Michigan retiree bought historic hometown newspaper, became its only reporter

HUDSON — Her hometown’s only remaining newspaper was about to go out of business, and although she’d never written a news story, hadn’t gone to school for journalism and didn’t even read the news very often, Barb Ireland bought the paper and became its only reporter.

“I didn’t want it to close,” the 72-year-old retiree said.

The Hudson Post-Gazette has chronicled small-town life without pause since 1858. Six years ago, its owner died, his family didn’t want to carry on the work and suddenly the town’s historic newspaper was on the verge of folding.

“For a town of this size, having a newspaper is very important,” said Mike Mills, the curator of the town’s history museum. “I think of it often as the cement that holds the community together. It instills a sense of pride in who we are.”

Hudson is a city of about 2,400 residents near the bottom of Michigan; just north of the Ohio border, a little south of Jackson. Its official motto is “Small Town, Big Heart.” It was first settled in 1833 and centers on a quaint downtown dotted with little shops inside historic buildings — many of which are more than 150 years old, as is the decorative, antique clock that stands high on a pole above the Main Street sidewalk. Those few blocks and ornate buildings are so old and so well preserved that the entire downtown was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Ireland grew up in Hudson, where her dad ran the family bakery. After college, she moved to Ohio and then Indiana for a series of jobs, the last one working with adults with disabilities. Eleven years ago, she came home to Michigan with her wife, Beverley Faulk, after they both retired. Not long after, she heard that the paper she grew up with was about to shut down after 160 years.

The Hudson Post-Gazette, like most small-town newspapers, had always been the one place to get the kind of local news considered too boring or unimportant to be covered in the bigger papers of nearby cities. Things like who’s having a birthday. A good deed done by a local Boy Scouts troop. The latest class of graduates from the high school. The passing of familiar names and faces in town.

“My sister and I were driving down this street and I said, ‘I don’t want to see it close,' ” Ireland remembered. “And she said, ‘You ought to buy it.’ ”

Ireland made an offer. All of a sudden she was a newspaper owner. And she also was its entire staff.

“I think it was just because of the long history of being here and there always being a paper,” she said. “A small town needs a paper. Yes, there’s Facebook now and that’s all out there. But I think a paper still has meaning. Just go to graduations and find out how many pictures people have cut out of their paper and put into scrapbooks. To me it was a sentimental thing. It’s been there my whole life.”

Now she just had to learn everything about journalism overnight.

***

The office of the Hudson Post-Gazette is a shoebox of a building that has the 1950s stamped all over it, from the retro lettering of its sign above the front door to the tan brick walls favored at the time it was built. An American flag flies out front, courtesy of the local Kiwanis, who place hundreds of them on sidewalks all over town every year.

Inside, there’s thick cement flooring that supported the heavy printing presses that once operated here, and an old darkroom unused since the days of film. It now houses the paper’s historic bound archives in undisturbed darkness, rescued from the sun-drenched corner where they withered and faded during years of neglect.

After she bought the building, Ireland’s nephew helped replace the cigarette-yellowed ceiling tiles, painted the drab walls and the dull floor, cleared out the clutter that filled the building from front to back and built a little wood deck out back that overlooks the quiet, grassy neighborhood behind the building.

But the real work was still ahead. They had to figure out how to publish a newspaper.

Someone needed not only to write news stories, but also go out and find them. Ireland’s only similar experience before this was editing her church newsletter, but she began attending meetings of the city council and the school board, dutifully reporting everything that happened in a single, long article. Now the paper had a reporter.

Rachel Stiverson, her 53-year-old niece who’d spent a career as a dental hygienist, had done some photography over the years as a hobby, so she agreed to come on board to contribute pictures. Now the paper had a photographer.

A longtime pediatrician told them he had memories of the town he wanted to share. “He came in one day and says, ‘I’m retired now and I’d just like to write some stories for you,' ” Ireland said. Now they had a columnist.

A local substitute teacher who’d covered sports in the past agreed to report on high school games, and that gave them a sports department.

The Hudson Post-Gazette was saved. And readers were elated.

“It was a miracle when Barb came along, oh my goodness yes,” said Mary Enerson, a 97-year-old Hudson resident who’s spent a lifetime reading the paper. “People were all relieved because we thought it was going to close up. I enjoy living here and have lived here all my life, and the paper is an important part of the town.”

“We’re just very thankful that somebody was willing to take over the paper,” said Michael Osborne, superintendent of Hudson Area Schools. “It instills a sense of pride in us as a community, especially a small community like ours. It’s a very important part of who we are.”

***

It was a sunny afternoon. Ireland and her niece were sitting in their office, where the big front window offers a view of life in Hudson: The Hudson Carnegie District Library down the street. The mammoth stones of the historic church. The passersby who wave to the women in the window. And the flag that blows in the breeze.

They were pasting mailing labels — one at a time — onto copies of the annual graduation issue, which features photos of every one of this year’s high school graduates, the sports they played, the honors they earned. It’s the year’s most popular issue.

“We get wonderful letters,” said Stiverson, who’s also the paper’s designer and editor. “When people renew they’ll write, ‘Thank you, great job, keep it up’ and ‘Best paper I’ve ever had.’ It feels good, considering we came in knowing nothing about this.”

An annual subscription for the weekly paper costs $40 for the print copy, $20 for the digital version, or $1 per issue if bought at the store. In the six years since Ireland took over, readership has remained steady and devoted.

The paper currently has 671 subscribers who get copies delivered to their homes and another 110 who subscribe to the digital version. That means roughly a third of the town pays to get the paper, a remarkable saturation rate for any publication, let alone a small-town newspaper. An additional 75 or so copies are sold at gas stations and grocery stores around town.

“I think they’re appreciative that we’re pretty much a happy paper,” Ireland explained. “We’re a good-feel paper, and I think people get tired of reading all the doom and gloom, hearing all the doom and gloom on the news. We pretty much cover really local stuff and all just happy news.”

As it always has, the Hudson Post-Gazette reports the essence of small-town life. Each week there’s a listing of churches in town. A mention of which residents have birthdays that week. And which neighbors passed away. The calendar lists events such as the Bee Day Festival, Puzzle Time and Craft Circle at the library and upcoming chicken dinners at the local American Legion.

Recent issues also featured news stories about a breakfast for local veterans that took place at a downtown diner, the Hudson Competitive Cheer Team’s fifth-straight state championship, the uneventful weekly crime report straight from the pen of the police chief, the weekly musings of some old-timers in town and, of course, a plainspoken account of everything that happened at the last council meeting, courtesy of Ireland, the accidental reporter who saved her town’s only paper.

“It felt like somebody needed to step up, and I stepped up,” Ireland said. “I grew up always having the Post-Gazette around, and it kind of hurt my heart that Hudson wouldn’t have a paper to cover the local stuff. It was like it was my civic duty. I guess I just felt it needed to be here.”

John Carlisle writes about Michigan. His stories can be found at freep.com/carlisle . Contact him: jcarlisle@freepress.com . Follow him on Twitter @_johncarlisle , Facebook at johncarlisle.freep or on Instagram at johncarlislefreep .

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan retiree bought historic hometown newspaper, became its only reporter