Did the Gardner, Kansas, City Council retaliate against the town’s small newspaper?

The Gardner News has been the paper of record for the city of Gardner, Kansas, for more than 30 years. But in December, the Gardner City Council voted to strip the newspaper of that title.

“Legals” — public notices about policy topics such as zoning changes, public hearings and requests for bids on government contracts — have been published in the print edition of the town’s newspaper of record for decades to ensure government transparency and accountability. This decision ignores those values of good government. Instead, the council has chosen to publish its legals in The Legal Record, which doesn’t appear on newsstands in Gardner at all, contains no news local about Gardner, and costs more for subscribers than The News.

The News uncovers how city government spends money and responds to requests for public records under the Kansas Open Records Act. The paper’s editor and publisher Rhonda Humble recently filed a protest on an annexation decision, asserting that a legal notice filed by the council didn’t conform to state law. Many Gardner residents believe the council changed where it pays for legals to be published in retaliation for the hometown newspaper’s commitment to speaking truth to power.

Newspapers have disappeared in droves, with 2,100 closing in the past 15 years. Nearly half of jobs in established newsrooms have disappeared since 2000. A recent study from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy analyzed 100 communities of 20,000 to 300,000 residents, and identified 20 communities where local news outlets contained no news stories at all about local events. Big media conglomerates often don’t prioritize small town activities. As alternate weeklies and small town newspapers die, the checks and balances afforded by public scrutiny of government activities disappears.

But through all the struggles, The Gardner News has managed to survive.

Council members fail to understand what a local newspaper represents. According to U.S. Census data compiled by the University of Kansas’ Institute for Policy & Social Research, Gardner’s population has grown from 3,200 in 1990 to more than 21,000 today. The newspaper has been part of Gardner’s heritage and traditions since before current council members were born.

Local newspapers help neighbors get to know each other and share a true sense of community fellowship. In The Gardner News, residents read about Jeff Buckingham becoming an Olympian in the pole vault and Malcolm Meyer leading the high school band to another 1 rating at the state level. Gardner Lake residents, like my own grandmother, looked for news of family and friends in Oma Girsch’s column every week, clipping those tidbits for their scrapbooks.

The council claims to have made the decision on financial grounds, but that shaky argument cuts no ice. Printing the legals in The Gardner News cost the city less than $10,000 annually. It’s a large percentage of the newspaper’s revenue, but a minuscule amount to the city — a tiny portion of Gardner’s $54 million budget.

Even the owner of The Legal Record has decried the decision. John Lewis intends for his publication to serve towns that do not have their own newspapers. When Gardner tried to pull this same trick in 2017, he wrote a letter saying he did not want the business. He does not want to harm a family-owned local newspaper.

“I’ll go down fighting,” said Humble.

Whether motivated by a desire for secrecy or not, the lack of appreciation for local journalism creates a troubling scenario. The Kansas City area already has lost many local voices, including The Spring Hill New Era and The Baldwin City Signal. Across the country, one-fifth of all newspapers have been shuttered since 2004, 17,000 of them weeklies. Newspapers’ revenue generated by classified advertising disappeared with the advent of internet sources such as Craigslist.

Through sheer grit and determination, the Humble family has kept The Gardner News alive. But now the council has turned against its hometown news source. The Gardner City Council ought to celebrate this paper as an invaluable source for community news, instead of dealing a harsh hit to a local family business in tough times.

Kiesa Kay is an author and journalist who contributes to The Gardner News.

This story was originally published January 14, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Did the Gardner, Kansas, City Council retaliate against the town’s small newspaper?."