Missouri Press Association
Serving Missouri Newspapers Since 1867
Buy a T-shirt! Save local news! That phrase isn’t likely to be added anytime soon to the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
But it’s a reality for some local news outlets looking for new sources of revenue.
The reason? Traditional sources of revenue to pay for the gathering and distribution of local news are drying up.
Many good community people are all confused about what this means.
On one hand, 80 percent of adults polled in February said they have a civic responsibility to stay informed about their own community and the world.
Yet in the next breath only about 8% of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center said they felt any civic responsibility to pay for verified, accurate news.
Local news outlets are feeling the squeeze.
That was a theme at the recent Missouri Press Advertising and Marketing Executives meeting in Jefferson City.
Operators of Missouri local news outlets said a major challenge they face these days is finding the revenue needed to support their local news gathering team.
Back to the T-shirts.
Gina Raffety, publisher of the Cash- Book Journal in southeast Missouri’s Cape Girardeau County, explained what’s working for her family’s newspaper in terms of new revenue ideas.
“We work closely with our chamber of commerce to help promote all kinds of local events,” she told the assembled sales and marketing folks in Jefferson City. “And this includes printing T-shirts.”
The T-shirt events have included viewing of the 2024 solar eclipse and honoring of some hometown people of distinction.
In a good year, Raffety says the sale of T-shirts can generate $25,000 in revenue to support the Cash-Book Journal.
She is not alone in using T-shirts to support local news.
A director at Mvskoke Media, the local news outlet for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma, spoke at the University of Missouri last month about the tribe’s T-shirt sales campaign.
Angel Ellis, the renowned director of Mvskoke Media, estimates the tribe has sold an astounding $700,000 in T-shirts in recent years to support the tribal news and information gathering efforts.
A best-selling T-shirt simply says “Indigenous” in a type font similar to the Indian motorcycle logo.
“It gives people something fun,” Ellis explained during her recent roundtable chat at Mizzou.
The fun T-shirts have ballooned into a significant source of revenue at a time when traditional advertising and subscriptions can no longer carry the full weight supporting local news.
Yet I fear there is a disconnect in many Missouri communities. Civic-minded people who value local news don’ t fully understand what it takes today to maintain that critical community resource.
They assume that news is just out there, floating in the air, and they will breathe it in through their social media pages and friends.
No. Local news appears when some real human being is paid to go out and gather up the facts, make sure they are presented fairly and then find a way to distribute the story. All that comes with a price tag and an editor.
Here’s an idea. Perhaps local news outlets around Missoui should consider a new T-shirt. One that says: “A Free Press Isn’t Free.”
