Support our newsroom
One hundred percent of it goes to the newsroom. Here is exactly what that means, and why we ask.
We sell copies and subscriptions essentially at cost. Your subscription pays to print your paper and mail it to you — at the end of a term we might come out a few dollars ahead on the exchange, or a few dollars behind. Everything else we do is funded by advertising.
Not a subscriber yet? Start with a subscription — the Tip Jar is for readers who want to do something extra.
What pays for the reporting is local small town advertising. It always has, and not by a little — roughly three quarters of everything a weekly newspaper takes in comes from businesses buying advertisements. So how much we sell in a given week is what decides how deeply we can cover local news. If advertising slows down, it is never our goal to walk away from a local news story because of a lack of finances, but it can happen. That is not an editorial choice. It is arithmetic, and almost no reader has ever been told it.
A newsroom “financial tip” skips all of that. It goes straight to the newsroom: the gas, the mileage, and the hours it takes to put a person in a chair at a meeting, behind a camera at a ballgame, and across the table from whoever the next community feature turns out to be.
What that looks like here
We are your most in-depth coverage of local Williams County and Fulton County news.
Meetings
Both county commissions, more than a dozen city and village councils, more than a dozen school boards and 24 townships — plus the fair board, port authority and health board. One or two meetings a month each, whether or not anything is on the agenda.
Sports
Every school, every team, every level, win or lose. If a coach or parent sends it, it runs.
Obituaries
About a dozen a week, free, no word limit, kept on file at our office and area historical societies.
The paper
40 to 60 pages a week, every page in full color, in your mailbox Wednesday and online the moment a story is done.
What a tip does
| $5 | Gas to a meeting in the next town over. |
| $25 | Round-trip gas to an event, and the time to write it up. |
| $50 | Helps cover one small story — the drive out, the time there, the write-up. |
| $100 | Helps cover a larger story, start to finish. |
| $500 | Two weeks of a part-time writer. |
| $1,000 | A month of a part-time writer. |
| $5,000 | Five months of a part-time writer. |
| $10,000 | Most of a year for one part-time writer — a whole beat we could not otherwise cover. |
Nothing is expected and no amount is too small. A five dollar tip and a five thousand dollar one do the same job, at different sizes: they put a person in a chair at a meeting.
Why we are asking
What postage and paper did to us, the hometown papers this area has already lost, and the $4 million in obituaries we never charged for.
Read the full story →
What has happened to our costs
Every figure below is public and checkable.
73%
Compounded rise in periodicals postage since 2021 — the mail class that carries this paper to your box.
Nearly 2×
What newsprint costs against 2020. Newsprint alone is about 70% of a printing bill.
9.3%
This July’s postal increase on newspapers mailed inside their own county — which is most of you.
6
Paper increases in ten months, October to August. About one every seven weeks.
Postage: National Newspaper Association and the News/Media Alliance, on the USPS increase effective July 12, 2026 — periodicals took the steepest increase of any class of mail. Newsprint: American Community Media, January 2026. Paper increase count as published in this newspaper, August 24, 2026.
We absorbed these increases for years before raising the subscription price once, in February 2026, for the first time since before COVID. We asked our communities first, and though the price increase was not well loved, the majority said to raise it so detailed local community news coverage could go forward. The alternative on the table that day was cutting news coverage and page count by a quarter. We chose the price.
“Gas comes back down. Paper does not. In ten months I have not once opened a letter telling me newsprint got cheaper.”
— Forrest R. Church, Publisher, from the Aug. 24, 2026 column
And the driving is real. Picture sitting at a gas station in Edon, which is basically Indiana, when a story breaks in Swanton, which is basically Toledo. Williams and Fulton Counties cover a lot of ground, and every meeting, ballgame, ribbon cutting and fire scene means somebody from this team putting miles on a vehicle to get there and back. That is not a figure of speech. It is a line item.
And what we have to cover it with
This is the part readers do not see.
Three quarters of our revenue has to come from advertising — sold here, in the small farm villages we live in. Not in Toledo. Not online to somebody in another state. On these Main Streets, to the businesses that are still standing.
Every small town had a car dealership, a grocery store, a hardware store, a furniture store. Those were the advertisers that carried papers like ours for a century. In small towns they closed, and nothing the same size replaced them. That is not a local story. It is the same arithmetic that has taken some 3,500 American newspapers off the map since 2005.
When a town loses its newspaper, the hole is bigger than the paper. Nobody sits in the back row at the council meeting, so what gets decided there gets decided quietly. The ballgame is over the moment it ends, and an obituary lasts only as long as a funeral home keeps the web page up.
It is not a far-away story either. Within about an hour’s drive, these hometown newspapers are gone — closed for various reasons, not all of them financial:
- Archbold Buckeye
Archbold · closed June 2025 after 120 years - Fulton County Expositor
Wauseon · merged away - Swanton Enterprise
Swanton · merged away - Delta Atlas
Delta - Fayette Review
Fayette
- Montpelier Leader Enterprise
Montpelier - Hicksville Tribune
Hicksville - Antwerp Bee Argus
Antwerp - State Line Observer
Morenci, Mich. - Hamilton News
Hamilton, Ind.
Three more — The Advance Reporter, The Edon Commercial and The Wauseon Reporter — were our own, folded into The Village Reporter. When towns lost their hometown newspaper, the oldest business in town often closed with it.
3,500
American newspapers lost since 2005 — almost 40% of all of them. Most of last year’s closures were small, family-owned papers.
50 million
People now living in counties with one local news source left, or none at all.
1870s
How far back these newspapers trace, under a long string of names and mergers. Still here.
Newspaper losses and news desert population: Medill State of Local News Report 2025, Northwestern University, October 2025.
Has government stepped in? Mostly not. Bills to help local newsrooms have been proposed in Congress for years without passing. A handful of states have started their own programs. Ohio is not one of them.
As of fall 2026. Federal: the Community News and Small Business Support Act, Congress.gov. State programs to date include New York and Illinois.
So when someone asks why a tip jar exists at a family-owned newspaper, that is the honest answer. Costs went up in every direction at once, and the pool of local businesses we can ask to cover it is smaller than it has ever been. We are not asking readers to replace advertising. We are asking, if you are able and if you want to, for help holding the line on coverage while we go sell it.
Why we call it a tip
Tipping has become a familiar part of an ordinary day. A screen turns around at the coffee counter and at the sandwich shop and asks the question before you have taken the first sip.
We would suggest that the newsroom covering your school board, your ballgames, your elections and your neighbors’ obituaries can reasonably ask the same — with one difference. We will tell you exactly where the money goes, down to the tank of gas.
What your support keeps free
Obituaries run free here — in print, online and on social media, with no word limit, and archived at our office, the Northwest Ohio Historical Societies and area college libraries. So do notices and events from local schools, clubs and community organizations. Most newspapers charge for obituaries. Across the country a printed obituary averages about $500; small-town papers commonly charge $200 to $400, and the nearest daily to us starts at about $200. We run about a dozen a week at no charge, and have since 2001. At what most newspapers charge, that adds up to more than $4 million over 25 years. That has been the arrangement between this paper and these communities since the 1870s, and it still is. Though we are a secular business, we consider this our public ministry. Advertising has always paid for it. A tip helps make sure it keeps paying for it.
Obituary pricing: Tributes.com, Average Cost of an Obituary, July 2025; Legacy.com Help Center, How Much Does an Obituary Cost, July 2026; The Blade obituary portal, Toledo, 2026.
Leave a tip
100% goes to the newsroom.
Pick an amount
Larger amounts
Each amount goes straight to a secure checkout for that amount.
Other amount
Any amount from $5 to $10,000. You type it on the next screen.
How often
This is a one-time tip. Nothing repeats. A monthly option is coming.
A tip is voluntary, not tax-deductible, and gives no say in what we cover. You will get a receipt by email. If you left your name, Forrest writes you a thank-you. No donor wall, no phone call. Card processed securely by Stripe.
Rather mail a check?
Checks are welcome. Make them out to The Village Reporter and mail to 115 Broad Street, Montpelier, Ohio 43543.
Questions? Write me directly at publisher@thevillagereporter.com.
A tip is voluntary. It buys no perks, no special access, and no say in what we cover. The Village Reporter is a family-owned business, not a charity, so a tip is not tax-deductible.
Leave a tip
100% goes to the newsroom. Each amount goes straight to a secure checkout for that amount.
Checks are welcome. Make them out to The Village Reporter and mail to 115 Broad Street, Montpelier, Ohio 43543.