“They could contemplate the entire universe
or just one star
or just how far was the walk for the morning papers”
“The Morning Papers” — Prince and the New Power Generation

“The Morning Papers” was a unique song for Prince in his career, during his collaboration with the New Power Generation on their 1992 album Love Symbol. The lyrics track the love story of a couple that is fighting for one another as those around them don’t “get” their connection.

What makes the recording unique is a pop-rock-ballad-soul song that combined multiple genres with Prince’s incredible vocal range to provide a lead vocal that many would not be able to offer, along with playing electric guitar and percussion on the tune. The lyrics, though, are an absolute game-changer. Prince weaves poetry and story throughout the tune.

The theme throughout the song revolves around doing things within the relationship to complete them before the morning papers were delivered.

There was a time that the Plainsman was produced as many as four times per day. Subscriptions and advertising dollars decreasing and increasing costs have led to the paper not printing a paper on a daily basis.

This past May, the Plainsman celebrated 137 years of publication. The paper has had multiple names (heck, many in town still refer to it as The Huronite), many layouts, and plenty of people who have contributed to the writing, editing, production, and so many other facets of the paper over those years.

In old staff photos, there are dozens of employees to operate the paper. Now, there are just five that work in the newsroom. I am the lone person in the newsroom who carries the title “reporter.”

To give some organizational background, because we’re a small staff, we simply cannot be at every event within our coverage area. If anyone can remember back to COVID-19 coverage, the counties that you saw mentioned are all part of the Plainsman’s coverage area - seven of them in all. The land area of those seven counties comprise 7,085 square miles of land (water within the counties not included). For reference, the combined square mileage of the states of Delaware and Connecticut is 7,000.

We rely on our community sending us information, photographs, and even contributing stories to ensure that the Heartland area is covered. Heck, we make a point in sports coverage each year that, while we focus on Huron sports, we want to get photographs from a regular season game of each of our Heartland teams in action, if possible, each high school sports season.

For a step back, the Plainsman is part of 103 print newspapers in South Dakota. There are a number more that are digital-only that are not on that list, but it is a representation of daily newspapers, weeklies, and monthlies in that number.

Newspapers are still doing well in South Dakota. The 103 papers in the state make up 1.6% of the roughly 6,250 newspapers still printed nationwide. Yet, the state only makes up 0.3% of the country’s population (South Dakota population of 892,717 as of 2020, national population of 329.5 million).

So, while the industry as a whole is seeing a downturn, and being a reporter (not just in South Dakota, but anywhere) is not a way to make your millions, newspapers serve a vital role in our country!

I was asked recently by a member of the community exactly what a week for me at the paper entailed. I got to roughly Wednesday of my week when the person asked me, “…and when do you get to go home?!”

Much like social work, teaching, or many service jobs, working for a newspaper requires some level of calling because it will sap plenty of your time and energy while not necessarily replenishing your bank account.

So, with this past week, October 1-7, recognized as National Newspaper Week, I thought it’d be an interesting time to outline some of those daily duties of a reporter in a rural South Dakota newspaper.

We’ll start the week on Monday. My editor is off Mondays, so I typically start off each Monday by putting together the editorial/opinion page for Tuesday. There are some consistent columnists that we run, but choosing an editorial cartoon (or two) each day requires discretion to not get too extremist to either side of the political aisle with a cartoon. I personally tend to look more for funny than pointed, but that’s me.

My next thing I do on a Monday is put all of the Monday paper onto our Plainsman.com website. That requires editing photos and choosing among the articles we have with photos to determine which piece should fit into which spot on our website. It also requires posting all of those articles that are put on the website onto the paper’s Facebook and X (Twitter) accounts.

Once that is completed, I begin working on pieces for the rest of the week, whether that’s reaching out to sources for a story, typing up the bankruptcies and court news twice per month, or simply researching for my weekly editorial column, which uses up the rest of my afternoon.

Monday evenings on non-holidays involve attending the Huron City Commission meeting and reporting to the community in “plain” language the events happening on the commission. Next week, you’ll see a piece explaining the city’s budget, and that comes from attending a month’s worth of meetings about the budget this summer along with being at every meeting to hear budget requests and projects that are going on in the city.

Twice per month, that is followed up Tuesday morning with the Beadle County Commission. I cannot thank (Huron city finance director) Paullyn Carey and (Beadle County auditor) Jill Hanson enough for their assistance when putting together stories to ensure I’m providing accurate information to the community on what those two boards are doing - as they utilize your’s and my tax dollars to do it all!

Tuesdays are a typical sports day year-round. In the evening, I will either come back to the office to take pictures of a local sporting event or stay home to use my computer (as the video technology is notably better) to watch a sporting event and report on it. We then wait on area coaches/athletic directors/student assistants to send in information on local games and turn that around into a story.

Each local game you see written up in the paper comes from a sheet full of (often hand-written) statistics that has been emailed to us. We decipher those statistics to create a story, then back-check the team’s current record and upcoming schedule as readers are interested in those pieces of information.

Wednesday is technically an off-day in the newsroom, but I still put the paper online (that happens each of the five days per week that we print), so I’m in the office, and that’s often when I take the time to begin writing my weekly editorial piece.

That piece you see on the weekends on the editorial page that I write usually requires anywhere from three to ten hours of research to put together. In that piece, I often look at societal trends that are going on, political actions going on, or highlight local, state, and national news of interest that may have received minimal coverage in the local paper.

Often I take aim at a political decision made by a particular politician or board. For what it’s worth, I don’t personally endorse either party. In the state of South Dakota, our elected officials are primarily from one party, so to evaluate their actions often means looking at the actions of their party (as many in DC and even in Pierre struggle to be bold enough to step out against their party line - not all, but many). If you’ve read through my opinion pieces over the years, you’ve noted that I have called out former President Barack Obama on a few issues, current President Joe Biden, along with many actions of nonpartisan boards, such as our local school board and city commission, so while criticism is often pointed toward Republicans, it’s simply because that’s who’s in office to evaluate - and any good reporter should be covering the actions of those in office with a critical lens, no matter their party.

Thursday we don’t have a printed edition, (no uploading) so I focus on getting stories for weekend edition finalized, proofreading my weekend editorial (do you know that we do all of our own proofreading? affording one and finding someone willing to work the hours is near-impossible!), and then each week, I put together the Agriculture page for the Friday paper, choosing which stories will be highlighted from a host of sources.

Thursday evening is typically a sports night as well throughout the school year, but it is usually one with games that I can get to at seven, so I typically record my weekly baseball podcast that I co-host (non-Plainsman related) on Thursday early evenings, but then I’m back to watching for statistics from area schools to write up blurbs for Friday’s paper.

Friday there’s a paper to put online, then ensuring everything I’ve written for the weekend paper is polished up before my editor goes to put it on the page. That evening is a busy sports night year-round for coverage as well.

Saturday, I plug the paper onto the website, which usually takes a bit longer as it’s the weekend edition.

There are a number of community events that take place on Saturday that we try to cover, such as this weekend’s Harvest Festival and Spirit of Dakota, among many other happenings in the community. We also get in the late scores from Friday from sports around the area and I work on a number of those to put into Monday’s paper.

That doesn’t get into how the week can get drastically changed because of an accident or police incident in town that needs coverage, something like the State Fair or a state basketball tournament in town that brings with it extra coverage, or simply seeing something photograph-worthy in the community that has a story to it…and then add in the great stories that are brought from all of you, the readers!

It’s pretty rare that I put in just a 40-hour week at any point of the year, but I believe in the value of reporting local information for local people. I began at the paper in November of 2019, and in the nearly four years since, I’ve had a byline on 1,457 articles through September of this year, written 165 editorial columns, and been credited with 701 photos for the paper - and much of the sports writing done 2-4 times per week isn’t even credited!

And this is just me. Everyone in our newsroom has their own responsibilities that lead to creating a paper.

We are blessed in South Dakota to have very few “news deserts” because the population has put a value on local reporting, but they are springing up throughout the country as many lean into getting “news” from opinion television or social media rather than journalistic reporters, who are required by ethics (and laws) to present full truth unless presenting the information on an editorial page or indicating the opinion of the writer at the beginning of the article. Televised opinion-based news and social media “news” have no such legal or ethical requirement to ensure the stories being presented are actually based in fact. Heck, at least monthly, we have a correction that runs in the paper to clarify or correct something that was previously printed. We don’t do that because someone complains loudly; it’s part of an ethical and legal requirement to ensure what is printed is accurate.

Reporting in this area has allowed me the joy of developing friendships with community leaders, covering state tournament berths for local teams, and being let into the worlds of many readers that we highlight in our stories. In the end, that’s what a newspaper is about - you. Covering you, highlighting your accomplishments, and giving you information that you need in a plain and unbiased manner. That’s my goal every day, and I hope that you support that goal with the Plainsman, whether it’s through a digital or print subscription or advertising with the paper.