The local paper breaking viral stories and battling the downward trend in community news

While many community newspapers around New Zealand are closing, the Westport News is breaking viral stories, adding staff, and buying a new printing press. Hayden Donnell talks to the paper's co-owner and editor Lee Scanlon about its unlikely success story.​

Lee Scanlon, co-owner and editor of The Westport News Photo: Supplied

If you were keeping an eye on the news over the summer break, you’ll remember the story: Sean Scanlon and his family waiting to disembark the Interislander when they noticed workers trying to remove a blockage in the ferry’s toilet system.

Soon after, something went wrong. There was an explosion. Urine sprayed through the windows of the family’s car, landing on Sean and his son.

The surprise downpour was a godsend for news-parched media organisations. Stuff covered it under the headline ‘Family sprayed with urine on Interislander ferry after underpants flushed down toilet’. Radio New Zealand, The Otago Daily Times and Newshub wrote their own stories. 

But all those organisations were just followers. If you traced the tale back to its source, you’d find it first ran in one of the country’s smallest independent daily paper, The Westport News.

It turns out Sean is the son of the paper’s editor and co-owner Lee Scanlon, and her recent brush with mainstream media syndication is just part of a surprising success story that's played out since she and her husband took over the media outlet three years ago.

Scanlon never intended to be a newspaper owner. She had worked at The Westport News for more than 40 years when its former owners, Colin and Mary Warren, put the 150-year-old paper up for sale in 2017. 

"It wasn't my job I was concerned about. I was scaling back," she says. "And it wasn't really even the jobs of the 14 people that we employed at that stage. What I was terrified of is that we were going to lose a community newspaper that's been around for 150 years, and if you lose it, you never get it back. I've seen what a community newspaper can do and what the community would miss if it wasn't here."

When no buyers stepped forward, Scanlon and her husband decided to take matters into her own hands. Though they were both in their 60s, they decided to buy the paper and run it essentially as a not-for-profit.

"We're fourth generation Coasters. We love the place. We thought it was about time we gave something back and we knew that the only way this business was going to work was if we worked it, and we took nothing out," she says.

The strategy has paid off. While Stuff closed or sold 28 community papers in 2018, and NZME has scaled back its own stable of local press, The Westport News has been expanding. Scanlon recently invested in a new printing press and has been adding staff to the operation. 

Her decision not to take anything out of the business is partly responsible for that expansion, she also credits the paper's journalists for helping expand its reader base.

Its recent scoops include the revelation that Buller mayor Garry Howard had overstepped his council remit in an effort to establish a waste-to-energy plant on the West Coast. Howard faced a vote of no confidence and stepped down at last year's local government elections.

The Westport News also has the advantage of having never given its online news away for free.

While The New Zealand Herald and Stuff are only now scrambling to implement paywalls, the paper has always employed a subscription model. Scanlon says the paper's former owners deserve praise for putting a price on their news.

"It was fantastic foresight at the time. We have never given away our copy, and that means that even though it's not a huge income, we are getting an income from everything we do."

The Westport News remains an anomaly. Struggling mainstream media outlets are still cutting back on local journalism and consolidating around the most profitable parts of their businesses.

But Scanlon says her paper's recent performance shows community news can survive in the modern media age, with or without the help of viral ferry toilet accident stories.

"That's where the media is moving," she says. "This is where the grassroots news is. This is where the human interest stories are. The crime, the court, the council. All of these things that mean things to people's lives. It's about how their money is being spent. And what's happening in their hospitals and their health systems. Who's committing crime. We would not know most of that, certainly in small towns like ours, if we relied on national media, because they don't cover it."