EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim sent this post several days ago, but due to some technical difficulties, we’re putting it up a little late. Do not fear, though, he’s still out on the trail. Stay tuned for more.
Made it to Logan, Ohio, where I had a nice talk with the publisher of the Logan paper, who has a pretty good story to tell.
Here’s the update:
I resumed walking where I had stopped, in Murray City, Oh. It’s such a rundown, tired-looking burg that if I were the Murray family, I’d have my name taken off the place.
My troubles with the Buckeye Trail started up again soon after I left the road out of Murray City and entered the woods north of town. The terrain was actually manageable, and the hills and ravines I
encountered were not particularly steep, so I marched along at a pretty good pace through the woods. Then I got lost.
The trail is marked by smears of blue paint on trees, and most of the time the markings are easy to spot and easy to follow. But I came to one place where I couldn’t follow the trail. I searched in every
direction, looking for the trail, and walked around in circles for a couple of hours. Finally got myself out onto a road, and asked a couple of friendly kids to help me figure out where I was. Once I
found my bearings, I had a short walk to a nice campsite next to Lake Tecumseh, just outside Shawnee.
Today I outsmarted the Buckeye Trail. Instead of meandering through the woods and getting lost again I figured out how to walk on roads that intersected with the trail often enough that I could follow the trail’s route, but do it on nice, quiet country roads. I made great progress (about 25 miles today) and didn’t get lost once!
Wound up in Logan, Ohio, where I found a hotel civilized enough to have a computer for guest use, and where I had a nice chat with the publisher of the local daily.
Monica Nieporte has recently become publisher of the Logan Daily News, a six-day daily with 5,200 paid circulation that distributes in Hocking County, 35 miles south of Columbus.
Monica said that her market had felt the loss of manufacturing jobs in recent years, but that a new highway has put bustling Columbus within reasonable commuting distance. So the economy of her market is in transition from a depressed manufacturing town to a blossoming suburb. New homes are under construction for the first time in years.
Business has been solid. Circulation is up by two percent, and ad revenues are growing. Monica said that the ad revenue growth is completely attributable to local Logan businesses, who don’t have other print options besides the Logan Daily News for reaching their customers. Ditto local readers, because no other paper makes an effort to cover the market. There’s a Gannett daily in nearby Lancaster, and the Columbus Dispatch sells lots of Sunday papers in Logan, but Monica said that local readers “still look to us to lead the way in local news. Nobody else will cover the Washboard Festival.”
So Monica’s good news adds another data point to my informal publisher survey. We have a daily that’s growing readers and ad dollars. Not consistent with what I’m hearing from other dailies. On the trail tomorrow I’ll try to figure out how to explain the difference.
