K-C Newspaper Publishes Blank Front Page Plea

Editors of Kansas City’s Northeast News opted for an unusual choice for the front page of Wednesday’s issue: They left it blank.

It was not a printing error, they assured confused readers who called and emailed their newsroom. Like many other local newsrooms, the News has lost advertising revenue at an unprecedented rate during the coronavirus pandemic. So the six-member staff kept its front page empty, a warning sign to the community about what might come if it ceased publication, reports The Washington Post.

“That’s the message we wanted to send: What happens if we’re gone?” publisher and co-owner Michael Bushnell said. “If we print a blank front page with no news, people are going to see what it’s like if we’re gone.”

Michael Bushnell

The 89-year-old weekly newspaper with a circulation of 8,500 was already struggling financially before the pandemic as advertising dollars waned. The newspaper is free, and the website does not have a paywall. When the economy spiraled in 2020, two laundromats, a charter school and a grocery store pulled their ads, a monthly loss of about $2,700, Bushnell said.

While the Kansas City Star and other larger local outlets cover the city’s most significant news, the News is alone in exclusively covering Northeast Kansas City, focusing on the neighborhood’s stories, such as an ironworking union rebuilding a cemetery’s historic gate or a cleanup effort under a bridge where homeless people camp.

In 15 years, one-fourth of newspapers nationwide were forced to close, according to a 2020 study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At least 1,800 communities that had a local news outlet in 2004 were without one at the beginning of 2020, the UNC team found.

“This repeated almost weekly across the country, another community newspaper closes up and a community loses its voice,” Bushnell said.

To survive, the newspaper would need to find a regular stream of revenue within two months, he said.