In the newsroom of The Monticello News in Georgia, there’s a buzz. Circulation is up, advertisers are excited, and the phones are ringing with tips.
But this isn’t a start-up digital operation, it’s an old-school newspaper.
At the helm is Evan Newton, 25, who a few years ago was an intern. Two weeks ago, he bought his hometown weekly and launched a mission to get fellow Gen Zers off social media and back into buying printed papers from the grocery store.
It’s a bold ambition. Local newspapers are, after all, on life support. In the first quarter of this century, some 3,500 of them have vanished.
A total of 213 counties across the country are already classed as ‘news deserts’ because they don’t have a single paper anymore. Many that still publish are so-called ‘ghost newspapers,’ mere hollowed-out shadows of their former selves.
Digital-only news sites have failed to fill the void as they tend to be based in affluent big cities, leaving vast swathes of the country without a reliable local news source.
However, like many a proto-news baron before him, Newton has taken a gamble that if he publishes good stories, the readers will come.
Evan Newton, 25, is the owner of the Monticello News in Georgia after buying it from former owner Kathy Mudd
He used his limited savings, and financing, to buy the 145-year-old title from Kathy Mudd, 70, who is retiring after the paper had been in her family for 50 years.
She gave him a ‘great deal’ in the hope that Newton can keep it going in the internet, and AI, age.
Now, the bespectacled Newton is owner, publisher, and editor, as well as the main reporter and copy editor. He has two part-time staff who do advertising and billing, an intern, and a slate of freelancers. In his first edition he had six bylines.
‘I wear a lot of hats,’ the busy newsman told the Daily Mail by phone while juggling several stories. ‘I go out and cover a lot of beats and write a lot of stories. I also go out and sell ads. I also design all the pages. But when it comes to small papers, you got to be able to wear a lot of hats.’
Monticello, with a population of 2,500, is the biggest city in Jasper County, and sits 60 miles south-east of Atlanta.
The newspaper office is on the main square where people can walk in, as they frequently do. There are copies of newspapers dating back to the early 1900s, and three newsroom cats. One of them, a 20-year-old feline, is named Typo due to her predilection for pouncing on journalists desks on deadline.
‘She walks across people’s keyboards and make mistakes and whatnot,’ said Newton. ‘Thankfully, none of them ever made the paper or anything like that. When I was an intern three years ago, she would actually stay on my desk all the time and consistently walk across the keyboard.’
‘Typo’ the cat sits on a copy of the paper in the Monticello News newsroom, where the feline has a habit of walking across keyboards
Newton graduated in mass communications from Georgia College & State University in 2023 and interned at the Monticello News before moving to The Covington News, where he was news editor. Then, Mudd told him she was retiring, and he scrambled to buy the paper.
‘I knew that I couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore,’ he said. ‘Because it was either she sells it to a conglomerate or the paper gets shut down. That’s why I decided to come back and buy my hometown paper. This is where I was born and raised, and I’ve been reading this paper since I was six years old.’
Circulation fluctuates between 1,800 and 2,000 and is on the up. An annual subscription for the 12-page paper is $40. But it’s still a struggle. The paper is sometimes profitable, sometimes not.
‘We’ve had 100 renewals or new subscriptions over the last two weeks, and so we’re we’re really doing well out of the gate, and I hope to keep this momentum going,’ said Newton.
‘In local markets like Monticello, there’s still a need for for local print journalism, and I think our advertisers know that and support that, so that’s why I think we’ve been able to at least keep the doors open, and I’m hoping to grow that as time goes on.
‘You’re not going to find what’s happening in Monticello, Georgia, in say like an Atlanta Journal-Constitution or any of the big TV stations in Georgia, but you’re going to find out what’s happening in the Monticello News every week.
‘That’s where you go and find fair, accurate, unbiased news, and I think people respect that, and that’s why we’re in business, and that’s why I think we’re going to continue to be in business for many, many years to come.’
The Monticello News is hoping to use social media to encourage younger readers back to buying physical newspapers
Newton’s key strategy is to reverse the trend of readers getting their news from social media by actually using social media itself to get them to buy the paper.
He has started a TikTok account on which he offers teasers for what is in the paper, and publishes reels that recap the previous week’s edition.
‘I know for sure we’ve gotten (paper) sales off of that,’ he said. ‘We can use social media and the internet to grow our business instead of being the antithesis of it.
‘I think that has paid off tremendously. I’ve got messages from people basically saying, you know, keep it up, this is this is great. There was actually one comment yesterday on a video that I did. The gentleman basically said, “I’ve not taken a newspaper since 2003. After seeing what you’re doing here, I’m buying. I’m in.”
‘I think people are buying the print edition based off what we’re doing online.’
But is it really possible to persuade digital natives who have never read physical newspapers to get their fingers inky?
‘I think so. I really do,’ said Newton. ‘For me, growing up, it was always a big deal getting the print paper. And so, really, my my goal, especially for the younger generation, people in my generation, is for them to really recognize that the print copy is still important. I think we’re on the right track of doing that.’
In doing so, Newton has already made significant changes to the News, including its first big redesign in 25 years.
That includes changing the color scheme from red to blue, and boosting the sports section with more focus on high school sports.
‘It has done really, really well. We have gotten lots of good compliments on that,’ he said. ‘High school sports around here is really important, and so we want to capture that the best way possible.’
The paper has to be sent for printing over 100 miles away in South Carolina.
‘This is another big problem in news at the moment. It’s not just local papers that are shutting down, but it’s also printing presses that are shutting down too,’ he said.
Monticello News owner Evan Newton and intern Elizabeth Bryans with copies of the paper
Unlike large modern digital publications, the nightmare scenario for the Monticello News is not a change in the Google search algorithm, nor the advent of AI overviews.
Instead, it would be an end to the law that requires publication of legal notices like court cases, real estate settlements and business filings in a local outlet.
As the only publication in Jasper County, which has a population of 18,000, the Monticello News fulfils that role, and with it comes revenue.
‘Those legal notices, I tell you, if that was ever changed or altered to where it would go digital, it would destroy a lot of local papers, not just ours,’ said Newton.
On the editorial side, Newton’s biggest splash so far was breaking the news that Monticello is getting a fourth chain restaurant to join Dairy Queen, Jack’s and Subway.
‘A Domino’s Pizza, is coming to town, and that has been a big story for us,’ he said.
Reaction to the resurgent paper has been overwhelmingly positive, with people coming up to Newton in the grocery store to tell him it looks great.
‘We have a ton of momentum right now, and I hope that we’ll be able to keep it as time goes on,’ he said. ‘For the first time in a really long time, and I’ve heard this from several longtime community members, people really feel like their local paper is back.’
Many former local newspaper readers are now getting their news from social media
He hopes it will encourage others around the country trying to keep their own local newspapers going in the face of the online tide.
Even many newspapers that continue have been bought up by conglomerates and are no longer locally owned.
‘You can tell when when ownership isn’t local, it shows in the product,’ said Newton. ‘You can tell it’s not locally invested, and I just think the soul is really taken out of the paper if it’s not locally owned.’
A locally owned paper can be the backbone of a community, providing less partisan news and stemming the spread of online misinformation, he said. It also lets everyone know about local events.
‘You can get some of that on social media – but it’s all in one place in your paper,’ he said.
Amanda Bright, a journalism academic at the University of Georgia, praised Newton’s move.
‘There is a trend, and I’m seeing it among my students as they go out into the industry, of them feeling called to do this work,’ she told the Georgia Recorder. ‘He’s definitely not alone in trying to do this, and I think that’s even more exciting.
‘All the positive philanthropic things that we have seen over the last few years – people trying to support and help grow local news – is fine and all. But it was never going to be sustainable unless the next generation said local news matters.’
As ‘news deserts’ spread, the United States has lost one-third of its newspapers, and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists, since 2005, according to a study by Northwestern University.
Their advertising revenue has collapsed, siphoned off by internet and social media giants like Facebook.
In 2023, an average of 2.5 newspapers closed each week, up from two a week the previous year. Most were weekly publications in areas with few or no other sources for news.
As for Newton, he is not setting out to become the next Rupert Murdoch.
‘I know I’ll never really live an extravagant lifestyle or anything, but I’m really rich in what I’m doing, and that’s that’s ultimately what matters the most,’ he said.
‘I think our future is very bright. I hope if there’s anything that someone can take it away from my story, it’s go out and do it. If you have a dream, just go out and do it. And as cliche as that sounds, and as cheesy as it sounds, that’s kind of my mentality with this.’
