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Farm and Dairy Newspaper Celebrates Its Centennial
SALEM, Ohio -- Above the of desk of the publisher of Farm and Dairy, Scot Darling, are photos of his grandfather, Wayne Darling, who began as an advertising representative at the weekly newspaper before becoming its publisher.
Scot Darling’s office is on the second floor of the Lyle Printing & Publishing Co. building here, headquarters of the paper celebrating its 100th anniversary.
On a built-in bookcase are a few of the blocks of type once used to print the paper’s flag, largely unchanged from one issue to the next in the century since it was first published.
Behind him, above a desk made in the 1920s and used by Wayne Darling, is a sign advertising subscription rates of the paper:
- One Year – $2.00
- Two Years – $3.00
- Three Years – $5.00
Off in a far corner of the room, older pictures of the Darling family sit stacked neatly on the floor. Atop a filing cabinet surrounded by spreadsheets is a leather-bound book that holds copies of the paper published 100 years ago.
As he flips through the pages, Darling, who became publisher in 1997, points to certain advertisements and articles which, he says, are not much different from what readers will find in the paper today, a century later.
For as long as he can remember, the paper has been split roughly 70-30 between advertisements and articles. And while the content of the articles is updated, their purpose has not.
“The basic role hasn’t changed. We cover farms and rural agricultural issues and news for Ohio, Pennsylvania [and other states],” says editor Susan Crowell. “If you look at our paper in 1914, there’s a lot of information about horses and what you would be feeding to horses. Nobody has many draft horses on a farm any more. [What we cover] changes as agriculture changes.”
Nowadays, the stories focus more on machinery, hybrid seeds – even water quality.
Many topics, she adds, don’t “scream cows and pigs, but they very much affect the livelihood of our readers. If something does, then we’re all over it.”
About six years ago, the paper began to cover hydraulic fracturing as it arrived in Ohio. Farm and Dairy was one of the first news organizations to offer such coverage, according to Crowell.
As Darling points out an ad for a wood stove – the same brand as the one that sits unused in another corner of his office – he notes just how important advertisements are to the readers of Farm and Dairy. The readers tend to fall into two groups: farmers and auction-goers.
Those groups are separate and distinct, he points out.
“The auction-goer can be anybody who’s interested in any type of auction. It could be cattle, equipment, collectibles, antiques, household goods or real estate. The types of auctions we have are really unlimited,” he remarks.
As for editorial content, the paper is and always has been, Darling states, focused on small farms. But over time the concept of what a small farm is has changed. No longer is it simply a family-owned plot of a hundred or so acres. Today many plots this size might better be called hobby farms, he suggests.
“They [the owners] may have a full-time job elsewhere but they’re so tied to the way of life that they still have 30 or 40 acres and maybe raise some cattle,” he explains.
Darling continues thumbing through the pages of the bound volumes of early papers until he goes a little beyond the page he was looking for and flips back. It’s page 24. The last page of the very first issue.
“Wow. Look at that,” he chuckles. “Only 24 pages. It’s gotten a bit bigger since then.”
The 100th-anniversary commemorative issue ran 40 pages, about quarter the length of the typical issue.
With the paper significantly thicker than it used to be, Crowell and Darling say Farm and Dairy has remained consistent in most ways. Since beginning publication, there was only been one week the newspaper didn’t come out.
“I actually remember that,” Darling says as he leans back in his chair. “There was a snowstorm that caved in the back of the shop. Most of the building was fine, but that’s where the press was.”
Darling, 12 at the time, describes the following week as “a scramble for a quick arrangement.” The scramble led to a partnership that lasted six years, until 1980.
Those six years are the only period in the history of Farm and Dairy when Lyle Printing and Publishing didn’t handle its printing. Today, with a modern press in a separate building, the company does all of its printing, binding and shipping in-house.
The newspaper is mailed Wednesday to 44 states, most of the copies within a 150-mile radius of Salem.
“About 90% of our readers get it on Thursday and if they don’t get it then, believe me, the phone is ringing on Friday,” Darling says with a laugh. “It’s a trusted weekly, looked-forward-to publication and people certainly notice when it isn’t on time.”
That’s where Crowell comes in. Editor since 1989, Crowell has sought to ensure that the niche publication is at the forefront of what farmers need to know.
“What we focus on are issues and concerns that affect landowners as well as farm owners,” she explains. “They look to us as a voice they can trust. On my end, that’s something I don’t take lightly because it takes so long to build trust and respect that can disappear overnight if you aren’t diligent in making sure you’re reporting accurate and objective news.”
And while she has spent 29 years reporting on the agricultural industry – she came to Farm and Dairy in 1985 – Crowell says she’s made sure that she doesn’t become a cheerleader for agriculture. Some readers might feel differently, she allows, but in the end, Farm and Dairy has presented the good and the bad.
“I’m doing a disservice if I don’t tell you, say, milk prices are horrible or about animal welfare issues. We’ve reported on that and I’ve had readers call me and say they don’t think [such stories] should be in Farm and Dairy. We can’t pretend bad things don’t happen, not just in this particular industry.”
In 1999, Farm and Dairy came into the digital age with the creation of its website. But if anything speaks to the longevity of Farm and Dairy’s print, it’s the state of its circulation numbers.
Peaking around 2008, subscriptions dropped off during the Great Recession before stabilizing around 30,000, where circulation remains. That figure excludes copies sold on newsstands throughout the multi-state coverage area, Darling adds.
Farm and Dairy jumped into new media fairly early, Crowell says, something that has helped the paper reach readers faster and keep them better informed. “If something happens on a Tuesday, that won’t be in print until nine days later, which is ages. We can have it online immediately,” she explains. “In a sense, it’s made us a little more of a daily or even an hourly. With social media, I’ll say we were pioneers among the [agricultural] community in Ohio, and maybe even a little more than the local dailies.”
After coming to the end of the first issue of Farm and Dairy, Darling begins flipping through the early newspapers two, three at a time. He comes upon an issue published in December 1917. Splayed across the top half of the page is an image of Santa Claus. Underneath the flag, in red and green letters on the aged yellow page, the paper wishes readers a Merry Christmas.
For Darling and Crowell, issues like that can take on a personal feel, becoming a holiday conversation with family.
“It seems like a family. To us, it feels like that agricultural community is part of our family,” the publisher says.
Crowell has heard that one reader directed that he be buried with a particular copy of Farm and Dairy, she says.
For the centennial, Farm and Dairy hosted an open house, welcoming readers to join in the celebration. One of the first groups of people came from Cambridge, Ohio, about and hour-and-a-half away. As the day went on, more and more groups showed up, Crowell says.
“We had people from Portersville, Pa., on the other side of New Castle. People were driving from New Philadelphia, from Walnut Creek, from Ashtabula, from Bellville over by Mansfield,” she says. “It was very humbling for us.”
PICTURED: Scot Darling, publisher of the Farm and Dairy, holds a copy of its recently published centennial edition. Darling’s office is decorated with memorabilia spanning the 100 years.