BROOKINGS Its a new day for The Brookings Register, with the newspaper being resurrected under the ownership of Champion Media, a community-focused newspaper publisher based in Mooresville, North Carolina.
The companys leaders father-and-son team CEO Scott Champion and CFO Corey Champion visited with staffers on Monday morning in the newsroom.
Anytime we see a newspaper that shuts its doors, it really hits our heartstrings, Corey Champion said. We feel bad for the community because theyre losing a very major aspect or voice to their community theyre losing a major piece to their puzzle.
He continued, Right away when we saw the news, we figured we had to do something to help at least some of the communities that were affected. Doing our research, we think that Brookings is an amazing market, we think that Hurons an amazing market, we think that Redfield and Flandreau are great markets.
Those were the South Dakota towns affected when former owner News Media Corp., based in Illinois, ceased operations on Aug. 6.
(We) have a bunch of great communities that deserve a community newspaper, Corey Champion said. We immediately got started and as quickly as we could acquired the publications so we could get the doors back open.
They certainly did, with Champion Media stepping up to the plate and closing the deal in less than two weeks time. Today is the Registers first print edition since Aug. 4, with e-editions published Aug. 5-6 and Aug. 15.
The Register will print twice weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays with frequent online updates. Huron Plainsman Publisher Shaun Sarvis, who worked with Champion Media to secure its purchase of NMCs South Dakota operations, will oversee operations in Brookings and Huron. He said the Register will work to take care of the needs of its subscribers and advertisers.
Were planning to bring a good focus on local news that youre not going to find elsewhere and really be here to pull the community into one spot, Sarvis said. As the publisher overseeing all of this and someone whose family has been in South Dakota a long time for six generations my family has been here I care about bringing local news in South Dakota and I care about Brookings and the community having everything they didnt know to be informed and to see their community printed somewhere and their history saved.
Scott Champion shared similar sentiments.
Every community deserves a voice and an institution, and a newspaper is an institution, he said. Our focus has always just been community newspapers and we believe that if you support your community newspaper with good editorial content that theyll support you in buying the paper and buying advertising. Every community deserves a voice, and we want to be that voice.
In addition to their South Dakota operations, Champion Media owns five other dailies and 21 weeklies, according to the companys LinkedIn profile. Those newspapers are found in the North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and North Dakota.
We plan to put out a viable product, and we feel that two days a week is what is viable for our community paper, Corey Champion said. What we plan to do is fill it full of local content we want every page to be full of just local content for local readers. We want to be able to stay relevant in the community and produce local content for them to read.
Scott Champion said local staff is a key part of that equation.
Every community deserves a newspaper and a voice and that we feel fortunate to be able to help provide that and the only way that we can provide that is with the staff here, he said. Its all about the local staff, and were confident that weve got a staff that can continue to put out a viable newspaper thats relevant and help this community grow.
Speaking of community, it, too, will continue to play a vital role in the Registers future.
Our readers are the voice, so we encourage our readers to reach out to the staff with content that they feel is relevant and help our staff produce the best product that they can put out, Scott Champion said. A good way to do that is to be involved, and we hope that our readers are involved and care enough to call the newspaper, email the newspaper, and say, Did you know this is going on? and be supportive to our employees, and our employees will be supportive to them.
Corey Champion cited an example involving photos if someone has a bunch of photos to submit, one or two of them can be used in print while that and more can be used online in a photo gallery.
Its all about community and connections, and were always looking for local voices in the community to help us produce more local content for everyone to read about, he said.
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