Liberal, Kansas, becomes competitive newspaper town

Who would believe that little Liberal, Kan. (population 20,000), in the heart of the Great Plains, would be the latest battleground of newspapers, currently with four and another in the works, observes Grumpy Editor.

Latest entry started Sunday with the debut of the High Plains Daily Leader.  Its publisher, Earl Watt, came over from The Times, a former daily, that in January went to publishing three times a week in Liberal, at the far southwest corner of Kansas, three miles from the Oklahoma state line.

Watt, who resigned as publisher of The Times last week, was joined at the  Daily Leader by 16 former Times employees that included the entire news staff plus business manager and others from various departments.

(Thus, suddenly, there are newspapers jobs open at The Times, which lost about 70 percent of its 22 full-time workers.)

Other newspapers in town are The Liberal Light, a weekly, and Los Tiempos, a Spanish-language weekly owned by The Times.

Soon to debut will be a free Spanish-language weekly from the Daily Leader.

What spurred the action?

In an Associated Press story by Maria Sudekum Fisher, Watt explains, “The public was upset” when The Times cut back to three days a week as a cost-saving measure.  “They were dropping subscriptions.  Three days a week was kind of a slap in the face to the community.  They felt embarrassed by it.”

Watt says 7,000 copies of the 14-page broadsheet Daily Leader, at the same subscription rate as The Times, are being printed Sundays through Fridays.

And a Web site is expected to appear later this week.