Five Years and Counting

V. Hugh Lewis II

Five years ago this week, Austin Lewter and I purchased the Jimplecute to keep it from closing.

The Jimp was struggling, was in danger of losing it’s mailing permit, and closing forever after 173 years.

Today the Jimplecute is largely a “one man show,” as Austin has moved on to other projects. There are several who help – both paid and unpaid – to put the newspaper out every week. But closure could still happen without community support.

The Jimplecute does a lot of things

• – films, broadcasts, and writes stories about the government meetings (City Council, School Board, Commissioners Court, Tourism, P&Z, JEDCO)
• – prints posters, booklets, visitors guides, brochures, business cards, flyers, postcards, raffle tickets, etc, for Marion County organizations
• – promotes the accomplishments of our kids
• – gives weekly specials of local restaurants and entertainment opportunities
• – Distributes your Dollar General Weekly ad

Did you know that the Jimplecute also offers free classified ads for individual garage/estate sales and free employment ads for small businesses? We view it as a community service to help all of us continue to survive and thrive. 

The Jimp doesn’t get everything, but I get what I can. 

But the Jimplecute also needs support to continue to do all of those things. Subscriptions are $30 a year. That’s less than many people spend on coffee each week. Local businesses can advertise for as little as $60/month and promote their business in over 4,000 copies, reaching 10-12,000 individuals every month. That’s less than one meal at a local restaurant for a family of four. 

And that’s guaranteed local or locally-tied individuals seeing the ad. No fancy “metrics” or “formulas” or “geo-locating” required to reach our readers. How many ads on social media do you scroll past or hit “skip” on? How many of those are for local businesses?  How much do you spend on social media ads in the hopes your business is seen by someone local?

It only takes 10 more advertisers a month or 150 new subscribers a year to add a reporter to better cover what happens here. That means more events, government meetings, sporting events, can be covered each week. That means more is recorded for history on what happened here.

Yes, a lot more of what goes on in Marion County is posted on social media. There’s a whole lot of folks across the County posting what happens on their feeds. But unless you’re friends with those people, and then regularly interact with them, you may not see it. And, how easy is it to find one specific event on someone else’s feed from 5 or 10 years ago? Or even last year or last month? The events in the Jimplecute are there, online, and can found relatively quickly. Almost every issue of the Jimplecute from about 1955 is available online. Who can still find their “MySpace” page?

The Jimplecute is surviving. It will continue to do so for as long as possible. It’s independently, locally owned and operated. There’s no big company overseeing it. Just a guy who’s tired, but loves his community and his home and the smell of ink.

If you want to ensure the things listed near the start of this continue, consider giving the Jimplecute a call or message and subscribing or promoting your business.