Alan & Beth Sparrow Purchase Newspaper
Alan and Beth Sparrow purchased the Polk County News from Dave and Sandy Thompson. Pictured is Beth handing the check to Dave. Photo by Rick Holtz.
It’s been quite a year for the Polk County News in terms of ownership. Dave and Sandy Thompson have owned the Polk County News ever since taking it over from Dave’s parents in 2006. They were looking to sell it. Then after many months, in August 2021 John and Anna Sterup purchased the business. They also owned the Pawnee Republican (newspaper) as well as a restaurant; Anna worked full time for the postal service and John also worked part time for them. They were simply too busy, and it didn’t work out, so in late February 2022, Dave and Sandy took the newspaper back.
Now, as of June 1, 2022 the new owners will be Alan and Beth Sparrow under the name of Sparrow Publications, LLC. We actually looked at buying the paper about a year ago in April 2021. At that time, the time commitment looked big and we weren’t sure we had the money. Plus I (Beth) was working two other jobs at the time. Now we understand the time commitment, since I have been working there for the last six months. We checked into financing, and it all worked out. I’m sure this was all in God’s plan.
For the future, we plan to keep it the same Polk County News, covering mostly local Polk County stories and information. We plan to keep it as positive as possible. Alan is keeping his fulltime job, but is looking forward to updating the computer equipment, and writing the occasional editorial. I will be taking over the billing, and still helping with the layout, stories, and photos.
We are also happy to welcome our brother-in-law, Rick Holtz, from Indiana. He has over 15 years of experience in newspapers, most recently in ad sales. Although he hasn’t taken photos or written stories in four years, he is looking forward to getting to do a variety of newspaper tasks. You may have noticed his touches on the recent issues, as he is more familiar with the computer program.
There will be a few small changes. It’s been four or five years since many prices have changed, so we will be raising some prices. Gas is going up, postage is going up, and both of these affect our expenses. We plan to keep the online edition, but hope to make it better, offering it in color. With two people working on the paper, we should have more time to make it better. One person doing the entire paper plus other tasks has meant other things I wanted to do didn’t get done. Also my limited training on the computer program meant I only knew one way to make the issue in color, and it was time consuming. Time consuming is not ideal when one person is doing most of the work.
We sincerely appreciate the county’s support of the paper, along with the alumni support. We appreciate all the photos taken and sent to us, articles written and sent, all our subscribers, and business support with advertising. We plan to keep our sports writers and other features you are used to, such as Alice’s Aspects, Gresham locals by Judi, and Grace Notes by Caroline. Contact information remains the same. We have kept the polkcountynews@yahoo.com email address, the phone number 402-764-5341 and are staying at the same location, 123 E. 4th St.
We truly think this will be the best for everyone. Feel free to stop by to welcome Rick. We hope the communities appreciate their newspaper staying locally owned and operated.
