Picture Lady a Small Town Celebrity: News Deserts Impact on a Community

I’m with my parents in our local grocery store called Piggly Wiggly. It has everything from a bakery and deli to a liquor store, all in one building. If you're from a small town you know a grocery store is where you run into everyone you know or someone who knows you. An elderly couple came up to me in the grocery store and asked, “Are you Sally Kahlhamer’s granddaughter?” I’m in the second grade. My family, made up of my little brother, mom, and dad are all volunteering at our Lutheran school concession stand when the referee, getting a dark blue Gatorade, asked me, “Is your grandma here today? I was going to ask her if she’s going to be at the upcoming high school volleyball game.”

I am in 7th grade at the time. I’ve just gotten my driver's license and am working at our local meat market. At least once a day someone would ask me, “Are you Sally Kahlhamer's granddaughter? Tell her I liked her story in the paper.” For my grandparents' Christmas present, we hired a photographer and set up a day for all of our extended family to take a picture. My extended family are not the type of people to do anything simple. Of course, that meant color schemes, specific pictures with a list of who’s in what photo with who, and props all had to be at the shoot. After getting done with the pictures, the photographer walked up to my grandma and said, “I want to thank you for writing such a wonderful story about us.” While talking about it later my grandma laughed while she said, “I don’t even remember what I wrote.” Now I’m a senior in college, working as a waitress. During our Friday night fish fry an elderly couple who just ordered asked, “Are you Sally’s granddaughter? When is she coming back to the paper?”

My grandmother, Sally Kahlhamer, is somewhat of a celebrity around our small town of Mayville, WI, though she definitely does not call herself that. Kahlhamer worked at our local newspaper, the Dodge County Pionier, for 32 years, over half of those years as an editor. Those in the industry know that when working as an editor for a small-town paper means you are also a photographer, reporter, and copy editor all wrapped up in one. One of the reasons my grandma is so well known is because she was everywhere with her camera. From sporting events to school board meetings and even parades, my grandma was there, camera in hand. Many people took notice and kids who wanted their pictures taken shouted for “Picture Lady.” Thus, the loving name “Picture Lady” was born, business cards included.

The Dodge County Pionier is a weekly newspaper that has been around since 1892. According to a special edition of the Dodge County Pionier, just three weeks after it started producing news the news office caught fire, but that didn’t halt publication. Henry Spiering was the original founder of The Mayville News and three other papers all based out of Mayville. Spiering had a long-term career as a public servant where he was the mayor, assemblyman, and justice of the peace. The first edition of The Mayville News was published fully in German, which then switched to English. Many different owners later, and the Johnsons who bought the Kewaskum Statesman and the Campbell Sports News bought The Mayville News and changed the name to the Dodge County Pionier. Although the name changed the spelling of pioneer in German is ‘pionier,’ which references the small town’s German roots. “Everybody when we first changed it called and said, “You spelled Pionier wrong.” Then we would have to tell them, “No, that's the German spelling,’” said Kahlhamer. Ironically, I also interviewed Andrew Johnson for a previous story I had written about his involvement with the Wall of Faces where my grandmother was able to help me contact him. Johnson’s son, David, passed away while deployed in Afghanistan, so the Wall of Faces project was an incredibly important and sentimental project for him. Johnson used the power of local papers to help match a face to every name on that wall. Johnson was also the President of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association and was previously my grandmother's boss.

Originally, Kahlhamer was a part-time proofreader who went in for an interview after a family member recommended she apply because someone was moving and she got the job. “Well, I proofread for many years and then I started working more with the editor. At that time he was terrible because he would go out and do a story and he'd come back and he couldn't read his handwriting. So to top it all off, if he couldn't read it, he would just make it up,” said Kahlhamer. Next, she started working on cutlines because “at that time the paper had a lot of pictures.” Then another person left, and she started writing stories and interviewing people. “So you know, I just started writing some stories and then we had another editor come in and it was another bomb,” said Kahlhamer. She then told me how she got “voluntold” to be the editor. She described it as Johnson (who was the owner at the time) saying, “You know what, you can do it.” She said, “No I can’t, I don’t want to” and he said, “Yes, I know you can do it.” So, that was her job interview and, unwillingly, she became editor.

When asked, Kahlhamer did not have a favorite story, but she did have a few that stood out. The hardest story she ever had to write was about a car accident that involved four teenagers who passed away. Kahlhamer said, “Two weeks before that we had been to the WNA convention and I had taken a seminar and the lady that talked there told about—she was a reporter—about how when her son died in an accident, she was so upset because nobody ever asked her about him, about how she felt. She just felt that she could never tell her story about him. So she said, “When you have to cover something tough like that, ask the people if they want to talk to you. If not, fine, but if they want to talk to you, you know, they should be able to tell their story.'” Many of the families did not want to be interviewed but one did. The lady invited Kahlhamer into her home to do the interview, “I'll never forget that because they invited me into their home, and she sat down, and we were talking. She got up and went into the kitchen. She came out with a package of hot dogs. She looked at me and she said, "My son loved hot dogs. He would have them every day after school, not just one or two. He might have three." She said, "So they were on sale, and I bought ten packages. What am I going to do with these hot dogs?" And then she started crying. It's like, oh. Oh my gosh.”

Kahlhamer’s story with the biggest community impact was a helping hand from Mayville, WI, to Mayville, ND. Mayville, ND, had horrible flooding and people would see it on the news all the time. “We got the idea at the paper that we should send some cleaning supplies for them. So we called it Mayville to Mayville. Piggly Wiggly couldn't buy enough cleaning supplies to keep up. Mayville Engineering donated a semi-truck and a driver, and we filled that semi. We had kind of a stack at the end, but we got it in one.” After that, she and my grandfather, the Mayville Police Chief at the time, followed the semi out to Mayville, ND, to the town’s fire department. We didn't get there until close to midnight. The firemen were all there and different people from the community, and they helped us unload the truck. They gave us coffee and water.” The pair had originally made reservations for a hotel in Fargo but, “they (the community) wouldn't hear of that. So they put us up in some homes there. We stayed overnight there and they had all these gifts for us, mugs and T-shirts and everything.” My mom, who was listening to the interview, added that she remembers getting a blue t-shirt from that initiative. Working at the paper wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. One lady Kahlhamer recalled was notorious for not liking any stories written about her events. “I guess I only had one rude lady that I can remember and she just came into the office because she didn't like the way I covered her story about a polka band that was going to be in Mayville. She was furious. She came in and she was yelling and yelling. “I sent three pictures and you only used one.” And she went on and on and got so excited she was spitting in my face. Finally, the publisher came out of the back room and said, “I'm sorry if you can't calm down, I don't want you in here ever again.’”

One thing about my grandma is she is unintentionally secretive about her own life. My grandpa came into their small kitchen where we were doing the interview to listen. He was the one who asked me, “Aren’t you going to ask about any of her awards?” I didn’t even know that my grandmother had any since she never talks about them or that she got inducted into the Mayville Alumni High School Hall of Fame, which my grandpa also brought up. My grandma won two awards from the WNA or Wisconsin Newspaper Association. One story was about a big company that caught fire and the other was about the impact of suicide. “I won the one with Andrea, who was the editor for Lomira, because we covered the Quad-graphic fire. Basically, the whole plant burned down. They had firefighters from, I don't know, how many communities and it burned for days and days. So we covered that story. The television crews were all there, too. So we wrote it together and took pictures and everything. And we got first place for that.” My grandpa added, “She even took pictures where she wasn't supposed to.” The next story was after a close friend's son had recently committed suicide, and “nobody talked about suicide back then.” She recalled taking the picture for the story, “I actually went up in the cemetery and took a picture, and put a teddy bear down by a gravestone. So you couldn't see the names because it was on the other side.” These awards, along with her Hall of Fame plaque, are now sitting on her closet floor.

Recognition of one's hard work doesn’t erase the sacrifices made to get there. Both of my grandparents worked demanding and odd-hour jobs. With three young kids and one car, it was hard to make everything work. My grandma recounted pulling my three-year-old mom on a sled to drop her off at the neighbors' to babysit while she made the walk to work. To make it to all their kids' sports games, my grandpa volunteered to be the officer to take the shift so he would be at the games making sure everyone was safe. My grandma had to have a balance of sports stories, so it wasn’t as easy, “Well, it didn't get real bad until the kids were in high school. Because I just felt bad because I missed a lot of their volleyball games.” My grandma also relates to me walking home from the University of River Falls student newspaper office at 2 a.m. during layout week. “Sometimes I remember walking home with one of the others, the ad setter, and we'd be walking home at midnight.” Being that my grandma worked in news and my grandpa was the small-town police chief they would meet each other in unexpected places. Many of them were council meetings or other meetings my grandma was covering. My grandpa also said that he helped my grandma out a few times, “I'd drive her to places that they let me in. Because they knew who I was.” The dynamic was a little odd at times since my grandpa had to keep much more of his job under wraps, and he knew my grandma would have to cover it later.

Years later, many people always ask when my grandmother is coming back to the paper but she always says she wants to enjoy her retirement. She spends her days expanding her M&M collection (it’s huge!), helping grade spelling tests, growing cactus for my aunt’s sixth-grade class, raising money to expand our local library, and going on outings with her red hat ladies. Times are changing, and Kahlhamer emphasized that her time writing for the newspaper is much different now. When she started working, they had a printing press, handmade ads, and lots of community engagement with a little over 4,000 subscriptions (for reference, current-day Mayville has around 5,100 residents.) “People would call us and ask us to cover different events. And I think the most important thing is you have to be out in your community, because I'd be up at the high school covering something. And then somebody would stop me in the hall and say, "Oh, do you know we're going to do this next week?" So they'd always be telling me about all different things,” said Kahlhamer. Not only did she have all the tasks of a small-town newspaper, editor, she also was the office manager. “We probably had 10 or 12 people working for us too. So then I would have to schedule. We also had another office in Lomira and another one in Horicon, but Mayville was the main one. So I would have to make sure that everybody else was doing their jobs too,” said Kahlhamer. For fun, I asked if Kahlhamer was getting paid enough and she said, “I calculated it once and it just made me sad.” At the time the Dodge County Pionier covered official communities and unincorporated communities all around the area, including Mayville, Lomira, Horicon, Theresa, Leroy, Knowles, and Brownsville.

While talking with my grandmother about her job and her experiencing the many communities' passion for news she emphasized, over and over again, the need to be in the community. Sadly small-town newspapers are disappearing throughout the country. According to the UNC Hussman School of Journalism, a news desert is a “community either rural or urban with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.” In other words, bigger media and publishing companies are buying local newspapers to keep them afloat and either shutting down smaller newspapers, getting rid of some staff, or moving staff out of the communities they serve. UNC data gathered in 2022 recorded Dodge County to have only three newspapers that are supposed to cover just over 89,000 people living there. With the rise of fake news rhetoric, people in small-town communities need people they can trust to report on their local news. No trustworthy news leads to unreliable gossip with no one to verify the validity of it. Watchdog journalism requires journalists to know their community to notice discrepancies and accurately investigate and write about public figures and government systems. Small ripples make big waves but without the small ripples, nothing will change.

As of 2020, the Dodge County Pionier has been sold to Multi Media Channels along with the Campbellsport News, and the Kewaskum Statesman and moved their home office out of Mayville to combine it with the other newspapers. “The rent was more in Mayville, so they moved out of town. People can't stop in anymore like they used to be able to. So there's three (employees) in the front and one doing ads in the back and the rest of it is all sent out. In fact, when you call in, there are no reporters in that office.” The copy editor moved to Mississippi, so all stories that people within the community suggest or even write are all digital. “I think the thing that I miss most in the local paper is the editor isn't local. So he (the editor) comes up (from Milwaukee) for things once in a while, but he doesn't have a lot of contact with the people. Everything is over social media, so I think they're missing a lot and when they do that, they don't do any of the human interest stories anymore and I think people like to read those,” said Kahlhamer. As of Dec. 15, 2023, the Dodge County Pionier editor has resigned. One reason that Kahlhamer thinks the paper isn’t doing as well as before is because “Mayville does not have a good retail base anymore. So if you don't have ads in the paper, you can't have as many pages. When Andrew had it, because he was so invested in the community, he would just say to me, "Well, we don't have enough ads to cover another two pages, just go ahead and run it all anyhow." So after he sold it, you have to have a certain amount of ads to have a certain amount of news. And if you don't have retail, we used to have car dealerships and everything in town, but we don't have any now. So you're losing all that retail.” Another issue that comes along with the lack of a retail base is the paper can’t find a salesperson to go out to these businesses and sell ads when they used to have a salesperson in each community. “When it comes time for a promotion, they have to get on the phone and call people, which they don't care for either,” said Kahlhamer. Another very common reason the paper is losing subscribers is because “there's not enough news in there” which is a very common sentiment from people in the three main communities. But Kahlhamer emphasized that if you don’t pay for a subscription because you are unhappy with the content, then the communities won’t get any news. Mayville, Lomira, Horicon, and the surrounding communities, which the Dodge County Pionier reports on, are on the verge of becoming a news desert.

In the heartland of America, where news deserts are spreading like invasive species, the Dodge County Pionier stands as a bastion of trust and comprehensive reporting. But without a dedicated ad salesperson, few local journalists, and a new editor living states away, the paper’s resilience is on the brink. Mayville doesn’t have a large retail base, and Pionier covers six small communities where there are plenty of businesses that could be contacted for advertising. But as the paper struggles, so does the community’s faith in it. They are noticing a lack of quality and quantity of the articles being written, but if citizens want any journalism, they need to keep buying subscriptions. Right now, the paper is walking on a tightrope without a safety net.

As a journalism senior who runs our campus newspaper, I understand the struggle. The struggle for resources, reporters, and time is real. One of the very first lessons taught by my professor, Andris Straumanis, is that it’s very easy to tell when someone is writing about something they know nothing about. For me, the Pionier is more than a paper; it’s a legacy. My grandmother, its editor, embodies the essence of community journalism. Despite her advice to steer clear, her impact inspires me. As I navigate my journalism degree, I embrace the challenges, knowing that, someday, I might carry on her legacy without seeking the celebrity status that accompanies the job.