By JACKIE TAYLOR | September 23, 2026

Name your work

First, I want to thank all of the people that said yes to being on our KU grant focus committee. It’s not easy to take time out of a day to help someone, but you all did that and I appreciate it so much.

Next, thank you to all who took time to come to our community meeting where we got to talk about our grant, what we will be working on in the future, and answer questions from the audience.

The genuine love we felt from our readers was awesome and makes all of the hard times in the newspaper business worth it!

We’ll hear from the KU professor in a couple of weeks with some ideas for us, feedback from the focus groups and steps to help us make the Linn County News better for Linn County.

I found one of the questions from the moderator at the community meeting interesting; it dealt with spotting fake news and trust in the media.

Well, overall, nationally – it’s hard to trust anything that is coming out. But, most small papers in communities such as ours, put their name on their product and the public knows who to speak to when they have a question, problem, or comment on a story.

KU professor Teri Finneman spoke of 10 rules for readers to look for and the first couple rang a bell – does the story have a byline? Is the author’s name on the story so readers know who is behind the writing? Is there a contact number to reach the author? Is there an email to contact the author?

Very good questions when we look on Facebook and see sites that spew information with the author hidden behind a cloak of darkness. Why is the author hiding behind anonymity? Readers need to ask such a question; is the site a valid site or one established to garner followers so money can be made down the road.

I was involved in a focus group with another entity earlier Monday; part of that discussion found itself on cornerstone businesses that support a community. Included in those can be the school, a grocery store, a library, lumber yards and a newspaper.

People often get their news off of the internet, so why would the newspaper be a cornerstone business? That answer can be found in one of hundreds of websites. Each city is trying to have their website up and relevant in the community. Each website is dependent on the employees the municipality has on hand to keep it updated – just look at the county. They have a full-time IT person and they still have issues keeping up with employees, information, etc. Compare that to a small city that has limited personnel and things go downhill fast.

My reference to hundreds of websites comes in thinking about public notices that must be printed in the official paper of the county. We print public notices from every school district, city, library, cemetery district, etc. in the county – in one location, on one website, backed up on the Kansas Press Association website where they also archive notices.

The public has one location to go to find name changes, probate issues, ordinances, etc. without trying to scour one of umpteen sites that might list the information they need.

Sounds trivial until you think about one town in Missouri that had their public notices on their own website and the city offered a house for sale. No one knew about it except a government worker and he ended up getting the $200,000 house for approximately $200. Had it been in the paper (I’m not sure how Missouri handles public notices) the public would have known about the house sale and maybe they’d have gotten a closer sale price to market value.

Newspapers afford transparency to the public – compare that to a blog where no one knows, except a few friends, who is the main author on the online site. Anytime something is cloaked in secrecy, the public needs to be aware about why something remains in the dark.

Transparency and openness are valuable to maintaining an honest government; newspapers allow the public to know who wrote the story and how to get hold of them – and that is the beginning of trustworthiness.