Focus on change

Change. It’s one of the few constants in life, and yet every time we go through it people often say “I wish things didn’t have to change.” Like it or not, whether it’s people, things or circumstances, life changes every single day.
I shared in this space back in May that the News-Register is taking part in a national focus group project on how newspapers are changing and how we can stay in front of a troubling change-driven trend. Across the country, and here in Nebraska, “news deserts” are growing, unfortunately. More and more weekly newspapers are closing their doors, leaving communities without a reliable source of local news.
Teri Finneman with the University of Kansas is passionate about working on the crisis that is facing newspapers today. She led a focus group session via Zoom with Hamilton County residents in July and also reviewed input gathered with help from Broken Bow publisher Donna Hueftle-Bullock during a session here in Aurora. The ANR staff did not attend either of those sessions hoping to gather honest, candid input. Finneman also interviewed several staff members separately, knowing that the entire staff, not just the owners, will be involved in making decisions and implementing possible in-house business changes going forward.
The good news is there is a lot of good news to share. That’s true both about the community we cover and the feedback we received regarding the community’s support of local news. Turns out you, as a community, want news and information, including features about your neighbors, coverage of the school board and city council, as well as highlights from school and sporting events. You also told us that you want it more often than once a week, and not only in print.
That’s just one small snippet of feedback we learned which is prompting some pretty significant changes here at your hometown weekly newspaper, all of which we will explain and introduce in the next few weeks.
This locally owned newspaper has been a part of this community for more than 150 years, tracing its history back to 1873.  The current owners and staff take seriously the task of considering changes to make sure this publication remains a reliable source of local news for the next generation.
Stay tuned.
-- Kurt Johnson