Just last week, I was asked “what’s going on with the newspaper” for probably the 10th time this year alone. Whether by a teacher at my kids’ school, a contractor doing work on my family’s house, a neighbor I see on a walk, or anybody else in town who knows my history with The Ardmoreite, I’m willing to guess I get that question at least once per month.
I have to ask just how often New Jersey businessman Jeremy Gulban is asked that same question.
For just over two years, I was able to meet scores of people across southern Oklahoma as a reporter and editor for The Ardmoreite. I got to tell the story about Mill Creek students who erected a memorial to World War II soldiers killed in a training accident nearby, and I had to hold accountable an entire public body willing to gloss over a simple mistake rather than take honest actions to correct it.
As I did all of that, I worked in a beleaguered newsroom that had seen at least a decade of job cuts. Despite that, a managing editor and local publisher kept the slim newsroom of 3 staff writers plugged into the community and led us to multiple statewide press awards.
As far as I know, those were the last awards received by The Ardmoreite. Now the newsroom of an editor and one staff writer mostly reports on–to use a phrase from our former publisher–”low hanging fruit.”
I didn’t know how important a publisher is to a newspaper until I worked at one. I rarely saw her in the office but when I did, she was relaying what advertisers, subjects of our reporting, and readers thought of our coverage. She regularly spent time in the community then would tell us about it during regular staff meetings.
Does Gulban–someone who is listed as the publisher of at least 70 other newspapers across the country–continue to do this for those served by and working for The Ardmoreite?
Is he frequently asked what’s happening to our newspaper?
If so, what is the answer? Because I just don’t know how to respond.