DeWitt, Iowa, is home to nearly 5,500 people, almost 45% of whom are age 45 or older. The residents may grow corn, hay, and soybeans while raising cattle and hogs on the abundant farmland surrounding the community. They may work in one of the town’s 16 manufacturing operations, the largest of which produces glass that is shipped around the world. Or they may operate one of DeWitt’s small businesses, such as the popular Urban Eats restaurant on the city’s main downtown corridor.
That’s where I met Nancy and Trevis Mayfield for lunch in mid-March as families and workers busily filled the two-room café. The Mayfields own and operate seven Iowa weekly newspapers, most of them in the eastern part of the state. The DeWitt Observer is one of their publications.
The fact that Dewitt, which sits about 70 miles northeast of Iowa City, still has its own local newspaper is worth noting. Northwestern University’s Medill School‘s Local News Initiative reports that 206 out of 3,143 counties across the country lack a local news source. Another 1,561 of those 3,143 counties have only one local source. Known euphemistically as “news deserts,” these communities and the 55 million people they represent face a challenge: Where do their citizens go for reliable information?
“The Mayfields own and operate seven Iowa weekly newspapers, most of them in the eastern part of the state.”
The Mayfields answer that question through practicing locally focused journalism, the kind that concentrates on the people, neighborhoods, and issues that impact a community. “We want honest, independent facts so the public can make informed decisions,” says Nancy, who previously worked as a reporter and freelance writer and taught journalism before she and Trevis started buying Iowa newspapers a decade ago. For the previous 20 years, Trevis had been either a publisher of a newspaper or chief operating officer for a chain of small-town papers, the latest of which was in Dixon, Illinois. The couple met at Indiana State University, whose team name — the Sycamores — provided the Mayfields the title for their company: Sycamore Media.
Along with DeWitt, the Mayfields own weekly newspapers across eastern or southeastern Iowa: the Maquoketa Sentinel-Press, the Bellevue Herald-Leader, the Monticello Express, the Wapello Morning Sun, the Des Moines County News, and the Van Buren County Register. Sycamore Media also publishes two weekly shoppers and two glossy agricultural magazines.
According to the Mayfields, the newspapers collectively reach 11,300 people per week. The smallest one circulates via mail to under 1,000 subscribers, while 2,225 people receive the largest weekly. All the papers are delivered through the mail. The shoppers reach about 16,700 readers.
The pair concede they are not getting rich practicing community journalism, but their children are grown and the Mayfields say they still make a good living. Their papers are solidly profitable, they report, although Trevis cautions that: “We value the product and the mission over money.”
“By concentrating on providing readers honest, independent facts, the Mayfields are supporting a key building block of a healthy democracy.”
That last statement is crucial. Commitment to the product and mission separates owners like the Mayfields from those who buy newspapers to simply make money, even if that means stripping the papers down to their barest assets, or to promote some ideological agenda. By concentrating on providing readers honest, independent facts, the Mayfields are supporting a key building block of a healthy democracy. This work is more than just an interesting undertaking of two journalists.
Sycamore’s secret sauce
Publishing reliable sources of information and pursuing the mission of journalism, however, has become a difficult proposition. That’s primarily because of a collapse of the business model that for-profit journalism organizations relied upon for decades. They largely depended upon revenues from advertising and subscriptions. But as the internet emerged in the 1990s, digitally savvy operations like Craigslist scooped up the lucrative classified ads that padded the bottom line of once-profitable newspapers. Advertising further flocked to social media platforms, while many journalism organizations provided their print reports on the internet for free.
Soon, newspaper annual profit margins of 15% to 20% went the way of black-and-white television sets. And media organizations, especially newspapers, have scrambled over the last two decades to survive as for-profit entities. Some have become non-profit publications, which we will feature in future case studies of American newspapers.
The Mayfields understand these pressures and acknowledge their entrepreneurial efforts have been harder than the couple expected. The task has been difficult for more than financial reasons, too. For one thing, attracting experienced reporters or even recent journalism school graduates to small, rural communities is not easy. The Mayfields have developed a work-around: They hire residents of the communities they serve and train them to become journalists. Some work full time, others are part time. All together Sycamore Media employs 40 people.
Kelly Gerlach serves as executive editor of all the papers and chairs weekly budget or planning meetings for the Maquoketa Sentinel Press and DeWitt Observer. When needed, she participates via Zoom in planning meetings in the company’s other newsrooms.
An English major who edited her community college’s newspaper, Gerlach has been with the Maquoketa paper since September 11, 2001. The Eastern Iowa native has covered school boards and city councils, written feature stories, requested public records, and performed other journalistic essentials that inform communities and help them stay connected. That’s the most important part of community journalism, Gerlach says.
She and the Mayfields often employ people who want a second career or have an interest in and the time to write about their communities – all while developing their journalism skills. One reporter, for example, is a retired teacher. Another is a senior citizen who loves covering his community.
Finding people to do this work can be challenging, Gerlach says. But once they are discovered, which may be through a community event a paper is covering, the new hires go through sessions on how to develop sources, conduct interviews, and write the beginning of a story. The training also involves role-playing, plus focusing on the key elements of a story.
“The Mayfields have developed a work-around: They hire residents of the communities they serve and train them to become journalists.”
Some reporters like Gerlach have been with Sycamore Media for a decade. Others have retired or gone on to other jobs. Whatever their tenure, the Mayfields try to develop a sense of teamwork. As one example, Trevis says, they explain decisions to the staff so everyone understands an action, such as why the company sued a school board to gain access to meeting records.
In some communities, such as Bellevue, the newspaper only has one reporter. So, Nancy occasionally travels to help with coverage. The Mayfields also meet regularly via Zoom with their reporters to discuss stories. They teach them how to attend and cover local board meetings. Along with a reporter, they sometimes view recorded sessions of a town’s city council, school board, or some other public agency. Then, they and the local reporter discuss what might make for the best follow-up stories or questions. Trevis acknowledges this solution is not the best practice, so he calls it the “best bad option.”
The Mayfields emphasize the importance of making relationships in the community if a citizen-journalist lacks them. That way, the reporter can earn the trust of the people they are covering.
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Still, the training emphasizes being objective and seeking all sides of a story, even if that means creating tension within a relationship. And Sycamore Media has not been shy about pressing hard to get accurate records and information for the citizens they serve.
The organization won a lawsuit that resulted in the DeWitt school board acknowledging trustees had conducted a meeting in secret about pulling books from classrooms. The Mayfields said they tried to resolve the case outside of court, but they persisted and prevailed. The suit led to meetings being held in public and the election of three new trustees.
This result is precisely why local journalism matters. Without Sycamore Media and other community-based media organizations pressing to get to the truth of a matter, citizens in big and small towns are likely to lack an accurate picture of what their elected officials are doing on their behalf. That includes knowing how those leaders use taxpayers’ dollars.
Focusing on local matters as opposed to the ever-present national news is how organizations like Sycamore Media provide their readers unique, unduplicated reporting. During one week this spring, the DeWitt Observer featured stories about a local author, a community art fair, and the bills that survived in the 2025 Iowa Legislature. The edition also contained photos of students preparing meals for people in need. There was ample coverage of local sports and obituaries, and a column by an Iowa journalist on how free speech includes the right to criticize a government.
“Without Sycamore Media and other community-based media organizations pressing to get to the truth of a matter, citizens in big and small towns are likely to lack an accurate picture of what their elected officials are doing on their behalf. ”
In other words, the newspaper published the type of news and information that impact DeWitt residents or to which readers can relate. They may have been at one of those sporting events, known one of the people who passed away, or had a child or grandchild in one of the photos.
The connection between readers and their newspaper is a primary reason that a 2024 Pew-Knight Initiative report found local journalism the most trusted form of media. A national newspaper cannot have that kind of relationship. But the Sycamore Media team provides information that no one else can supply in a town like DeWitt. That’s why the couple emphasize their products contain local reporting and advertising or reports from a state news agency that impact one of their communities.
Another workaround, this one to bolster Sycamore’s revenues, is the publication of two glossy agricultural magazines. Both are named the Eastern Iowa Farmer, but they serve different counties (eight in all). The twice-yearly journals draw pages of ads from local farm-related businesses and organizations.
In its spring 2025 edition, the Eastern Iowa Farmer that covers Clinton, Jackson, and Jones counties featured articles from Nancy Mayfield and local contributors. The topics ranged from Congress’ work on renewing the omnibus farm bill to the role of women in Eastern Iowa’s agricultural education to debates over wind energy versus land rights. The revenues help the Mayfields offset the costs of running their newspapers.
Arrangements like these are an innovative way to provide a specialized service while supporting the mission of daily journalism. Finding additional revenue sources is key. Maintaining the bottom line is the biggest challenge local newspapers face now with their upended business model.
The obstacles
Sycamore Media faces other hurdles, too. Trevis laments that people often equate community journalism with national journalism. They lump Sycamore Media’s reporters in with the Big Foot correspondents in Washington and New York, who surveys say people trust the least. And some customers associate the papers with the political left, although the Mayfields do quietly receive thank-you notes from some readers. Similarly, Trevis says, local readers don’t always appreciate the difference between news and opinion.
“Trevis laments that people often equate community journalism with national journalism.”
To navigate through any confusion, the Sycamore team tells readers what they do and why they do it. For example, Trevis, who writes the editorials in Sycamore’s papers, explains to readers when he meets with them how editorial pages provide readers a place to debate issues that affect their communities. And from time to time, he writes a column explaining the purpose of the editorial page in the newspaper, differentiating the role of opinion pages from news coverage. He admits to thinking about dropping opinion pieces, but he knows they are part of a public square for the communities Sycamore serves.
Along with the shifting business model, rapid changes challenge the daily news business elsewhere. None more so than the emergence of new forms of media. Influencers and content creators post podcasts, interviews, video commentary, and their own writing to share their views on everything from politics to health to fashion to sports.
The pace of change is acutely felt in small-town papers, where an all-hands-on-deck mentality is required. The Mayfields work on creating a culture where adapting to change – and adapting quickly – is a way of life.
Part of the shifting environment is the simple cost of doing business. Postal rate hikes make it more expensive for Sycamore to deliver its papers. As in most industries, rising health insurance costs pressure the company’s finances. The Mayfields also worry about the effects any tariffs may have on the local economies of their communities. In turn, that could impact their newspapers.
“The pace of change is acutely felt in small-town papers, where an all-hands-on-deck mentality is required.”
Sycamore Media faces an aging population, too. The communities in which its papers operate are filled with small-town Americana: feed stores, schools, Main Street businesses, and hospitals. But small markets lack a growing population and that is true with the communities where Sycamore Media operates. The towns are losing population or barely holding onto their size.
Attacks on the integrity of the press and a politicized environment also have made it harder for Sycamore’s journalists to perform their work. (The same is true for Sycamore’s sales representatives, Trevis reports.) As one example, elected state leaders now often bypass Sycamore’s reporters. The officials don’t talk to local reporters as much, which is a reality bigger papers likewise face.
“[The Mayfields] want to develop a sustainable model so they are not the last people doing this business in these markets.”
Still, the Mayfields say, they are committed to making their enterprise work. The couple may have to fix toilets and clean bathrooms along with publishing newspapers. But they want to develop a sustainable model so they are not the last people doing this business in these markets. “Someone has to succeed here, or no one will,” Trevis concluded as lunch wrapped up.
