Media Matters: Telling our story, sustaining our paper

As we enter our third year and approach end-of-the-year fundraising, I thought it would be good to report on the state of the Oxford Free Press and the ongoing local news crisis.  But first, some history …

In 2000, U.S advertisers spent roughly $100 billion on advertising, with 31% going to newspapers. Back then, early internet ad spending accounted for just 3.8% of the national ad pie. By 2015, newspaper ads accounted for only 11% of U.S. advertising, while digital ads captured 28% of all ad sales.

It only got worse for newspapers. Today roughly $500-600 billion is spent on U.S. advertising, with about 2% going to newspapers and well over 70% going to Internet ads.

As it is sometimes called, “the Craigslist effect” – free and low-cost digital ads – eroded the classified advertising model used by all for-profit newspapers. Before the internet, classified ad sales accounted for about 40% of most daily newspapers’ revenue, with subscriptions and regular ads accounting for the rest. Bill Kovach, former editor of Cox Media’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, once told me that the paper’s profit margin was nearly 30% during the late 1980s.

So the rise of the internet pretty much explains the loss of  over 3,600 papers and more than 40,000 reporters over the last two decades. A Local Journalist Index ranking shows that 25 years ago, for every 100,000 U.S. residents, there were 40 reporters; today that figure is down to eight per 100,000. Northwestern University’s State of Local News initiative notes that “almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished, leaving 50 million Americans with limited or no access to a reliable source of local news.”

More than 300 nonprofits are working to address the collapse of the for-profit business model, recognizing that democracy works best when citizens are informed. When Cox Media killed the one page that was left of the old Oxford Press in January 2024, Jim Rubenstein, John Skillings and I, over lunch at Gaslight Brewhouse, decided we did not want to become another news desert. So, we hired Sean Scott, a former editor of The Miami Student, right after his graduation, and we built a local digital and weekly non-partisan newspaper.

The Oxford Free Press is free, paid for by donations, advertising and grants. To do what we do, we need roughly $200,000 in annual revenue. Since our start in July 2024, we have raised $290,000 from donors and roughly $90,000 in ad sales. We have also received $18,000 in grants from the Greater Oxford Community Foundation and $25,000 from Miami’s Menard Family Center for Democracy, both which help us support our Miami student interns and our Friday printing costs (1900 papers cost about $1000 per week). In addition, the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) gave us $22,000 in donor matching funds last year. The distribution of our revenue by percentage is roughly 20% from ads, 20% from grants and the remainder from donations.

After Sean laid the foundation our first year, we did a national search for a new editor. Fifteen candidates applied and we chose Aidan Cornue, a 2025 graduate from West Virginia University. In the smooth transition, Sean told Aidan that he’ll probably never find a job in journalism where he has so much community support.

In addition to our editor, we have added two full-time reporters: Katelyn Aluise, also a West Virginia University grad and a former reporter for the Huntington (WV) newspaper, and, most recently, a sports editor, Miami grad Jeff Middleton. We also have exceptional part-time staffers: Ginny Reynolds, our business manager, and Alison Perelman, our digital media manager (another Miami journalism grad). Our award-winning part-time page and ad designer, Macey Chamberlin (also a Miami grad) has been with us from the start.

Then there’s our small army of volunteers, led by Bobbe Burke, who deliver our papers each Friday.

We think we have spent our donors’ money responsibly and wisely. On the local level, Kiwanis named us their 2024 “Organization of the Year.” At the state level, we won nine awards at the Ohio News Media Association’s competition, which named us “Newspaper of the Year.” We also won three awards last year in Ohio’s Society of Professional Journalists competition. At the national level, INN honored us in 2025 and 2026 as one of three finalists for “Startup of the Year,” and LION Publishers this year named us one of three finalists for “Business of the Year.” In addition, the Columbia Journalism Review recognized us early this year in a story titled “Where Print is King.”

Our biggest costs are our three full-time employees, our part-time staff, Friday print costs and office rental (aided by Miami’s ASPIRE program). Our biggest challenge is sustainability. We work with several national organizations to address the local news crisis. In addition to INN, these include LION Publishers, Tiny News Collective, Rebuild Local News, Report for America (which chose us for a pilot program dedicated to sustainability) and INN’s Rural News Network (which is giving us $17,000 as one of six papers in a pilot program to improve rural news coverage).

To end, I’ll cite my very first column from July 12, 2024: “Local journalism has long been at the center of democracy, telling our stories and documenting a community’s life. To do this in Oxford and to sustain the Free Press over time, we need your help and support.” 

The OFP is a community paper – a joint project that we all have a stake in. Please take the time to look over our donation information and help keep this community project working. We cannot do this without you. Thank you!  

Richard Campbell is a professor emeritus and founding chair of the Department of Media, Journalism & Film at Miami University. He is also a co-founder of the Oxford Free Press.