Editor Fletcher Farrar and Publisher Michelle Ownbey discuss the first 50 years of Springfield's alternative weekly, Illinois Times, and how it is evolving to increase its coverage of local news.
Transcribed by AI with human editing for accuracy and clarity.
Randy Eccles:
This is Community Voices on NPR Illinois. I'm co-host Randy Eccles. We've got an interesting segment today. It's about the 50th anniversary, not of NPR Illinois, but of Illinois Times. And it's great to have our colleagues at the Illinois Times here with us today, Fletcher Farrar and Michelle Ownbey. Thank you for joining us on Community Voices.
Fletcher Farrar:
Nice to be here. Thank you.
Michelle Ownbey:
Thanks, Randy.
Randy Eccles:
Let's start at the beginning. A 50th anniversary is a tremendous accomplishment for any entity, let alone an alt weekly. Tell us a about how Illinois Times got going. My understanding, Bud, is you joined it a couple of years after it started.
Fletcher Farrar:
Right. The first edition was on Sept. 18, 1975. For our 50th anniversary celebration, we had video from some of the founders that were here then. I wasn't, I was working for daily newspapers in Decatur. But Bill Friedman was from Springfield, and he met Alan Anderson when they worked together at Time magazine. Bill had for a long time wanted to start a newspaper to compete with State Journal-Register in his hometown. Hhe got his friend Alan to be the editor, then they got other friends to join them from out east where they were. They came to Springfield and got it started. It was a fun paper. It was tabloid size with a lot of features and history and news and politics, but they took a fresh look at Springfield and central Illinois.
Randy Eccles:
At the time, I saw it referred to as new journalism. There was a need for something else. This is 1975 in that era.
Fletcher Farrar:
Right. Everything was alternative to the daily newspapers, which were, at that time, big, and strong, and powerful, and conservative, and stodgy, and a lot of good things. These journalists wanted an alternative to that. It wasn't political necessarily. It was friendly. They weren't trying to change the world, but they were wanting to report different things about Springfield. It had a good personality.
Randy Eccles:
It's a big deal taking on a major newspaper like the State Journal-Register. Was that what it was seen as or was the idea that it was a once-a-week type of paper making it something different than a competitor?
Fletcher Farrar:
They saw themselves taking on the daily, but I don't think anybody else did. It was an entertaining alternative and that's what they wanted. They weren't going to compete to the end with the daily, but they wanted to coexist and make a difference. They kept their expenses low and their enthusiasm high and were able to survive business-wise for a couple of years, then I came along.
Randy Eccles:
How was the initial reception to the paper? Did it get picked up well? Why did you need to come in?
Fletcher Farrar:
It got picked up well. I first saw it when I picked it up at the information booth at the state fair one time, and thought it was fresh. I went to the founders and asked if I could start a Decatur edition. By that time, they were ready to go back east, and they said, "Why don't you take over the whole thing?" So that's what happened. They had set a good model, and I was enthusiastic about it, and they were ready for me.
Randy Eccles:
Was that daunting to pick up a business that you were responsible for other folks?
Fletcher Farrar:
I knew nothing about business. I knew nothing about alternative journalism. I was an editorial writer and a news reporter. I learned a lot by trying to run a business. But we survived, and I learned as we went along.
Randy Eccles:
Eeventually, you discovered there were other papers like this?
Fletcher Farrar:
I got a call in the fall in 1977 saying that papers like ours were going to meet in Seattle in January and try to form an alternative newspaper association. I didn't know there were any papers like ours. I'd never heard of alternative journalism. But I went to Seattle in January of 1978, and the founding meeting of what became an association that's still in existence now. It's the Association of Alternative Newsmedia.
Randy Eccles:
Were you supportive of each other at this nascent phase in your development?
Fletcher Farrar:
Oh, yes, everybody! We had annual meetings and the first thing was everybody congratulated each other on their survival for that long because it was new. We all thought we knew everything editorially. We didn't, but we were confident about the editorial side. Mostly, editorial people didn't know about business. There's a lot of talk about circulation techniques, about how to sell advertising and things like that.
Randy Eccles:
Originally, you charged for the paper, but it became free. Has that model worked out well?
People told us the only thing they didn't like about us going free was that it was no fun to steal it anymore.Fletcher Farrar
Fletcher Farrar:
The first thing I brought back from Seattle was that these papers are going free. We switched to free. The idea was that if more people pick it up and read it, then it’ll be easier to sell advertising, increasing your revenue. People told us the only thing they didn't like about us going free was that it was no fun to steal it anymore. It used to be a quarter. We didn't get very many quarters, but it succeeded as a free paper.
Randy Eccles:
It's been a good model now for 50 years.
Fletcher Farrar:
Yes. And we hope to build on that model.
Randy Eccles:
I shared a media post online. It was behind a paywall, which I didn't realize. Immediately somebody said, "The whole problem is I can't get the information I want to get," yet at the same time, how do we pay for news media? I'm glad Illinois Times has become a paper of record in town and is able to offer its information without a charge. You hopefully solicit the advertisers, right?
Fletcher Farrar:
Yes, advertising pays our bills, and we have been successful in becoming part of the community, so the advertisers not only get the benefit for their business, but they like to support our business as well.
Randy Eccles:
Has the mission changed over the years?
Fletcher Farrar:
Recently we got asked for our mission statement, I realized we didn't have a mission statement. I said, "Michelle, what are we going to do? We don't have a mission statement." But the mission is to publish every week, and that's been enough to keep us busy. The personality has evolved over time, depending on who the writers are, but the fresh approach, the journalism attracts talent. We've had not only news, but arts and entertainment coverage over the years as well.
Randy Eccles:
You've hired some of the best journalists who used to work at other places to contribute.
Fletcher Farrar:
We try for the best, and we think we attract talent because of the paper that we publish.
Michelle Ownbey:
The name that we came up with for our new nonprofit is Local Journalism Matters. That's the closest thing we have to a mission statement, officially or unofficially. That's helped us in attracting writers as well, staff members and writers, because they understand and appreciate our focus on local journalism. That we're not going to tell them to write stories to generate clickbait, or because it's a trending topic, we're writing about stories that matter in our community.
We certainly look at state and national issues, but we do it through a local lens. For example, the current cover story is out right now. Dean Olson wrote about the federal Medicaid cuts, but looking at the impact locally. He talked to the CEOs of Memorial, of St. John's, the community hospital in Pana, SIU School of Medicine. What are the ripple effects that are going to play out here in our community? There's lots of places you can go to get news about what's happening in Washington, D.C. or about what's happening at the state level, but most people are primarily interested in how does this affect me and how does that affect my community? That's the story that we try to tell.
Randy Eccles:
Local news is huge and it's hard to get enough journalists to be able to cover it well. You started with the Illinois Times how long ago, Michelle?
Michelle Ownbey:
I started in 2014. I worked for Springfield Business Journal for five years under the original owners and left when the company was sold. In those subsequent years, Fletcher and I had gotten to know each other through some different community involvement and neighborhood activities. When he made plans to purchase the Business Journal, he knew that I had worked there before and asked me if I would consider coming back to help with the Business Journal. When I joined in 2014, I was initially on the Business Journal side of things, but that's evolved over the years.
Randy Eccles:
That was a major change, taking on the Business Journal as part of the Illinois Times operation, too. How's that gone?
Fletcher Farrar:
It's gone well. The Business Journal has more than paid for itself and helps to pay our bills. I been a successful operation. It also brings with it award programs and events that we didn't have before. Michelle has a good connection with running the Business Journal. It's been good for our whole operation.
Randy Eccles:
Over 50 years, what stands out as the most memorable things that have happened with Illinois Times?
Fletcher Farrar:
Over 50 years, we've covered a lot of protests and politics. One of the early editions was the ERA. I remember all that back then. We've also gone through recessions and downturns.
We went through a pandemic together, and we enjoyed being considered an essential service during the pandemic. Michelle and I came to the office all during that time. A lot of our people work from home, but we published every week during the pandemic.
Lots of outstanding moments. I enjoyed recently trying to pick out one issue per year to write about what was going on that year. It was a revelation for me. We did a cover story way back in the early 1980s about personal computers coming on the scene. This seemed to be an innovation that was going to last.
Michelle Ownbey:
We did a cover story back in the 1970s about downtown and can downtown be saved. We went to a Citizens Club meeting last week on the same topic. It's also a reminder a lot of these topics are continuous.
A big part of our role is to help put information into context. There's such a stereotype now that print is dead because of the digital age or because of social media. I would say that makes it all the more important to have fact-based reporting, to have both sides of the story, and to have the larger context of what's going on, because it's easy to get on social media or on a website and quickly maybe know what's happening, or at least what you think is happening. But it's often being presented from one side,without fact checking, and without true reporting.
Repeatedly, people reach out to us because of something they've seen online, and they want to know what's the real story is. Can you investigate this? That's what's never going to go away is people's desire to understand the bigger picture of what's happening around them.
Randy Eccles:
Social media doesn't use the principles of journalism. You must really get up to speed on media literacy if you're going to use that as your primary source of information.
Fletcher Farrar:
People appreciate getting the real story. They may see something online and find out from us that didn't happen exactly that way.
We've only recently been able to get our archives, going back to the beginning, digitized and available and searchable. What I hope to do more is to put our stories in context.
I remember that we did that story before, but I can't always remember what decade it was. Being able to find out something about the history of our coverage of downtown or even political issues that keep coming up repeatedly, I want to be able to put that into context.
Randy Eccles:
Is that available through your website?
Fletcher Farrar:
It's available through newspapers.com and through Lincoln Library. Anybody with a library card can access it at Lincoln Library downtown.
Randy Eccles:
That's a great resource. You were mentioning you went back and wrote for each year something about a cover or story. You had a tremendous 50th anniversary issue, Is that still available for somebody didn't catch it when it was first on newsstands for free?
Michelle Ownbey:
Absolutely. It's on IllinoisTimes.com. We also had an event on Sept. 25, the day that the anniversary issue came out. That was our legacy and a vision event. Fletcher and I both spoke there, along with a few others. The videos that he referenced are all online as well. If somebody wants to take 45 minutes and watch the whole thing, there's also short video clips of the founders or the different segments, people can go and view those on our website.
Randy Eccles:
That's at Illinoistimes.com. Excellent.
Fletcher Farrar:
It was nice to have Senator Durbin come to our luncheon event. He was well aware, but the third issue of the paper that we did in 1975 was this young Democrat, Dick Durbin, running for office for the first time at 30 years old. Now, he's retiring at 80 years old. He is full circle for us.
Randy Eccles:
Ready to turn to the next 50 years?
Fletcher Farrar:
Let's move into the future.
Randy Eccles:
Fletcher Farrar and Michelle Owensby join us to discuss the 50th anniversary of the Illinois Times, the alt weekly that started out here in the Capitol in 1975 and is delivering more than its original intent today.
Randy Eccles:
At this event that Sen. Durbin attended, you had a big announcement. Michelle, you mentioned it, but what is it that's going on?
Michelle Ownbey:
We are converting to a nonprofit that will be called, 'Local Journalism Matters.' We've filed the paperwork. Some of that is in the hands of the state and federal government to decide how quickly to act on things, but we're hoping by the first part of the year to officially make that transition. We will have a board of directors. That will allow us to do is more of what we're already doing.
Our current staff will stay in place. Our current model of advertising will stay in place. We're already at a point where we're sustainable, which is wonderful for a newspaper today. But we need to have room for growth because we continuously get requests to do more coverage, to hire more journalists, to expand our operations.
That is what we don't have the ability to do at this point. Becoming a nonprofit will open us to another revenue stream, whether that's through grants, or donations from individuals and businesses. That is what we're going to rely on to be able to grow. We're putting things in place to help with that transition.
For example, we partnered with Report for America for the first time. It was a competitive process for us as a newsroom, and I understand it's also a competitive process for individuals. Dilpreet Raju is our Report for America Corps member. He started with us in July, and we plan to apply to get another RFA member next year. It's been a wonderful experience so far. He will be with us for a minimum of two years, then we're required to raise a part of his salary. We get a contribution through Report for America, and then we're responsible for raising the other part. That's been our first venture into fundraising, dipping our toes into those waters.
Randy Eccles:
Report for America works across the country with different newsrooms. How long is that reporter then with you?
Michelle Ownbey:
It's a minimum of two years with an optional third year. They encourage you, if all goes well, to hire that person full-time going forward. It's been a great experience for us, and they provide resources and education, both for the newsrooms and for the RFA members.
Randy Eccles:
Is there any downside to moving from the for-profit model to a non-profit model?
Fletcher Farrar:
One of the downsides is it's time-consuming, but mostly it's a good thing. While we're going to a nonprofit model, we'll still be Illinois Times and Springfield Business Journal, and our publications will all remain the same. We still will have print, but we hope to expand our digital offerings and have more video offerings and have more reporters. They're going to help us to grow.
Randy Eccles:
Folks are always asking for the media in town to do more. It's really shrunk over the past years. That there are a couple of us left standing to still cover is good news.
When you look at the current state of things, there's pressure on media to do things cautiously. The best way to put it — freedom, First Amendment issues are becoming extremely frequent. How are you responding to those?
Fletcher Farrar:
Our emphasis is being able to use our freedom well and responsibly. We want to be thoughtful, responsible, and fair and use it a lot. That's what is going to keep the First Amendment alive. Concentrating on local makes these news stories hit home. Everybody' has an opinion on what the federal government's doing and doing wrong, and a lot of people are angry about that. But when it comes to their home community, it's more of when I see the people that I know being reported on, then it's more convincing and more interesting for the local audience.
Randy Eccles:
Michelle, as you move into this nonprofit mode, what do you see as the top areas you need to head toward or things that need to change or evolve?
Michelle Ownbey:
A big part of our expansion is going to be trying to reach a broader, more diverse audience. We are committed to print. We still print 20,000 physical copies of the paper every week, and we have delivery drivers that go out. There are over 400 distribution points in five different counties. That is not going to change. We made it through the pandemic. A lot of publications, including many in our national conference, went to digital only, or they slowed down to just printing once a month. As Fletcher mentioned, we kept putting out a paper every week throughout the pandemic.
Randy Eccles:
Did you start making home deliveries for the first time during that period?
Michelle Ownbey:
We've always offered that. There are some people that have moved away from the area or that are homebound. It's not a moneymaker for us, especially with postage rates being what they are, but it's more of a convenience if people are unable to pick up a physical copy. It's not behind a paywall. They can read it online for free, Some people just prefer to have the physical paper. We do still have a small number of subscriptions, but that's not a huge thing for us.
Randy Eccles:
There's still the tactile sense of print. With your advertisers, display advertising in that form seems to be more effective than what you see go through digital forms.
Michelle Ownbey:
There's still a big commitment to print, especially in this market. There's a certain demographic, and I'm going to include myself in that, feels very strongly about print. I'm the same with books. I will probably never have a Kindle. I just like to hold the book and flip the pages.
The reality is there's a large segment of the population that does not consume information that way and probably never will. Particularly for people under the age of 40, they're watching videos, they're listening to podcasts, they're on social media. It's very much a digital generation when you start looking at younger people. We need to acknowledge that. It's not about turning our content into clickbait. We're not going to sit around and make TikTok videos all day. But we can take our existing reports and our existing information and package them in a way that's more appealing to diverse types of people. That's one of the things we want to look at doing.
Along with our Report for America member who started in July, we also hired Zach Adams. He's well known in the community through his photography business, 1221 Photography. He's doing a lot of videos for us in addition to the photos. He's taken on our Instagram account, which we never had before. He's getting up and running. It's just about how do we convey the same information in perhaps new and better ways?
Randy Eccles:
You'll find the information and put it on whatever platform is needed.
Fletcher Farrar:
People are interested in experimenting with new platforms. If we make news compatible with new platforms, we'll learn the new platforms and other people will learn the news. We're interested in how that future is evolving. With a nonprofit, there's a chance that nonprofits can get together. Way back when I was in college, they were talking about the medium is the message. Very soon all the medium's are going to be all one thing. If we can adapt to that in the future but also concentrate on telling the story and reporting the news, I think it'll be good for us.
Randy Eccles:
We've always appreciated the collaboration between us, and coming up, two nonprofits. Zach is some videoing the essayists when they come in to record their This I Believe essays. Thank you for that. That's the key that I've looked at lately, it's less about competition and more about collaboration.
Fletcher Farrar:
Exactly.
Randy Eccles:
There's not enough ability to get information out, the information we need to get out to everybody. I'm glad to hear that you're doing this. Anything else that came into consideration of making this transition? I'm sure it wasn't a quick decision.
Michelle Ownbey:
It's been a lot of paperwork and a lengthy process. One of the main things behind it was the Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln. Almost two years ago, in Nov. 2023, they held an event at UIS to announce that they were becoming a Press Forward chapter, and they were one of half-dozen nationwide. They were one of the early adopters of that Press Forward model, then they received an endowment from Patrick Coburn, the longtime publisher of the SJ-R. hTey set about doing a market study and look at how to best help support local media.
As part of that, they hired the American Journalism Project that works nationwide, doing startups in news deserts, or in some cases working with legacy media organizations like ours to do more and better things. The American Journalism Project surveyed an eight-county area, the same area that the Community Foundation serves, and came back and said that there was a big demand for local news and that Illinois Times was very well thought of.
Then the Community Foundation came to us and asked how we could do more of what we were already doing. We said that's going to take more. More staff, not just journalists, but all the people needed to help support journalists. That's how it came about. We started working with the American Journalism Project on a three-year strategic plan and mapping out what that would look like over the next few years, what positions we would need to hire, how we could expand our coverage, and what we could add to what we were already doing.
Randy Eccles:
That sounds like a great process.
Fletcher Farrar:
One of the things that NPR has always done, and we've been afraid to do, is ask our readers for money. When we had our luncheon, we sold tickets for $50. I thought, "Oh, that price's too high, nobody's going to come," but we had 200 people show up. So, I think opening our eyes to the possibility that people are willing to support community journalism is a new thing for us. Reader support as well as foundation support, is a new source of financial growth and it's energizing.
Randy Eccles:
There's increased recognition by philanthropy that journalism is critical to democracy and that it's in decline, or at least the business model that's been around is changing. There are more philanthropies turning to the idea that this is a problem that needs to be funded. Your timing is great and hopefully for us too, although there's been some federal changes lately for part of our funding. We're all trying to respond to that need in the community to get information out. I'm thrilled that Illinois Times is joining this. You've already been a critical part of the community. So more than anything, I think this means you're sustainable in the future.
Fletcher Farrar:
Let's hope. We're looking forward to it. And it's a grand experiment for us, but it's been energizing so far.
Randy Eccles:
Michelle, any last thoughts?
Michelle Ownbey:
Excited to see what the future holds. We're committed to what we're already doing, but we think we can do even more and do it better.
Randy Eccles:
What's your title, Michelle?
Michelle Ownbey:
Publisher.
Randy Eccles:
Publisher. Is that going to change at all or is that that's what it is now, publisher? Fletcher Farrar, what title do you use?
Fletcher Farrar:
I'm editor.
Randy Eccles:
Editor. For the Illinois Times and the Springfield Business Journal. And the new nonprofit coming your way is...
Michelle Ownbey:
Local Journalism Matters.
Randy Eccles:
Thanks for joining us today on Community Voices and sharing the exciting news about Illinois Times. We'll be watching closely and wish you the best.
Fletcher Farrar:
Thank you for this opportunity.
Michelle Ownbey:
Thanks, Randy.
