Matthew Moore: Covering local news and community events is our bread and butter here at KUAF, but we realize we cannot cover it all. Our listeners stretch across three states, and on weekday evenings the coverage in Arkansas for Ozarks at Large grows substantially thanks to the airwaves of Little Rock Public Radio.
Luckily, there are people in our community like Jamie Smith. She's a journalist by trade, but she also volunteers as the communications director for Elkins Community Network, a nonprofit organization that works to share news and events specifically for their community through a multi-platform newsletter. Smith says they were founded on three principles: engaging, empowering and enhancing Elkins.
Jamie Smith: And that goes past the city limits. We consider our boundaries to be basically the city of Elkins, the Elkins school district and a little bit of the outlying area. We just wanted to help people make connections, because people didn't know what was going on. This was during COVID, and so there were not a lot of events going on, but people didn't have access to information about what stores were open, how to patronize them. So we wanted to help make that information available and help people make connections.
We started the newsletter as kind of an almost last-minute idea, and it's blown up into this thing that, honestly, I'm really proud of — that we've done now for four years. My journalist background requires me to call it a newsletter, not a newspaper, because we don't talk about events after they've happened. We don't analyze them. We let people know about what's coming up. And so even if there's been something that's happened, we talk about how the community can respond to that. It's about connecting people to information and resources that they can then use to help their families and their businesses.
Moore: In a community the size of Elkins, one might assume there's not really enough going on for a newsletter. I think you would dispute that.
Smith: We're already looking at having to grow our newsletter. It's four to six pages and about 2,500 words, and we run out of room every time. I'm constantly adjusting things when I'm laying it out — we're always having to cram it in there really tight. There's a lot of stuff going on. Our library is vibrant. Everyone that goes into our library is like, "Oh, this is really cute, this is a neat library." I'm very proud of our library, and they've got a lot of stuff going on. Our community centers are always full. We've just got a lot of things happening right now.
Moore: For people who aren't in Elkins, what can they gain from the newsletter?
Smith: They can learn about events happening in Elkins that they can maybe visit. For example, in April we've got Elk Fest coming up — it's a community-wide event that people can come from all over Northwest Arkansas to enjoy. But I also really recommend other communities start a similar newsletter. We all have the newspaper, but when you have a community newsletter, you get to be empowered to put what you want in it, and it's more focused toward community events instead of just news.
Moore: People want to work with you on that newsletter in Elkins — you're looking for help.
Smith: Yes. It's always been an entirely volunteer situation, but all the volunteers that were involved have had to step away because of family and work obligations. So right now it's just one person — me. We publish our newsletter through three different avenues. We do a print newsletter that we distribute around town to various restaurants and businesses. We also have an e-newsletter that goes out via email. And we put the articles and the ads on our website.
Moore: What are ways that a newsletter like this can fill the gaps of local news?
Smith: We have a community calendar that usually takes up two of the pages. People say it's really helpful to have it all together — we put the weekly stuff with the special events all together. Anyone that wants to get involved can help make a community more informed, use their skills to support a rural community and maybe even learn how to do it for themselves in their own small community.
Moore: You're an army of one doing this right now. What are some specific, concrete ways that people can help you keep this going and help it grow?
Smith: We've grown quite a bit. We now have — and this may sound small, but we are a small community — about 300 to 400 subscribers for each of our three distribution channels. We're outgrowing some of our accounts. Microsoft Publisher is going away, so we're having to switch to Canva for the print version, and we're also switching to MailerLite from Mailchimp. What we need help with is laying out the newsletter in Canva every month, putting together the e-newsletter every month and putting things on our website — we use WordPress. And a one-time thing we could use help with is making social graphics for the holidays. Those cute ones that say "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year" — I've never had time to sit down and make those for the year. If anyone has the skills to do that in Canva, that would be fantastic. Helping with the production side is where we're really needing help right now. I do most of the writing — in fact, pretty much all of the writing — but where my skill set is lacking is the production side.
Moore: What have you heard from subscribers, people who value the work that you do with this newsletter?
Smith: They say they love knowing about the community events and especially having it all in one place. We're in a very information-driven society, but because we've become multi-channel, it's all over the place. People say, "Well, just shut down the print side, it'll be a lot easier for you." But we have a digital divide in our community, and we have a lot of people that don't have Facebook, don't have social media, don't do email. So the print is very valuable to them. It's very popular at the senior center — and I've got to give a shout-out to the senior center. They help fold it, because our newsletter is printed on 11-by-17 paper and then folded, and we have inserts. They do that for us and distribute it around town. It's a valuable community resource.
Moore: I also think there's something really valuable about the physical, tactile nature of a newsletter — you have something to grab, something to hold on to, something to thumb through. There's a value in taking a moment away from a screen to just learn more about the people around you.
Smith: In our community calendar, we purposely make that our insert. We try to do the community calendar as the 8½-by-11 insert, because you can take it out and put it on your fridge. So every time I type it up, I always think someone's going to put this on their fridge.
Moore: For other communities out there who are thinking about doing this — maybe Tontitown is thinking about doing this — what are some tips or ideas for folks who are just looking for an excuse to do it?
Smith: At the risk of stealing from Nike, just do it. Get it started. You don't have to start the way we did — we kind of exploded and made it a lot of work for ourselves, which is why we're needing help. If you can't do the print, that's fine. Start with an e-newsletter, start with a blog. I would really encourage just learning how to gather information, learning about accuracy, ethics, stuff like that. Just get people together that have a like mind and are willing and able to do it.
Jamie Smith is the communications director for Elkins Community Network. She joined me earlier this week in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio. Here is a link to the February newsletter and how you can connect with Jamie.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
