Jones County's news desert is not actually new. According to Bethea, the county found itself without a newspaper in the mid-seventies. So my grandfather started one.
The economics of rural newspapers have always been fragile. Given their much lower paid subscription counts, rural papers were more heavily dependent on advertising than their urban counterparts. Lose one or two important advertisers one week, and you may well not publish the next. Without a wealthy publisher willing and able to plow money into a paper, investigative journalism, especially at the expense of advertisers, was a luxury that few rural papers could ever afford.
I have no knowledge of Lois Simpson's and Sondra Riggs' departure from the Jones Post. But surely when someone is fired, they tend to remember the circumstances in some detail? Yet according to the article, neither of them do. However, they both seem proud of the investigative reporting they did at the Post: Simpson's self-described tail-burning resulted in a number of elected officials being moved on (her words) and Riggs proudly reports that she was known as the blonde-headed vigilante bitch who raised mortal hell covering the New York garbage barge.
Sure sounds like journalism. They must have had a supportive publisher.
In fact, my grandfather entered the newspaper business late in life, in the early nineteen-seventies, well past the age of 50. He was older than I am today; I cannot imagine starting a newspaper from scratch at my age. Before that he was a salesman and a farmer, and he even served a term in our state's General Assembly.
But I think it was newspaper publishing where he belatedly discovered his true vocation. Along with my grandmother, Frances, he founded The Pender Post in 1971. This was in Burgaw, in Pender County, in rural southeastern North Carolina. A few years later, he started the Jones Post, in nearby Jones County.
In the seventies and eighties, he was one of the heroes of rural newspaper publishing here in North Carolina. When Jones County found itself without a newspaper, instead of bemoaning the loss in a highbrow New York magazine, he rolled up his sleeves and started one. I am not suggesting that Charles Bethea move to Trenton and start a newspaper. But in an article about the loss of rural journalism, why traduce someone who did so much to sustain it?