Sparta paper now Christian County?s News Journal

Brett Adams has been in the newspaper business for more than a decade, and now he's a publisher with a newspaper of his own.

Adams and his wife, Myka, purchased the Sparta News Journal from its previous owner, Randy Dale, approximately two months ago. Adams on Aug. 21 began publishing the weekly newspaper now called Christian County's News Journal from its new location at 427 E. South St. in Ozark.

Adams said the newspaper has a staff of six, including him. The rest of the staff is Karen Bushman-Doucey, editor-in-chief; Lynnette Ashcroft and Candida Dickey, graphic designers; Alex Ash-croft, advertising representative; and Karen Adams Brett's mom business administrator.

"Our whole goal here is to take the Sparta News Journal and turn it into a county-wide paper," Adams said. "Basically, what I tell people is, there are 50,000 people in Christian County, and everybody in every town is just as important as everybody else, and some of these smaller towns, in the past, have not received a lot of media exposure," he added.

Adams said although the cities of Nixa and Ozark already have their own newspapers, Christian County's News Journal will include news from those towns. But he said the smaller towns, such as Sparta, Clever, Billings, Chadwick and Oldfield, also will be included in the news.

"Granted, more people live in the two largest towns, and one of them is the county seat, but everybody's important in this county," he said.

Adams said the newspaper's motto is "Recording the Life and Times of Christian County," and that's what he intends for the publication to do.

"Sometimes it's kind of hard on a county weekly, because if you live in Billings, you might not be interested in what's going on in Chadwick you know, you're 20 miles from each other ... but then, there are some things that are interesting," Adams said. "We're going to have news, we're going to have events, and I'm going to have sports and stuff in there, but we're looking for kind of a cross-reference of everything."

The layout of the paper reserves the front page for news from throughout the county, but inside the paper, several of the towns have their own pages devoted to their news. Sports from the different towns and schools are covered together on the sports pages. There's also a dedicated page for business and a page for academics, among other things.

"We don't have a lot of professional stuff, and if you want to read about what's going on nationwide or in Mis-souri, you get that ... (from TV and other media) ... we know there's a niche there that we don't need to fill, because people get that all the time," Adams said.

The printing of Christian County's News Journal is outsourced, but Adams declined to name the publication's printer. Adams said 1,500 copies of Christian County's News Journal are printed each week.

The subscription price is $20 a year, and Adams said the publication now has 500 subscribers. Single copies also are sold for 50 cents each at 15 locations in Christian County, and single-copy racks will be placed at additional locations soon. Adams said reception for the new publication has been "excellent," thus far.

"We would like to just continue growing. ... My goal is, we would love to have 10,000 to 20,000 readers each week,"

Adams said getting a Web site for Christian County's News Journal is among his future plans for the publication.