Small Newspapers

Ida Wells would tell you if she could that back in 1884, sometimes small newspaper editors ran into major bumps in the road just for writing the truth, as she experienced and visualized it during the time the “Ku Klux Klan” thought they were the total authority.

In fact, as the story goes, if she had been sitting in her small office when a mob destroyed her printing press – she’d probably have joined the lynched club and been unable to practice freedom of speech. But the good thing is, she lived to tell this story and was an advocate for the people through her speeches and editorials.

Unlike Ida, many small publishers have the freedom to bring news to the forefront in the form of a small newspaper – some of these papers are published daily, weekly, monthly and/or quarterly.

So this brings us to the question of why are small newspapers becoming the in thing again; (1) Is the news unembellished and more or less the bare truth, (2) Do small newspapers attract more people than the big awkward cumberson ones that are packed with everything from soup to nuts, (3) Or is it just a re-invention of the small papers from the 1800’s and early 1900’s?.

The birth of the United Kingdom newspaper can be traced back into the 1600’s when Nathaniel Butter tried his hand at a periodical specifically concerning politics, economy and discussing in length what the government was or wasn’t doing.

The small newspaper creates its own specific group of readers, who for one reason or the other prefer small to the gigantic ones we’ve become accustomed to… Small papers actually allow editors and publishers to be more creative without the massive restrictions that the large local papers fight daily.

Considering there’s over 15,000 small online newspapers in US one would think the market is totally saturated, but many entrepreneurs seem to enjoy publishing a small online paper.

You can be more than a little naughty in some of these papers or try your hand at bashing the next door neighbor without too much recourse – so in the 21st century, small papers have come into their own.