Marlene DeClue was heading home after her second radiation treatment for cancer when she decided to pull over and buy the Greenfield Vedette.
It wasn’t, however, just one copy of the newspaper she pulled from a newsstand on the street. It was more than 150 years of them, which instead of tucked under her arm, she carried in her heart.
The Vedette is where she had worked as editor for 35 years before retiring in 2018. But when she heard the corporate owners were set to close the publication at the end of 2023, it just took a beat – of time, and of heart – to make a decision.
She and her daughter, Krista Guy, bought the entire newspaper.
“I loved it, I ate it, I dreamed it, I lived it – what can I say?” Marlene shared of her experience at the Vedette. In one moment, those feelings led to the start of a three-generation family business.
The Beginning of an Era
Marlene’s decision to buy the Vedette wasn’t meant to be part of a trend. It was simply because she cared.
It did, however, throw the Vedette into a category shared by a growing number of Missouri Ozarks newspapers: A shift from corporate or removed ownership – where decisions about the paper are ultimately made far from a paper’s readers – to local hands.
Of course, in the beginning, the Vedette was in the latter category. It began as the Greenfield Vidette when its first issue was published in 1866. And while it undoubtedly changed in ways beyond the spelling of its name – done to anglicize the term, which loosely refers to a lookout – most of that time was spent under local control in the largely agricultural county of about 7,500 people.
Marlene knew the owner when she went to work at the paper in sales and advertising at age 29 in 1983. A lifelong local, she never envisioned a career in journalism; she just needed a job, and found one at the Vedette, which had recently acquired the other competing newspaper in town.
“He had put an ad in the paper because he needed a salesperson,” Marlene, now 71, recalled of then-owner Larry Brownlee. “I thought, ‘I can do that.’ I went over here and applied for it, and of course, he put me to work.”
Due to the limited income she was making, however, she “griped,” as she put it, and was given more hours and worked into all aspects of the entity.
“He kept working me into everything else,“ she said. “It just was a process, and six, seven months went by, and he just threw the keys down and said, ‘It’s yours.’”
Brownlee didn’t give her ownership, but he did allow a sense of control and mission, which led others to think the paper was hers. She didn’t do much of the writing – that was often completed by stringers and correspondents – she was heavily invested in the entire operation.
“I mean, when you run something like this I didn’t turn phones off,” Marlene said. “I was always available to whoever called, whatever time of the night it was.”
She ran it as if it was her own – an attitude that lasted through several sales of the paper.
“Every time they would just call and say, ‘We have bought the paper, and we understand that you’ve done this and this, and we’d like for you to stay on board,’” Marlene said.
Troubles Grow at the Paper
After 35 years of newspapering, Marlene retired in 2018.
As part of that transition, she asked to have a subscription to the Vedette for life. It was that weekly connection that led her to become increasingly concerned about the paper’s future.
“Everything was done elsewhere,” Marlene said, of layout, billing, and management that had been outsourced. The previous owners even let the Vedette’s editorial staff go, Marlene and Krista said, in an effort to save money. Submitted content was sent elsewhere for layout and printing, and then it was shipped back to Greenfield with minimal local input.
“I know how to run numbers, and I knew they could not be making it,” Marlene said of the paper’s diminishing size and content.
The former editor reached out to a representative with the paper’s then-owner to ask him if he realized what was happening with the Vedette. Ultimately, she was given the chance to buy the paper – but turned it down.
Marlene had been diagnosed with lung cancer in October, and the timing just wasn’t right.
But a few weeks later, another call came: This time, it was from one of the paper’s longtime stringers.
“He said, ‘I just got word. They’re closing the Vedette at the end of the year,” Krista recalled. The two were together when the call came through: They were traveling home from the radiation treatment.
This newsflash hit her mother like a bolt of lightning.
“She said, ‘Get on the phone and buy that paper,’” Krista recalled. “I said, ‘Mom, we’ve discussed this – you know where we’re at.’
“She said, ‘It’s been there 157 years. Get on the phone and get that paper bought – now.’”
And Krista did. In addition to the Vedette, the sale also included the Lake Stockton Shopper, a publication that is automatically mailed to all residents in certain zip codes.
News broke on the front page of the Vedette in December:
“The purchase returns the historic newspaper to the manager that operated and served it for 35 years. The acquisition guarantees that The Vedette subscribers will continue to receive prompt coverage of local news and features, as well as community correspondents and social news, a signature of DeClue’s work. The Vedette has been the written record of Dade County’s history for 157 years.”
Terms of the sale weren’t disclosed, the new owners note, but signs of its success were obvious. When they walked in to get their business licenses, Krista said, they received “literally almost a standing ovation.”
“To get the welcome back that I got – well, it was awesome,” Marlene said, her voice breaking with emotion.
More Newspapers Under Local Ownership
Across southwest Missouri, numerous papers have been reverting to local owners in recent years. “There has been a move back to local ownership in regard to several of Missouri’s newspapers,” said Mark Maassen, executive director of the Missouri Press Association in a phone interview.
One catalyst he pointed to is Gannett, a company that began branching out from its upstate New York roots and buying “local” papers across the country in the 1970s.
After the turn of the 21st century – and a merger with GateHouse in 2019 to become the largest newspaper publisher in the United States – Gannett reversed course. Instead, it was selling off local papers.
“So they basically put a lot of their other newspapers up for sale,” Maassen said, noting that main exclusions were the Springfield News-Leader and the Columbia Daily Tribune, Gannett papers that serve two of Missouri’s larger cities.
“That worked actually quite well … because local newspaper publishers, maybe in a neighboring county or a neighboring newspaper, were able to then buy that newspaper and through economies of scale, keep it going and have a local influence.
“These are things that I think are a movement in the right direction, in a positive direction,” Maassen said, “where you have local influence and local opportunity for the people in that area to continue that newspaper publishing.”
Several of those sales happened in the Missouri Ozarks, like the Neosho Daily News and the Aurora Advertiser. When those two papers – located in small communities about 40 miles apart – were sold to Jimmy and Rhonda Sexton in 2021, he said the decision “was kind of a no-brainer for us.”
“We operate our papers with the belief that local, ‘refrigerator’ news sells,” Jimmy Sexton shared. “People still want to cut out pictures of their kids; they like seeing their accomplishments, their anniversaries and things. In my mind, there’s always going to be a desire and a need for print publications. We operate with the belief that if people are reading it and talking about it, then advertising and subscriptions will come.”
Other companies, too, divested themselves of rural papers, selling them back into the hands of local owners; another example is the Cassville Democrat, which was featured in a 2023 Daily Yonder story.
Ultimately, Maassen said, rural newspapers are still doing well, citing a recent conversation with a representative from a mid-Missouri paper who said their print paper quantities are the highest they’ve been since 2006.
“In rural Missouri, those newspapers, those community newspapers, are the lifeblood to a lot of those communities,” he said. “That’s the only place where you find out about what’s going on in the county courthouse, the sheriff’s department. And there’s a lack – still there’s a lack – in Missouri of high-speed internet access.
Managing the Paper’s Transition
Back in the Vedette office, the past several months required untangling many aspects of the paper’s production such as design, sales and printing, and quickly working to rebuild its advertiser and subscriber base.
One issue was the actual design of the paper, which had been done away from Greenfield after the paper’s former owner eliminated local positions – including its editor – in a cost-cutting move.
In one of their first moves, Marlene and Krista rehired the graphic designer who was let go. (In an effort to keep local news coverage flowing, the former editor went on to found his own paper. Due to financial, health and staffing challenges, its operations are currently paused.)
They needed equipment – like computers, which were property of the former owner. They decided to continue working with the paper’s printer, which is based out of a community about 85 miles away.
And in addition to production, there’s advertising and delivery – which is also done by Krista and Jessa Guy, her 15-year-old daughter. They take papers to racks throughout three counties, to post offices for mailing, and to advertisers.
“We go see, or try to see, every advertiser every week and take them a paper,” said Krista, a thought followed by her mother: “That’s something I did all that time [in the past].”
Those relationship-building strategies also tie to content, which often is contributed – and is as local as possible. For example, the town’s senior center menu is news content, and if a local businessperson dies their obituary might double as a story.
The latter example is not just hypothetical. It happened a few months ago, when my grandmother died and her obituary was published on the front page.
My family has deep roots in Dade County, but while Marlene and I figured we’d crossed paths at some point in the past, I can’t pinpoint a time when we met until I walked into the paper’s office the day of our interview.
These days, it sounds like I’m not alone.
“We’ve got people walking in, ‘My grandson’s in the paper this week and I need to get a copy,’” Krista said. “That’s something that I’ve really tried to focus on is getting school coverage back in the paper. I’m like, ‘Send me your honor rolls, perfect attendance, achievements.”
A focus, too, has been continuing relationships with community correspondents. In rural papers, these individuals report from small parts of the coverage area about the happenings in their necks of the woods – and they can carry a loyal following and subscribers along with them.
“I feel like the only reason we’re able to keep the paper alive and going is because there are so many people in the smaller counties that don’t use social media,” said Jessa.
Building the Paper for the Future
It’s really only been a few weeks since the purchase officially went through, and even though it feels good, there are still questions about why.
“The ‘why now’ question: Why now? Why now?” Krista emphasized of the sale’s timing with her mother’s cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Until she had a lightning-bolt moment of her own.
“I was on the phone with my best friend, and I was exhausted, I was driving home, I had left here and I think it was about 9 p.m. And honestly, I was just kind of mad. I was like, ‘Why now?’ Because I really needed her in here. And my friend said, ‘You’re looking at it all wrong. It’s ‘now’ because she’s going to be here for a lot longer. You’ve got to change your mindset.’”
“It was like, ‘Why hadn’t I thought of that? It was just like a light came on.”
Those words are spoken in optimism laced with reality. When Marlene was diagnosed with cancer late last year, she was given approximately three months to live if she didn’t pursue treatment.
Marlene did complete chemotherapy and radiation and surpassed the three-month mark. All looks encouraging at the moment, but she knows that the woods is not far behind her.
Perhaps that makes her enthusiasm greater for the work that can and will be done through her, her daughter and granddaughter.
“Hopefully, I’ll get better; maybe I won’t,” Marlene said. “But I know she can carry it on, and this one can carry it on behind her.”
Kaitlyn McConnell is the founder of Ozarks Alive, a cultural preservation project through which she has documented the region through hundreds of articles since 2015.
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