Mount Ayr Record-News
Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa
Thursday, August 09, 2012

The Mount Ayr Record-News has a new owner for only the fourth time in a century, it was announced this week.

Tom HAWLEY and his wife, Tami, have purchased the stock in Paragon Publications, Inc., the corporation which owns the local newspaper, from H. Alan and Valle SMITH beginning August 1.

SMITH will continue to help with some of the news coverage of the community for a period of time in a role as publisher emeritus.

"We had several groups interested in purchasing the newspaper, but we wanted someone who would be able to truly become a part of the community and have its interests at heart," SMITH said. "We think that Tom will do just that."

HAWLEY, who currently lives in Ames, comes to Mount Ayr with a broad newspaper background.

HAWLEY grew up on a farm outside Vail, in western Iowa, and graduated from the University of South Dakota with a degree in mass communications. He has published newspapers in Iowa for the Des Moines Register (Indianola, Independence, Altoona), the Omaha World-Herald (Ames) and Community Newspapers Holdings (Ottumwa).

HAWLEY is a past president of the Iowa Newspaper Foundation and has served on numerous industry and community boards.

"The Ringgold county community has been so good in its support of the newspaper with readership and using it as their communications and advertising medium," SMITH said. "We are certain that Tom will receive the same kind of support from our readers and advertisers."

"It has always been a dream for Tami and I to own a community newspaper," said HAWLEY. "What Alan has done to make the Record-News and indispensable part of Ringgold county is amazing and we will do everything we can tocontinue that legacy."

The Record-News has a long history of serving the county since its beginnings in 1864 and is the county's longest running business.

It will be celebrating 150 years in business in 2014.

Sam SPURRIER and his son, Franklin SPURRIER, owned the newspaper for 55 years between them from 1911 to 1966.

Jack TERRY owned the Record-News from for 15 years until selling an interest in it to SMITH in 1981.

SMITH has been editor and publisher of the Mount Ayr Record-News for the last 30 years.

By my calculations I've been sharing some of my thoughts -- and, as my wife Valle says, mostly other things -- for almost 1,680 weeks with the Mount Ayr Record-News readers. For more than 1,570 of those weeks I've been writing as the editor and publisher of the newspaper.

This week I'm writing as an employee again instead of an employer for the first time in more than 30 years.

An article on the front page talks about the sale of this newspaper to new owners Tom and Tami Hawley.

It's probably about time.

By my calculations, I have owned the newspaper here longer, or at least as long, as any other single owner.

My how time flies.

There's a saying in the newspaper business that you irritate 10 percent of the people every year. By my count that means I've irritated all my readers at least three times.

Some of you who have been disappointed much more than that can take comfort in the fact that this must mean there are others out there who have gotten by for 30 years scott free.

My but it has been a good run, at least from my point of view.

Back in 1980 a much younger Valle and Alan moved to Mount Ayr with our children Nathan and Erin and soon Cara came along.

Jack Terry had put an advertisement in the Iowa Press Association Bulletin about a "tired publisher" wanting someone to come help him, with the idea that they might become an owner down the line.

Because of connections between the Terry family and the Loving family, Valle's family, years earlier in Lamoni, this seemed like a good fit.

Valle and I had set some goals after living in three communities in the first five years of our marriage.

We wanted to find a community where we could live, run a newspaper and worship with our church family -- all in the same town.

That hadn't been possible in our other stops.

I knew how important a community newspaper could be to an area and I wanted to be able to provide a paper that would play an important role in helping make the community better for everyone.

Mount Ayr fit our first goal for a place to bring up our kids and live to a T.

You'll have to be the judge of how well the second part of our goal was met.

There have been many changes in the newspaper business over the 32 years we have been in Mount Ayr. We went from Compugraphic equipment to set type in a photographic process to computers and from pasting up pages to doing everything digitally.

Having an internet presence is something completely new too.

Photography has changed dramatically. Instead of having to develop a roll or two of film each weekand then make the prints in the dark room, the digital revolution has made it possible to take hundreds of pictures to try to find the right one and getting them ready for print is a snap.

The newspaper has changed designs over the years as well, as a look back at the newspaper logos over the years that was part of our advertisement in the progress edition earlier this year clearly showed.

We have covered both the great achievements and the great tragedies of the county community.

We have tried to celebrate the good things and grieve together with the heart-breaking ones.

Over the years your appreciation of our efforts have been heartening.

Being the owner of a business in a small town has had its highs and lows. Back in the early days when we were making monthly payments and the farm crisis hit, we had some weekly crisises of our own.

I remember having to cash out a life insurance policy at one point to be able to make payroll. There were times when our own paycheck was held back so that all the other bills could be paid first. Over time there was less of that, thank goodness.

We've picked up a number of awards over the years for our writing, photography, community service, advertising and more. It was nice to receive these recognitions for the hours we put in each week to have a good next issue.

I had the wonderful experience of being able to work with other newspaper people from around the state, serving as president of the Iowa Newspaper Foundation in its early days and serving as president of the Iowa Newspaper Association as well.

Working on committees and sharing at conventions has been gratifying.

Sitting for a day reading articles or reviewing advertisements while judging contests for other states might not sound like fun for some people, but I thoroughly enjoyed trying to give kudos to what struck me as some great work.

Without a loyal staff, the newspaper wouldn't have been a success either. Over time we became like family at work. This didn't mean that everything always ran smoothly, but we seemed to be able to pull together pretty well to meet that incessant deadline each week.

We certainly didn't have much staff churn over the years.

I'll miss those relationships, but I'm pretty sure I won't miss having to live my life by that deadline.

While recognizing the necessity of the help and support of staff and the community for the newspaper over the years, I would take exception with the President if he was speaking of me when he said I didn't build the business. Someone else could have spent as many long hours, but that doesn't necessarily mean they would have had the same results.

(I just had to get in one more comment about politicians who have never run a business yet feel they know all about how it’s done.)

I'd also like to take a moment and thank my readers for following the saga of my family as shared in this column. I know I'll have a great time reading the family history in future years as I go back through these efforts.

There was no crisis that didn't have the silver lining of being fodder for my column. Whether it was five-legged horse pictures or getting lost in Ringgold county, you've laughed along with me at my foibles.

The sale will take one load off my mind. If my health should take a turn for the worse, I won't have to worry about what to do with the paper.

It's already been turned over to good hands to help it go on to the future.

I have a host of writing projects, photography projects and more that I would like to get to before my time runs out, so I'll be spending more time on some of these.

Tom still wants me to help out around the office for awhile. He's even given me the fancy title of publisher emeritus. In case you want to know what that means, I looked it up.

"Emeritus is a post-positive adjective used to designate a retired professor, bishop or other professional."

Wow, I'm finally a professional something.

I hope to be able to continue sharing my thoughts and other things with readers for awhile.

We'll continue to be here in the community as Valle has a few more years left in her school teaching career.

I told Valle after the papers were signed this past week that it was sort of like a wedding. I have "married off" an important part of my life to someone else with the assurance that they will take my "baby" and have a wonderful future with it.

The relationship will change a bit. But the paper and the community it serves will always have a special place in my heart.

Welcome, Tom.

She’s all yours now.

Transcriptions by Sharon R. Becker, August of 2012