Jim Baumann and Michelle Cortright sit outside Lake Charlevoix Coffee Company. They reminisce on their time as local reporters - back when Boyne City had plenty of local news outlets writing stories about the area.

“There was this little spot right across the street. It's now a barber shop… it was a newsstand,” Baumann said. “A guy named Irv ran the newsstand, and people would run in there around like 2:30-3 o'clock. That's the time that the News-Review arrived and they’d buy a paper for a quarter.”

But those days of lining up for the evening paper are gone. All over the country, local news is becoming harder to find. As small newspapers and media outlets collapse, residents no longer get the information they need to understand the issues facing their community.

A group of volunteer journalists and publishers hope to change that in Boyne City but it’s going to take a lot of work.

With the growth of the internet in recent decades, advertisers that once filled pages of newspapers began to move their money toward high-traffic websites.

That meant less income for the news outlets, which led to cutting staff and less coverage of important topics and communities.

“Many newspapers were sold, and sold, and resold,” Baumann said. “Each time it got a little worse, because the environment was more different, more difficult.”

According to a 2023 Northwestern University survey, there are 204 counties in the U.S. that have no newspapers, local digital sites or public radio newsrooms.
There’s a term for these areas: “news deserts.” And they’re breeding grounds for disinformation, polarization and the collapse of civic life.

“It means there is no way to get local news in your community,” Cortright said. “We asked people of all demographics where they got their news. Many said, ‘I don't get any news.’ Many said, ‘I get my news from Facebook or these different news groups which are slanted one way or another.’”

Elizabeth Jensen is a former media reporter and NPR Public editor. For the past year, she’s worked to map out the news ecosystem in northern Michigan.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For transparency, Interlochen Public Radio worked with her on that research with funding from Rotary Charities.

She sent a survey to around 50 news outlets across 23 counties from M-55 to Sault Ste. Marie. They varied in size, medium and business models.

Jensen found nearly a quarter of reporting and editing positions in the region had been lost in the last three years - about three dozen jobs.

That’s not a net number - some jobs were offset by new positions. But Jensen said the effects of cuts are being felt.

“They simply can't cover the news in the same way that they used to, or even in the way that they'd like to,” Jensen said.

Boyne City, Charlevoix, East Jordan, Grayling, Gaylord, Petoskey, Bear Lake, Thompsonville, Arcadia, Brethren, and Onekema were all singled out as communities that are not getting covered as deeply.

Outlets also said they can’t cover the important topics they would like to - things like housing, the environment, arts and culture.

Jensen calls it a “cycle,” with less news coverage, readers and advertisers stop paying. Less profits for the newsroom leads to cuts in staff - which means less news coverage.

But Michelle Cortright and Jim Baumann hope to break away from that cycle with a new business model.

This month, they resurrected The Boyne Citizen with its first new edition since 1968. However, it’s no longer a newspaper - it’s a nonprofit digital newsletter.

Readers can sign up for free on the Boyne Citizen website to receive a weekly email with stories. Cortright says the email format is better suited for the digital age.

The first edition includes coverage of a recent city commission meeting, a list of upcoming community events, profiles of new school staff and a feature photo of a family who now has three generations who have worked at or attended the local preschool.

Nonprofit news organizations have popped off in recent years from statewide coverage from Bridge Michigan to Pulitzer-prize-winning investigative reports from outlets like Propublica.

But successful nonprofits have steady streams of funding from grants, philanthropists and individual donors.

And while some $3,000 have trickled in with the first edition - Cortright and Baumann aren’t paying themselves for the work yet.

Jensen says the jury is still out on whether or not nonprofit news can sustain itself on the hyper-local level. Boyne City has about 3,800 residents, neighboring townships have about 2,600. But Cortright says Boyne City wants its local news back and the community has the power to decide its success.

“This is purpose driven,” she said. “We're looking for the next generation to come in. We definitely want this to succeed and grow and become the new news source for our region.”

Michael Livingston covers the area around the Straits of Mackinac - including Cheboygan, Charlevoix, Emmet and Otsego counties as a Report for America corps member.