How you can support The Sparta Independent

In last week’s issue of the paper, we asked you to support local journalism and our work.

There are a couple of ways you can do so.

The best way is with a donation to our newsroom.

The pandemic has impacted our base of local advertisers. While the advertisers who are running with us continue to report great results, we have about 90 fewer businesses running ads with us weekly than pre-pandemic.

Newspapers and magazines around the country are increasingly turning to readers to raise revenue and support our vital work of covering the community.

You can send a donation to our newsroom by clicking here.

Here’s what your contribution can do:

• $50: Postage and printing to mail you and a neighbor the paper each week for one year

• $100: Reporting and editing one story one week

• $150: Reporting, editing and designing one page one week

Another way you can support our work is to shop local. The American Business Alliance reports that each dollar you spend locally triples in value to the local economy.

You may wonder: why does it matter if there’s a local independently owned newspaper in town?

As fellow publisher Reed Anfinson put it “newspaper stories activate citizenship.”

Research has shown that in communities without a local newspaper, residents pay higher taxes because the cost of borrowing goes up and municipal payrolls grow.

Communities tend to become more polarized when there isn’t a newspaper to tell a common story.

A local newspaper helps inspire more civil conversations and offers a more trusted source of news.

Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out that “each new generation is a new people that must acquire the knowledge, learn the skills, and develop the dispositions or traits ...” of citizenship. Democracy is not a ‘machine that would go of itself,’ but must be consciously reproduced, one generation after another.”

Our entire team appreciates your support.

Sincerely,

Jeanne Straus

Publisher