News Journal grows along with Christian County

Christian County is growing fast, and Christian County's News Journal is growing along with it.

In the last year and a half, the News Journal has grown from 46 subscribers to almost 1,300. The publication's owners also are branching out with a new monthly magazine, RPM, which covers motor sports.

Brett Adams, owner and publisher of the News Journal, said he and his wife, Myka, bought the paper in August 2001, when it was known as the Sparta News Journal.

"Just in the first week, when we took what the Sparta News Journal was and turned it into Christian County's News Journal, we changed that whole philosophy to make sure that everybody had a voice," Adams said.

The News Journal covers the Christian County towns of Billings, Clever, Chadwick, Sparta, Highlandville, Spokane, Nixa and Ozark.

"The good thing about our paper is when you open it up, starting on Page 3, every town or a combination of two smaller towns has their own page in the paper each week," Adams said.

Topics ranging from murder trials to Easter egg hunts to school sports and community events can be found inside the News Journal, which comes out every Tuesday. And while the paper does cover Ozark and Nixa, it does not make the county's two largest towns the only news.

"On a weekly basis, we try to provide our readers with the best coverage of Christian County not of Ozark, not of Nixa, but of Christian County that we possibly can," Adams said.

The News Journal competes with the Christian County Headliner News and the Nixa News-Enterprise, both owned by Community Publishers of Missouri Inc.

When Adams first took over the Sparta paper, he said many people did not believe he would be able to compete with the two papers.

"A lot of people we talked to did not give us a chance. They said, in six months they are going to be out of business, there is no way they are going to be able to compete with a giant like CPI,'" Adams said. "We've hopefully proven them wrong in that fact that we have people who want to read us, who want to read something that is locally owned and operated."

Community Publishers of Missouri Inc. is based in Bolivar and also owns papers in Stockton, Bolivar, Buffalo, Marshfield and Rogersville.

CPI papers print 7,400 papers for Christian County readers while the News Journal prints 2,400 papers each week. That's a total of 9,800 copies a week, compared to a county population of 54,285 residents, as counted in the 2000 Missouri Census.

Dave Berry, publisher and vice president of CPI, said nobody has the type of penetration that they need to have.

"Any publisher is going to have a tough time and has to work in reaching (the population), and we are definitely working hard to try and build the numbers," Berry said.

The focus of the Headliner is county-wide while the Nixa News Enterprise focuses on Nixa. Berry said competition doesn't worry him.

"My philosophy has always been if we concentrate on what we are doing and leave the competition to themselves and their own devices, we will be better off. I'd rather spend my time focusing on what are we doing right and what are we doing wrong," Berry said.

Adams said he believes competition makes all three publications better.

"It makes us strive to be the best we can be. And the people who have benefited more than anything else are the citizens of the county," Adams said.

Changing the routine of Christian county residents is one of the major challenges Adams has faced at the paper. He said 62 percent of the county's residents leave the county to go to work and many times they forget about the local newspaper.

"With the News-Leader being a daily and the television being able to give you all the news you want when you need it, we have to custom-tailor ourselves to the citizens of our county," Adams said.