The Lawrenceburg Catch All
We still have a weekly newspaper in Anderson County, Kentucky, but Facebook is where our citizens get the news.
It is May 2025.
If you ask folks in Lawrenceburg (Anderson County), Kentucky — population 24,000 — where they get local news, you will get one of the following answers: Facebook generally, or the Lawrenceburg Catch All private group on Facebook which, as best I can tell, is both a completely unreliable 24/7 gossip site AND the best place to find out what’s going on.
In May 2023 the last local editor/reporter, who had been at The Anderson News less than a year, resigned to go back to preaching.
The editor had “formerly had been an associate pastor at Versailles United Methodist Church and pastor at Camargo in Montgomery County and Mt. Carmel in Fleming County. He was with the United Methodist Church for about six years and then departed, last attending New Harvest Assembly of God in Frankfort.”
Our local newspaper office closed. The paper still existed, but would be produced elsewhere.
We often hear about the death of local news. But what does this mean?
I live in Anderson County. I am also on the board of the Society of Professional Journalists, Bluegrass Region, and we recently hosted a Sunshine Week event in Frankfort, near the state capitol, in which a panel discussed the importance of open government.
During that discussion, the president of the Kentucky Press Association was asked about the health of smaller newspapers throughout the state. As I recall, he said that only a few Kentucky papers had closed.
But what does it mean when your local newspaper is not officially dead, yet also no longer relevant, no longer alive?
When I moved to Lawrenceburg in 2016, The Anderson News was a robust, local newspaper. It came out on Wednesdays. The buzz was often about what was in the paper, what was going on in and around town.
The Anderson News is now owned by Paxton Media Group.
The Anderson News does not have a local office or local presence.
The paper version, which you can buy at local gas stations, Kroger, Walmart, Walgreens, etc… used to cost 75 cents. The paper version now costs $2 and consists of a few pages:
— brief reports on local government meetings
— obituaries
— a bit of sports
— gardening tips
— lengthy propaganda pieces from our state senator and state representative couched as “updates” from the state capitol
— a long, regular column from Van Yandell, a Florida man self-described as follows: “I am a retired Industrial Arts (shop) teacher, a commissioned Christian missionary and an ordained gospel evangelist. I currently write weekly Christian newspaper articles based on the series topic ‘Bible connections.’ The purpose of the articles and my life is to reach people for Savior Jesus.”
The Anderson News comes out on Thursdays, in print and online. This means there is no immediacy, which is a death knell in the age of social media and 24/7 news. If a story breaks on a Thursday, for instance, you may not read about it until the next week on Thursday.
Today is Thursday.
I stopped this morning at a gas station to buy a print paper, but the papers had not been delivered yet.
There is breaking news about our local government — city and county — and the fire departments.
I found out about this story on Facebook, via the Lawrenceburg Catch All private group.
The kicker is that I am not a member of this private Facebook group, which means even I heard the news secondhand from someone who is.
It is May 2025.
Our local newspaper is not technically dead, but it is also not where we get our news. We get our news in the non-factchecked, non-sourced, comments section of a private gossip page on Facebook where people can post anonymously.
This is what the death of local news looks like.
Thank you. In the 90’s when I worked for the LA TImes there was a foreign desk. And locally based versions of the daily paper. the south bay. The west side. The valley. While limited and not representative of the south central LA there was an attempt to localize. That went away the minute the paper was sold to a company interested more in profit and less in journalism. The internet was on the upswing and corporations were buying up newspapers. Look where that has taken us.
I printed the Anderson County News from the time we closed LCNI's Landmark Web Press until PMG closed the Cynthiana Democrat's printing plant. I haven't seen one in a while but it's the same story playing out in many other chain-owned papers. Newsrooms are expensive, ad revenue is scarce, and every owner believes that a 40% margin is mandatory. String together enough high-margin/low-volume papers, and you have a business plan. This is how we end up with zombified newspapers and it's the best argument I can imagine for not-for-profit journalism.