In early August, Benjamin Chase, the editor of The Huron Daily Plainsman in Huron, South Dakota, received a strange phone call.
It was from a former editor of his, who asked him if the paper, known to locals as The Plainsman, was closing.
As far as Chase knew, it wasn’t. They’d been printing papers as usual. And business had been strong. The paper was the most profitable by percentage of all the papers owned by parent company News Media Corporation.
“We knew nobody’s just going to come in and shut our doors,” Chase said.
And yet, when he arrived at work on Wednesday, August 7, the sign on the door read: “The Huron Plainsman & Payday has ceased operations effective August 6, 2025.”
News Media Corporation had shuttered, closing its papers across the country with barely any warning. Three other papers in South Dakota were also affected: the Brookings Register, the Redfield Press and the Moody County Enterprise.
The closure of a local newspaper isn’t a new story. According to the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University, more than 130 local newspapers shut down or merged in the last year.
But in South Dakota, something unusual happened. All four of the papers reopened.
They had been bought by Champion Media, a North Carolina-based publisher, and would continue to publish local news.
The resurrection of these papers isn’t the only way in which South Dakota is bucking national newspaper trends.
The South Dakota NewsMedia Association, which represents more than 100 print and digital outlets, conducts periodic surveys on South Dakotans’ news consumption. Their 2024 survey found that 62% of South Dakotans read print newspapers every month. By contrast, a 2025 nationwide survey by research firm Attest found that only 31.5% of Americans read print news at least once a month.
According to SDNA Executive Director David Bordewyk, that’s likely due in part to the state’s demographics. Only 57.2% of the state’s population lives in urban areas, the seventh-lowest percentage among all U.S. states.
“Those rural communities, because of where they’re located, because there are these great distances between communities of one size to another, there’s a strong identity within those communities,” Bordewyk said.
Tight-knit communities are motivated to support their local newspaper.
Though readership remains high, newspapers in the state are still facing headwinds.
Consolidation of advertisers is one issue. Bordewyk said that as local stores have been bought out by bigger companies, advertising in local newspapers has declined.
Another problem is unreliable mail delivery. Newspapers are delivered to customers through the USPS, which sends them to centralized sorting centers along with all other mail. As a result of recent USPS changes, newspapers are now sent to Fargo, N.D., or Omaha, Neb. before being delivered in South Dakota.
A paper sent out for Wednesday delivery could arrive Friday. That’s frustrating for both customers and advertisers, who might be looking to inform readers about an event happening that Thursday.
Bordewyk said newspapers are having to find new ways to do business. That might be as simple as a weekly newspaper adding a second, online update. Some newspapers have gotten more creative, offering graphic design services or selling merchandise.
For the Plainsman, change has come to both the form and content of the paper.
Prior to the acquisition, the Plainsman and the Brookings Register were printed five times a week, while the Redfield Press and the Moody County Enterprise were printed weekly.
Printing was handled out of house for the Register, the Press and the Enterprise. Since the acquisition, the Register and the Enterprise have switched to being printed in-house to save on costs. That required the Plainsman and the Register to print only twice a week.
Going from five editions a week to two has created some new issues for the paper. But Chase said they’re adapting.
For instance, any paid obituaries will immediately be posted online, allowing funeral information to be shared in a timely manner.
Overall, the paper’s coverage is shifting to include more of what group publisher Shaun Sarvis called “refrigerator news” — stories about local events and community members.
Previously, all four papers reprinted Associated Press stories covering national news. But Sarvis said most readers either didn’t care about the national coverage or were already up to date by the time the print edition was released.
“They’d comment and tell me that they’ve already seen that online before we put it up,” he said.
After the acquisition, the papers stopped using the AP wires. The most pushback he’s gotten is from readers who are annoyed that the national sports coverage is gone.
In the future, Sarvis hopes the papers will cover local and state-wide news almost exclusively. There will still be lots to print. Chase calculated that the Plainsman’s coverage area is bigger than Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
In particular, Sarvis and Chase hope to highlight the diverse cultures in the area. Huron is home to a large Hispanic population, as well as a community of Karen refugees from Myanmar.
An increase in the online presence of the paper is also likely to happen. Chase said that live streams of local events on the paper’s Facebook account have already amassed tens of thousands of views.
Some in the state believe online coverage is the future of the news business.
In 2022, veteran journalists Jonathan Ellis and Joe Sneve started a newspaper in Sioux Falls, the largest city in the state. Called The Dakota Scout, the paper stands out for its focus on digital content. Though it’s printed once a week, Ellis said the primary purpose of the print edition, which is free, is to drive subscribers to their digital platform.
The Dakota Scout gets over a million online impressions monthly.
Ellis said the readers of the online edition tend to skew younger than those who read The Dakota Scout in print.
Sarvis would like to attract a younger readership. According to him, the average reader of the four papers is approaching retirement age.
But the Plainsman and its sister papers won’t be leaving print news behind any time soon. The closure showed just how essential print still is in their communities.
“Even a week after we had closed, I was still getting calls from elderly subscribers who hadn’t realized we closed. So it seemed like everyone, I mean, everyone across the country, had been hearing about the fact that all the papers were closed, and I had them calling in asking if they had their subscription or if they had expired,” Sarvis said. “All of their world comes to them through that local paper.”
so glad that the Plainsman Continues!