By Lauren Milideo

When University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications Professor Teri Finneman learned that Eudora, a town of 6,500, 15 minutes from campus, didn’t have its own paper, she contacted town officials and set out to cover Eudora’s local news with her students.

The project began in a social media class, with students taking photos of the town’s goings-on for the Eudora Convention and Visitors Bureau, and posting them with captions.

“In all of my classes, I have students who work with real clients producing real content,” Finneman explained. “I was looking for news clients for the social media class.” The work quickly expanded, though.

“It became clear very quickly that we needed a full story,” Finneman said. “Just a photo wasn't enough to explain that this new business was opening.”

Finneman and her two founding reporters, Riley Wilson and Lucie Krisman, initially met with Eudora’s residents, asking what they wanted from a local news outlet. There was some concern among potential readers, Finneman recalled, about someone from outside town reporting their news – would the coverage be fair? Finneman and her students forged ahead, connecting with the community and reporting its stories.

The result was the online Eudora Times.

Finneman brought reporting students aboard to begin providing expanded coverage in an extracurricular news reporting club with a Wix site. The Eudora Times was then folded into Finneman’s community reporting and advanced reporting classes, officially becoming a part of the journalism curriculum with 13 students reporting in one class, Finneman said. Next fall, the Eudora Times will return to its roots as an extracurricular activity.

“When you're doing it as an extracurricular, you have people who really, really want to be there and really care about the mission,” Finneman noted.

The Eudora Times is funded by donations from Eudora residents and KU alumni, Finneman said. Although Finneman is a faculty member and does not rely on this funding for her salary, the Eudora Times requires a great deal of effort beyond those duties. She is the paper’s publisher and editor, and reviews all the students’ reporting herself before it appears on the site.

The commitment continues to expand, she noted. This summer, for the first time, “we raised enough money to be able to hire two full-time interns – essentially students working for us this summer.”

And once the school year starts, May 2023 graduate Sara Maloney will become the Eudora Times’s first full-time reporter. Funded by a Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship, Maloney will work through the end of the 2024 school year. Finneman also anticipates having between three and six students working by this point.

Maloney, who worked with the Eudora Times since January 2022, did not initially have community journalism on her radar, she noted, but once she joined the Eudora Times, she discovered a “huge passion” for the work.

“Somehow, it just worked out so perfectly that it actually was the thing I loved,” Maloney said. “I'm really, really grateful for the whole experience because it's been such a great learning opportunity and also just such a good way to figure out that I actually am a good journalist.” The work helped Maloney move past imposter syndrome, she said.

“I think having the opportunity to write for a real serious newspaper as a college kid was such a unique opportunity,” Maloney said, and while she also worked for student newspaper University Daily Kansan, “there's just something about getting out into a city and getting to cover city government and local, local politics and school board and that kind of thing. That is so important… it's really, really cool in that way to get such a unique experience while still being a student.” Maloney credits Finneman’s guidance with helping her to refine her reporting skills.

The goal at the paper is to have nine stories go out in a weekly newsletter, Finneman said, and the student journalists cover everything from the city commissioners’ activities to high school sports and senior citizen concerns. Much of the paper’s strongest support comes from its senior readers, Finneman said.

The coverage is gaining wider recognition as well. “We're a member of the Kansas Press Association,” Finneman said, “and every year we win first place for our senior citizen reporting.” She also noted, “This past year, we won 25 awards in the state newspaper association. We're a real player.”

With about 3,000 Facebook followers and 1,000 Instagram followers, and a steady core readership of about 600, the paper is looking to expand, Finneman noted. Public relations students helped, tabling at a local grocery store and placing a QR code on local restaurant tables, connecting diners to the Eudora Times site. Santa has even gotten in on the effort, Finneman said, as he will promote the paper at a local event this summer to raise funds and awareness.

Looking forward, Finneman said, she is considering adding another community to their coverage, creating a local newspaper group. With a new Panasonic plant being built between Eudora and neighboring De Soto, there is an ever-growing need for local reporting, and De Soto, like Eudora, lost its own newspaper. Was this investigated? I don’t know anything about if De Soto had a newspaper before or not. Just that they don’t have one now.  Such an expansion may entail involving the university’s business school on a feasibility study, Finneman noted.

Maloney recalled one of her earliest stories as a lasting favorite – she spoke to an elderly couple who spent their days weaving baskets, which were then being displayed and sold around Eudora.

She continues to appreciate the important role her reporting plays in the community, Maloney noted. “A lot of people – because they're not used to having a paper – they get super-excited and they'll thank us profusely. And I think that that really helps us all feel like what we're doing is worth it.”