The continuing decline of rural newspapers is creating conflicts with state regulations.
The last edition of the Rockwell Pioneer-Enterprise was September 8. The Iowa Newspaper Association website listed its circulation at 174 — and a mailing address in Buffalo Center. The paper’s website is combined with the Sheffield Press, about 6 miles south but just across the Franklin County line.
Information for the Sheffield Press is not available on the INA website. The Press‘ website hasn’t posted anything in the news section since mid-June and in the sports section a full year ago. The most recent obituary as of Sunday is Aug. 31. Its sporadically updated Facebook page is headlining the retirement of Jack Zimmerman, who started at that paper in 1957 at the age of 17.
The closure of the Pioneer-Enterprise leaves only two papers in Cerro Gordo County: the Globe Gazette and the Clear Lake Mirror Reporter. KGLO-AM has a story about the county supervisors officially voting to move forward with publishing notices in two papers. According to Iowa Code Chapter 349, counties with a population above 15,000 should be doing it in three.
Wait a second — this affects Tama County too! Tama County has only had two newspapers since May 2020, and with a population just above 15,000 it’s supposed to have three official newspapers as well. The third option could be the Sun-Courier as it is the merged Gladbrook-Reinbeck paper, and technically its office is in Tama, but it’s not officially a Tama County newspaper. Iowa Code is very detailed about having more papers than needed, and even three-newspaper communities, but doesn’t cover how to handle the opposite situation. The concept of a newspaper nominally being of one community but having no local presence is something that didn’t come up until the 21st century.
In Tama County government, the auditor is required to “[p]ublish all proposed ordinances and all amendments in the manner required by the Code of Iowa, as amended, and by the ordinances of Tama County in at least one newspaper having general circulation within the county.” The board of supervisors approved the North Tama Telegraph and Tama-Toledo News-Chronicle as official county publications on May 26, 2020, after the old nameplates went defunct. (The county only keeps one year of minutes active online, and changed its Web address to tamacounty.iowa.gov earlier this year, but I got it through the Wayback Machine.)