Small-town Iowa newspapers on the chopping block
By Marcus McIntosh
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MADRID, Iowa (KCCI) — More than a dozen small-town newspapers across Iowa may be nearing permanent closure as Mid-America Publishing moves to discontinue 18 community papers, raising concerns about the future of local journalism and the preservation of community history.
In Madrid, where a weekly newspaper has been printed since the late 1800s, the possible end of the Madrid Register has become a major local concern.
The paper’s closure would mark the end of a long tradition in a town where residents have relied on it for generations.
Mary Swalla Holmes, a board member with the Madrid Historical Museum, said losing the newspaper would mean losing an important record of community life.
“I think people’s lives, history, the people that came here to work in the coal mines, work on the railroads — it’s all here,” Holmes said.
Holmes said the loss would also be felt by future generations trying to understand the town’s past.
“I think about 50 years from now when somebody else is trying to look up some event or some history of a person, and there’ll be a big gap,” she said.
The possible closure has also hit the Wilcox family hard.
Jennifer Williams said her grandfather bought the newspaper in the 1950s, her father took over in the 1980s, and she and her husband, Ken, ran it beginning in 2008 before selling it to Mid-America Publishing in 2020.
“We just didn’t feel we could offer the best for the paper, so we looked for a company that had the things they could offer that we couldn’t,” Ken Williams said.
Williams said the family never expected the company to stop publishing the paper.
“We had a strong readership. We have a close-knit community. We had support within the community for the paper,” he said.
Even so, residents said they are holding on to hope that a buyer could step in and keep the Madrid Register in print.
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