Q&A with Paul Keane

Paul Keane began his journalism career working for his hometown newspaper in Mesquite, Texas, covering local sporting events. He was 14 years old.

He freelanced for numerous papers and radio stations during high school and early in his college career. He graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and also met the woman who would become his wife, Doris.

He continued to work in sports departments throughout Texas and Alabama before moving into management in 2000 as the general manager of The Clanton (Ala.) Advertiser. He worked with Boone Newspapers through 2003 before taking a job with Bolton Publications to run and manage The Wayne County (Miss.) News. He took over that position in January 2004 and has remained there since.

In 2015, he and his wife purchased the newspaper from Bolton Publications. In 2019, the couple purchased The Franklin Advocate in Meadville, Miss.

In an exclusive Q&A with the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics, Paul Keane shares his insights on the future of journalism, public relations, and the emergence of artificial intelligence.

Q1: What are the primary challenges that your news organization is dealing with and how are you dealing with those challenges?

A: There's a lot of challenges. Obviously, revenue is the biggest challenge. Just having enough to provide a good product is a challenge. And we've diversified. We're much more than a print edition. We are a live-game broadcast, live-stream organization and we sell commercials around that.

We have an indoor digital billboard network where we have flat screens all over the county at restaurants, doctors’ offices, all kinds of places, the hospital with the emergency waiting room and we sell ads on that. We're just trying to diversify and throw enough mud on the wall. Hopefully enough of it sticks to where we can keep going.

Another challenge is, and I have to say this delicately,  social media has created a whole generation more or less of people who just read the headlines and that's it.

And with clickbait culture, people aren't getting properly informed. They're barely getting any of the story. You don't have people that will go ahead and click on it and read all the way through. If you notice, I know a lot of people aren't fans of Fox News, but I enjoy their app on my phone because It tells you how many minutes it should take to read the story. And they're keeping them in the three- to five-minute range.

I mean, if you get on X, everybody just seems to be part of the herd following along when they should be forming their own decisions. Get information, get both sides of the story. Am I a fan of CNN? No, but do I follow them? Yeah, because it gives us both sides, and newspaper journalists have always tried to present both sides. Well, now we're pushing that news out to people who don't want both sides. They just want one side, which is their side. And there are always three sides to any story. Your side, my side, and the truth. And somehow, hopefully, newspapers fall in that middle as close to the truth as possible. But people don't necessarily want that anymore because they don't want to think independently. I mean, I hate to say that, but it's the truth.

They just want to jump on one side. And a great example here at the paper. We had our representative in the state House of Representatives for I guess eight or 12 years, and she and I were on totally opposite ends of the political spectrum. I mean, we just weren't in agreement. But we could sit down and agree to disagree and then find out where we had common ground, and we were able to get things done for the community. 

Q2: What are you doing in your organization to keep the confidence in your organization up? 

A: I slightly disagree with your statement about losing confidence. I think that's true with larger media companies. But with the smaller ones like ours, I'm not so sure that they're losing confidence. However,  a lot of our industry's problems can be solved if they would just go out and mingle with the public.

So many of us now, and I'm going to pick on the large corporations, they're so far removed from the communities that people have lost confidence and they don't care. But I know if I write a story that is controversial or edgy, I know that whenever I go to the grocery store, a couple of people are going to jump on me about it.

But you have to get to the point where the people say, well, I didn't like what you wrote, but at least you were fair. And If you don't have your finger on the pulse of the community, I think that's where you start losing confidence. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. That thought has served me well. And I think you see that with papers like Wyatt Emmerich, who owns almost 25 papers across the state. His people at each location are invested in the community. And so people have confidence in their product because they know you care and that you're doing what you feel is best for the community. 

I've heard of newspapers where you walk in the front door in the foyer, there's three phones. And if you want to advertise, you call this phone. If you want to subscribe, you pick up this phone. And if you want to submit a story, you pick up this phone. And it goes to a call center that's like three states away. Well, you don't even interact with a human being. I mean you do, but it's on the phone. What are you telling your community? You're telling your community we don't care enough about you to actually have a living, breathing person to work with you in that office. Now there are people there, but they're behind closed doors way back. What kind of message are you sending? 

Q3: Editors and journalists are working more closely with businesses. Are you concerned about this collaboration of editors and journalists with businesses? 

A: That's a tough one. You’ve got to have the businesses to keep your business afloat. I think you can cross the line there. For example, a business wants me to do a story about their ribbon cutting or their grand opening. And I say, well, I've got a restaurant here that has been a huge advertiser every year since we got here in 2004. How am I going to look that guy in the eye and say, hey, I did this free for your competitor but I ain't doing it for you? And a lot of times businesses will understand that. They don't like it, but they'll understand it and go ahead and buy an ad. A lot of our businesses want us to do stories about a fundraiser that they're doing or a donation that they're giving, things of that nature.

It's a balancing act, and I think you can go too far if they're trying to push their agenda or if they come in and say, well, don't run this story or I'm going to pull my ads. Well, pull your ads then. Okay? We had a business the first two years I was here. We would do a Martin Luther King Day page. And we had a business that sent word to me through our sales rep to your boss that if he runs another Martin Luther King Day page like that I'll never advertise with him again. The sales rep said, what do I do?

I said, you better sell him as many ads as you can between now and next Martin Luther King Day because he ain't going to advertise after Martin Luther King Day next year. And you know what? We ran another Martin Luther King Day page and he never advertised with us again. So yeah, I mean it's a balancing act. I mean, you’ve got to be very careful. And again, it gets back to being in your community. 

Everything gets back to being active in your community. And if you're not active, then you don't know how to read the tea leaves, and that's where you get in trouble. 

Q4: How do you feel about AI affecting the news media?

A: We don't use AI. And I will be honest with you, I started in this business in 1978. One reason that we don't use AI is because we're so short staffed. I don't have time to learn enough about it to utilize it the way that it needs to be utilized. I think it can be a very useful tool. 

It's a tool. It's another tool in your belt to utilize. The problem is, and I get back to the generational thing where people are just looking for clickbait and all they do is the headlines. Well, as a journalist all of a sudden I can see where you would rely on AI to basically do your job, and that's a problem because that's another thing that separates you from the community. Because AI is not walking the streets of Waynesboro, Mississippi. AI is not at that softball game that I'm going to tonight. And I think we have to walk a fine line because AI could become a crutch that cripples some journalists if they're not careful. 

Q5: What is something that your organization has done that you personally feel very proud of?

A: We've got a very dedicated staff. We're small in number, but I can go back through the whole 21 years that we've been here running this thing. And we've had a lot of good staff members, and the number one thing that I'm most proud of is our staff. 

We were mocked for starting audio broadcasts, live audio broadcasts of baseball, football, softball. A lot of people said you shouldn't be doing it. And it's been very successful for us. There are a lot of plaques on the wall, and a lot of those are for what we've done with our broadcast. And it's really made us multimedia instead of just a newspaper. And we've had a lot of success and now it's funny because we'll also broadcast middle school football games, and the five middle schools here in the county, they play each other and the top two teams go and play in a championship game. The coaches will get mad if we haven't videoed or if we haven't broadcast enough of their opponents’ games.

Q6: Is there something journalism schools are not teaching that you wish they would teach?

I've been beating this drum about being involved in the community.  Be involved. Some of my best stories over my career have come from being in the grocery store, being at church, going to a ballgame. I got a lot of good story tips while I'm at a ballgame because they'll corner you up and say, "Hey man, you need to do a story about this." 

With AI now, I think a lot of that connection is lost. We know that you're fresh out of J school and as a newspaper owner, I know that if I can get a year out of you before you move on, then I've been a success. If I can get two years out of you, it's great. 

But no matter where you're at, get involved, immerse yourself, don't keep an arms distance between yourself and the community that you're reporting on. I see so many new graduates out of J school who say,  “I'm going to be the next Woodward and Bernstein.” Well, you're probably not going to be the next Woodward and Bernstein. 

But you can be pretty good and you can make some really, really good friends that will stick with you. We've got friends here in Waynesboro, as well as in Louisville, Mississippi, Fairhope, Alabama, Robertsdale, Alabama, Clanton, Alabama,  Dallas, Rowlett, Texas, Rockwall, San Marcos, and San Angelo. And we've got friends there because we get involved. 

Just be one of the community members and get involved. They'll give you a whole lot better story if you blend in. Don’t go in a room thinking you're the smartest person in the room. Go in there thinking you're the dumbest person in the world and you're going to be a sponge and just soak up everything you can and your stories will be a lot better. 

————————————————————————————————

Ahmer Khan is a graduate student assistant in the Overby Center. He is studying law and journalism.