Local journalists deserve credit for their work

A lot of us are preparing to spend the Labor Day holiday with friends and family. Maybe you’re going to grill, go to the lake or enjoy one of the many fall festivals that are about to kick off.

The weather late this week has certainly got all of us thinking about cooler temperatures and being able to enjoy a variety of activities that were less fun in the sticky hot days of July and August.

Part of your plans for the weekend might include swinging by the grocery store to pick up something from the deli or the bakery for some snacks.

When you’ve gone to the retailer and picked out the goods they provide, I wonder how many folks would turn brazenly around and walk out without paying. And if they did that and were stopped, then accuse the retailer of being greedy for asking for payment for their work?

One of the most frustrating parts of our job can be when people screenshot our photos and articles to give away, accuse us of being greedy for using a paywall system to share our content, or when another media outlet has blatantly plagiarized our work by copy and pasting all or portions of a story from our website to their website and presenting it as original content.

That being said — we do make items free access, including those of a public safety nature, requests from law enforcement for help, emergency weather announcements, election advances and certain other content.

The honest truth is that we would all like to make all of our content free access. But newspapers tried that business model when they first started moving their content online and it wasn’t successful. That was before my time and it’s not a debate I’m trying to start here.

Finding the balance between the ad and subscriber revenues of our print products and digital products is something everyone is still struggling with.

But when it comes down to it, we need both advertiser and subscriber revenue to pay the salaries of our employees. They’re parents with children in school, grandparents helping house and raise adult children and grandchildren, and daughters supporting their parents, among others, just like the employees of any other small business in our community.

We know we’re far from perfect, just like the other businesses in our community, but our employees work hard and they deserve, just like everyone else, to be paid for their work.

We see the value of their work every day, both in the majority of readers and subscribers who pick up our print products or click on our digital products, and even from those who get mad because their free access is limited.

So the next time you click on an article about an arrest being made, a feature story that looks interesting or a meeting notice you’re curious about, if you get a pop window that says full access to the Daily American Republic website is just $7.50 a month, please remember someone with a family and electric bills to pay made that content possible.

Thank you to everyone who reads and supports small newspapers across our region.

Donna Farley is the editor of the Daily American Republic. She can be reached at dfarley.dar@gmail.com.

_________

PS ... Well, I actually thought I was done with this column around 500 words, but then I read some more Facebook responses to an article and got fired up again. This will probably kick off another round of comments, probably what we’ve heard before, along the lines of “you don’t deserve to get paid for what you do,” and more vitriol.

It makes me sad to see how beat up my staff gets day after day for doing a job that helps protect our freedoms, shines a light on problems that need to be corrected and highlights the triumphs of our community.

I know that I missed my brother’s wedding rehearsal to attend a city council meeting at the Second Street complex on the location of a future city hall. It was at a time when it seemed like the decision could easily have been made to move out of downtown, something the public had been very vocally against. I felt like it was important for the DAR to be there and provide a record of what was happening. I missed a good chunk of a Mother’s Day celebration with my family to sit in my car in the parking lot talking to a source who ultimately helped prove the corruption of a former city manager. I spent countless weekends working on projects, like combing through boxes of government documents to find information we could document regarding mismanagement by an emergency management director who was ultimately fired.

I know these stories best because they are mine, but I also know all of my co-workers can share the same. Like the staff writer who came in on her weekend off to spend hours talking with a grieving family for an article about their loved one, the calls out to fires, tornadoes and train derailments, and the many trips crisscrossing our region to follow high school sports teams.

We’re far from perfect. I know that. But no one here is in it for the money, greedy or putting money over lives.

The people I’ve worked with at the Daily American Republic are some of the hardest working, most generous, and most dedicated people I could ever imagine meeting. I’m proud every day of the work they do, and there are moments — as most of us have at some point when reading the sludge put out on social media — when I wish I could share these stories with each individual who spends their days trying to tear down the work of others.

Fortunately, I work at a newspaper and have other outlets.

Thank you, folks, for letting me share this with you.