This Town Ain’t Big Enough… Two Newspapers Battle For Readers In Tiny Town Of Republic

(From For the Record, September 10, 1997:) Incorrect identification: In a Sunday article on Page B1 about competing newspapers in Republic, Wash., a caption beneath a photograph of Panorama Examiner editor Brenda Starkey misidentified her.

The thousand people who live here have one blinking traffic light but, since July, two weekly newspapers.

Editor Brenda Starkey insists there’s room for her new Panorama Examiner in addition to the established Republic News-Miner.

The ashes of upstart newspapers across the country indicate only one paper can survive in a small market, much less turn a profit. It’s usually the newcomers that crash and burn.

But Starkey thinks she has an advantage: news.

“I thought there was a lot of news that wasn’t covered,” she said in a losing struggle not to criticize her competitor, News-Miner Editor Dick Graham. “A lot of the juiciest stuff in the other paper is printed in the (paid) notices.”

Starkey - a 48-year-old former Navy publications specialist with a journalism degree - goes to meetings and events, asks questions and writes most of her own stories. She’s tackled issues such as welfare reform and the state Growth Management Act in addition to routine police and court news.

Sheriff Pete Warner said he likes both newspapers, but appreciates the Examiner’s emphasis on law-enforcement coverage.

“I think it’s informative,” Warner said of the Examiner. “I know there are some people that think it has more of the news that’s going on in the community.”

Even Graham acknowledges that his momand-pop newspaper has long been dubbed the “Newsless Miner.” Still, the 60-year-old editor has dispatched a couple of challengers during his 28 years of running the NewsMiner.

He said he isn’t worried about the Examiner.

“Free country,” he said as he slapped labels on the 2,200 newspapers he sells each week.

Graham said he’s built up his circulation over the years from 500, which is about 100 more than the Examiner has now. He said he hasn’t changed anything because of the Examiner, and doesn’t plan to.

As for covering events such as county commissioner meetings, Graham said, “I run everything they put in their minutes, and I do that for free. … When you run a small business, you can’t be sitting up there (in the courthouse) all day.”

Besides, Graham said, he covers the things his “50-cent stockholders” want.

“I’m an old-fashioned newspaper man,” he said, “and I cover events that affect people, like 50th wedding anniversaries…”

Starkey said some of her readers have told her the same thing: “The biggest comment I’ve had is, ‘We have to take the other paper to see who’s been visiting whom. You just print news.”’ The wisdom of Graham’s strategy was demonstrated at the Republic Chevron convenience store, where Republic High School senior Jacquelin Anderson passed over the Examiner and bought a News-Miner.

“My friends are in it,” she explained.

The Examiner is “pretty good,” Anderson said, “but it’s not as good as this one because it doesn’t have a lot of people in it. This has our school in it.”

Inside the store, clerk Kay Bretz said she thinks many customers are just starting to realize that the Examiner exists. While the News-Miner sells out in two days, there are usually some Examiners left over at the end of the week.

“People will pick that up if the Miner is gone,” Bretz said.

She said Examiner headlines more often seem to grab customers’ attention, just not their wallets.

Downtown, Anderson’s Grocery clerk Judy Ringstad said the Examiner seems to be holding its own with the News-Miner.

“People get one of these and they get one of those,” she said, pointing to stacks of the two papers at her checkout counter.

Starkey acknowledged she’s in no position to quit her other job as a cook and waitress at Back Alley Pizza, but she expects a profit by January.

When she’s not at the restaurant or covering a meeting, Starkey is likely to be shoehorned in a minimall office that would measure 6 feet by 13 feet if all the corners were square.

“I usually end up sitting here all night Monday putting the newspaper together, which wasn’t in the plan at all,” Starkey said.

She said she’ll have to get better-organized now that her 17-year-old daughter, Katy, has gone back to school and can’t continue driving to Spokane to get the paper printed.

The Examiner so far can afford only eight black-and-white pages, but Starkey said it’s at least not losing much money.

“The paper could go on indefinitely as a hobby, but that wasn’t my idea,” she said. “I want to make some money, not a fortune, but some living expenses.”

First, though, some capital expenditures may get in the way. Those might include a new laser printer big enough to do a whole page at once and a computer that will talk to the printer.

Starkey now uses two obsolete Macintosh computers. Only one of them can make attractive advertisements, and it works only with an old dot-matrix printer that makes everything look jagged.

Graham can empathize. He began using a desktop computer seven years ago - when the Starkeys moved to Republic.

“I did it the way men do it,” Graham said, nodding to his wife, Jeanne. “She went and learned it, and I just picked it up from her.”

Starkey’s computers were provided by her business partner, Ferry County Assessor John Sweetman.

“I swear, the man’s closets must be unreal,” Starkey said.

Sweetman also used scavenged equipment to set up Republic Community Radio, an unlicensed station operated by volunteers. Starkey’s husband, Ron, a former broadcast journalist in the Marine Corps and later the Navy, is one of the volunteers.

Brenda Starkey sold some ads for her husband’s radio show and wrote some news stories - “not a lot, but enough to remind me that I really liked doing that.”

One day, she said, Sweetman told her, “Well, if you really want to start a newspaper, I’ve got the computers. Why don’t you write a business proposal?”

Sweetman thinks lack of news coverage in the county has fostered misunderstandings and political manipulation. The Democratic assessor is often at odds with some of the county’s more conservative residents, and has quarreled publicly with the two Republican county commissioners.

Starkey said she didn’t include Sweetman in the Examiner masthead - its published list of managers - for the first couple of editions “so people wouldn’t immediately judge it.” She also hesitated before writing an editorial taking Sweetman’s side in a dispute with commissioners, “but there are some things that are just too important to ignore.”

She said Sweetman exercises no control over the newspaper’s opinion section or its news content.

“The main thrust of the paper is real objective reporting,” Sweetman said. “We intend to be as professional as we can.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo