I am writing this letter to the Solon Community because I fear we might be losing our hometown paper, The Solon Economist. The bottom line is the cost of publishing a newspaper, the critical issues are advertising and subscribers to keep a paper viable. Bob Woodward, from Woodward Communications in Dubuque and who owns the Economist, visited Solon recently to get a local take on community interest in the future of the Economist.
Some of us met with Bob that day at the library. My interest is from the historical standpoint, as I not only grew up in a newspaper environment but have worked with several local history projects. A pictorial history book of Solon, Solon Snapshots was published in 2010 and a history group worked for several years to collect and preserve Solon’s storied history.
Solon newspapers have been archived and then digitized from 1893 to 2016 by Advantage Preservation of Cedar Rapids.
If our community doesn’t have enough advertisers or subscribers to keep the Economist viable, perhaps a way forward would be to reinvent the collaboration with North Liberty as the free North Johnson County paper did, but as a subscription. Solon has had a relationship with North Liberty through the North Liberty Community Center, senior groups and close proximity to a wide variety of restaurants and businesses. The possibility of more stories about local happenings, organizations and events from both cities could provide this combination substantially more advertising plus enhanced subscriptions.
I am appealing to our community members, whether you subscribe to the Economist or not, to consider how important it is to maintain our local newspaper’s printed page. If you are willing to attend a community meeting in the near future to strategize how we can retain our Economist please contact me at 319-430-8655 or [email protected].