Why doesn’t Spring Green have its own stand-alone paper (The Home News) anymore?

From Tom Finger

Publisher of Finger Publishing Inc.

I’ve have received quite a few letters, notes and phone calls from subscribers expressing their anger, frustration and irritation that they feel they no longer have their own community newspaper.  In an effort to respond I am going to explain why we combined our Sauk County newspapers and can no longer publish a separate newspaper exclusively for the River Valley area.

The Home News had declining revenue for many years.  Newspapers are not publicly subsidized entities. To publish a newspaper, we need to have employees such as editors, writers, graphic artists and salespeople.  We need to cover the cost of printing, mailing and delivering the paper.  We need business and community support. We simply could not get enough advertising and subscription revenue out of the River Valley area to sustain the paper over the past several years.  The Home News has not been a profitable business for quite some time.  We could not continue to lose money by continuing to publish the Home News by itself.  Like any other business, if it doesn’t have the financial support it will cease to exist.

We combined all our Sauk county papers in an effort to provide news to the whole area so the River Valley still has a newspaper that covers local government, community, people and the arts.  I understand that there is a sense of loss in not having your own stand-alone paper. But you still have a newspaper, and the Independent Star News is still working to cover the community, just as we have for years. Please know that our restructuring of the newspaper was an attempt to save independent, local community journalism in this area. While you are now seeing news from your neighbors in the pages of your newspaper, we will strive to continue providing factual, compelling local news that both shines a light on your community and helps it thrive in the years to come.