsbury Journal—a single, unified, community-owned publication.
This case study details the strategies, operational changes, and software architectures used to revive and secure local journalism in Kingsbury County.
Part 1: The Strategy Used to Save the Papers
The revival of Kingsbury County's local news was not an accident of philanthropy; it was a structured corporate rescue executed through four distinct strategic pillars:
1. Collaborative Acquisition
Recognizing that no individual private buyer was stepping forward, the economic development corporations from both towns—the De Smet Development Corporation and the Lake Preston Development Corporation—joined forces. They stepped in to purchase the existing newspaper facilities, business assets, and historical archives from Blacken, securing the intellectual property for the public good.
2. A Unified Consolidation Strategy
Publishing two separate weekly broadsheet newspapers was no longer financially viable. Development boards surveyed the community and found an overwhelming consensus: residents wanted their news back at any cost. Leaders decided to merge the two historical papers into one unified, tabloid-style publication covering the entire county.
3. The Volunteer-Driven Model
To eliminate the crippling payroll costs that frequently sink small-town print operations, a team of 20 to 30 local volunteers stepped up. This group—composed of retired teachers, civic leaders, and local residents—completely took over reporting, copy editing, photography, ad sales, and physical distribution.
4. Creative Operations, Coaching, and Financing
Organizers partnered with the media consulting firm Creative Circle Media Solutions to redesign the paper for fast, digitized production and to train non-journalist volunteers in basic journalism, editing, and layout principles.
Financially, the publication utilized $20,000 in backup loans from both development corporations to buffer initial operating losses. However, because community members immediately rallied to support the paper through ads and subscriptions, the Kingsbury Journal was cash-flow positive from day one, and the seed money was quickly returned.
Part 2: Software Tools Streamlining Production
Prior to the merger, producing the two independent small-town papers required roughly 250 hours of intensive labor each week. By partnering with Creative Circle Media Solutions, the new operation reduced production times by approximately 30% through targeted digital automation.
[Traditional Process: 250 Hours]
Integrated Web CMS and E-Edition Platforms: Creative Circle launched advanced websites built specifically to handle multi-format digital distribution. This allowed a volunteer to enter a single article once and simultaneously populate the live online feed and layout archives, completely bypassing duplicate data entry.
Unified Database Infrastructure: Instead of using fragmented spreadsheets or manual ledgers, the paper implemented a centralized software system. This platform simultaneously acts as the circulation database, subscriber payment gateway, and online classified ad intake engine.
Adobe InDesign Cloud Assets: Non-journalist volunteers were specifically trained on Adobe InDesign and localized templating tools. Custom cloud templates allowed layout designers to pull pre-formatted text elements into the tabloid blueprint rapidly, enabling remote, decentralized layout collaboration across both towns.
Part 3: Subscription & Advertising Pricing Structure
The newspaper designed its financial strategy to prioritize sustainable cash flow while remaining highly accessible to the local tax base.
Circulation and Cover Pricing
Single physical copies are priced at $1.50. Annual subscriptions are tiered geographically to offset postal logistics, running $65 per year for local county residents (covering Kingsbury, Miner, Clark, Hamlin, and select Beadle County lines) and scaling to $75 per year for subscribers living anywhere else.
Self-Serve Advertising Architecture
To reduce the need for specialized advertising sales employees, the paper's digital portal integrates a completely self-serve automated system for classified ads. Community members submit, review, and pay for their ads directly through the website, which automatically populates both the print and web queues.
Hard Deadlines to Safeguard Volunteer Labor
Because the paper relies entirely on a rotating volunteer staff, operational boundaries are strictly enforced to prevent burnout. Ad submissions are strictly cut off by 5:00 PM on Friday, and classified entries close by Monday at 5:00 PM. This rigid schedule allows the volunteer layout team to finalize pages ahead of the Wednesday publication date without stepping onto an endless operational treadmill.
The Takeaway: The Kingsbury Journal demonstrates that the death of a local newspaper is not inevitable. By transitioning from private, print-first enterprises to a community-owned, digital-first nonprofit structure, small towns can successfully preserve their history, protect their democracy, and keep the heartbeat of their community alive.
More Details on necessary actions.
When a consulting firm like Creative Circle Media Solutions steps in to design a "volunteer fire department" style newsroom, they cannot train citizens using standard, multi-year journalism school methods. Instead, they strip journalism down to its bare-bones infrastructure.
The goal is to convert localized enthusiasm into a precise, systematic, and legally insulated operational workflow. The concrete training modules and strict operational guardrails used to make non-professional citizens functional by deadline are outlined below.
Part 1: The Citizen Reporter Training Curriculum
The consulting firm structures the transformation of citizens into reporters around a fast-tracked, 4-module boot camp focusing on objective, formulaic writing.
Module 1: Deconstructing the "Inverted Pyramid"
Citizens naturally write chronologically (e.g., "The meeting called to order at 7:00 PM, followed by the pledge..."). The firm strictly breaks this habit.
The "Lead" Formula: Volunteers are trained to write a single-sentence opening under 30 words that captures the most impactful outcome of an event.
The So-What Test: Trainees are taught to ask: "How does this affect the reader's tax bill, safety, or children?"
The Inverted Pyramid Structural Blueprint: Content is stacked in descending order of importance, allowing a layout editor to cut the bottom paragraphs of an article at the page margin without losing crucial facts.
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ The Lead (Who/What/Why) │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Crucial Context & Scale │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Supporting Quotes & Details │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Background Info (Cut safely if short on space) │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Module 2: The Direct-Quote Matrix
Civic volunteers often lean toward editorializing or inserting their personal viewpoints. Training enforces an absolute separation of fact and commentary.
The "Said" Commandment: Writers are prohibited from using interpretive verbs like claimed, pointed out, admitted, or noted. They must use the objective word "said" exclusively.
The Fact/Quote Sandwich: Every paragraph containing an assertive statement from a public figure must follow a strict framework: [Contextual Fact] ➔ [Direct Quote matching the fact] ➔ [Attribution].
Module 3: Structural Beat Formats
To rapidly deploy non-journalists to municipal meetings (e.g., school boards, city councils), they are given formulaic templates. Rather than interpreting a three-hour meeting, a volunteer must simply fill in a pre-structured outline:
The Fiscal Anchor: What funds were allocated? Specify the exact dollar figure, the tax source, and the vote margin (e.g., Passed 5–2).
The Operational Shift: What ordinance or policy changed?
The Next Milestone: When is the public comment period or next phase?
Module 4: Basic Visual & Photojournalism Literacy
Because volunteers double as photographers, they receive quick coaching on capturing high-utility images:
Banning the "Grip and Grin": Avoid staged, static photos of people standing against walls or shaking hands while holding giant checks.
Action & Engagement: Capture subjects actively talking, pointing at a map, or interacting with a workspace.
Tight Cropping & Captions: Shoot close enough to distinguish faces clearly, and record names from left to right immediately on-site.
Part 2: The Copy Editor & Layout Workflow
Copy editing and page design present a critical operational bottleneck. To compress the traditional multi-day process into a few hours, consultants automate styling and restrict creative choices.
Automated Stylesheet Integration
Volunteers are not permitted to manually select fonts, sizing, or paragraph tracking. Operating within an asset environment like Adobe InDesign Cloud, the design framework is strictly bounded:
| Element | Preserved Blueprint Rule |
| Main Headlines | Must fit precisely into 36pt, Bold, Multi-column layout grids. |
| Subheads | Fixed at 14pt Italic to break up text every three paragraphs. |
| Body Text | Locked into a strict 10pt serif font with automated paragraph indenting. |
The "No-Hacks" Visual Philosophy
Trainees are barred from using cheap design crutches—such as decorative borders, random clip art, or artificial background tints—to patch empty layout gaps. Empty spaces must be corrected exclusively by adjusting story lengths, adding an objective data sidebar, or expanding a primary photograph.
Part 3: The Editorial Guardrails (The Protection Policy)
To protect a community-owned paper from fatal libel lawsuits and internal social division, consulting firms establish a strict, non-negotiable playbook.
The Four Absolute Editorial Laws
The Double-Source Rule for Accusations: If a citizen levels an accusation of misconduct against a public official or local business during a public forum, the comment cannot be published unless it is directly supported by official public records or confirmed independently by a second, non-affiliated source.
The "Right of Reply" Protocol: Negative reporting concerning any individual or business must explicitly state their perspective or document that they were provided a clear, 24-hour response window before the publication deadline.
The Absolute Separation of Opinion: Letters to the editor and opinion columns must be housed within a dedicated, visually distinct section clearly marked as "Opinion." No volunteer writer can merge editorial commentary into a straight news report.
The Verified Source Mandate: Anonymous quotes are strictly prohibited. If a source refuses to provide their name, their statement cannot be used in the paper. Transparency keeps the volunteer network trusted and legally insulated.
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