2024 will mark the start of a significant new era in our company’s history.
In January, the Shawnee Mission Post and the Blue Valley Post will merge operations and relaunch under a new name: the Johnson County Post.
At the same time, we’ll expand our footprint, adding the city of Olathe and the Olathe School District to our mix — a significant step toward our vision of providing dependable community coverage across the county.
Why the change?
Johnson County is the most populous, most prosperous and fastest growing county in Kansas — and we believe all of its communities deserve a robust, independent source for local news. Our mission is to build a fully functional news gathering institution that can serve Johnson County not just today, but for the next half century and beyond.
Becoming the Johnson County Post is a move with that ultimate goal in mind.
Merging into a single publication offers not only operational efficiencies but also the chance to break down barriers in our newsroom. You’ll still see all the “play-by-play” coverage of city and county government that we’ve provided since our founding back in 2010. But you can also expect more collaboration among our reporters and deeper exploration of issues that are affecting neighborhoods across the county — from property taxes and housing to school policy and redevelopment.
We will remain committed to our “Readers First” philosophy, which prioritizes making it quick and easy to get caught up; focusing on facts, not opinions; and emphasizing the topics our readers care about the most. But we will also be able to go deeper, providing more context on the trends impacting your community.
How will this impact you?
Based on feedback we’ve gotten from thousands of readers through focus groups, surveys and messages over the past several years, we anticipate this move will be welcome news to the vast majority of you all.
But we also understand that any change can be difficult, so we want to give everyone ample notice so that we can field your questions and answer as many as possible before the transition actually goes into effect.
For starters, here a few items we anticipate will be of interest to regular readers and subscribers:
- Subscription pricing will stay at $8.50/month or $85/year. Readers with existing subscriptions to the Shawnee Mission Post or the Blue Valley Post will have those subscriptions migrated over to a corresponding Johnson County Post subscription. Your billing cycle will not be impacted by the migration to Johnson County Post accounts. All monthly subscribers will be charged $8.50 each month. Annual subscribers will continue to be charged $85 per year.
- Our noon newsletter will feature news from across the county. We’ll be merging our noon newsletter, Today’s Headlines, into a single edition. The new Today’s Headlines will pull in the latest news from across the county, not just the Shawnee Mission area or the Blue Valley area.
- Out Front will be tailored to highlight the biggest news from your neck of the woods. Paid subscribers will start their day with a version of Out Front, our curated morning newsletter, tailored to the part of Johnson County they call home. We’ll have one version of Out Front for residents of the Shawnee Mission and De Soto areas and another version for residents of the Blue Valley and Olathe areas. Our goal is to ensure subscribers can get caught up quickly on the news that most directly impacts their neighborhood and community.
Have other questions? Send them to me at publisher@shawneemissionpost.com and we’ll get you a response!
The future of local news
It’s no secret that the business model that powered community news coverage for decades and decades has been in precipitous decline over the past 20 years. The “information wants to be free” ethos of the early internet trained people to no longer expect to pay for news, as has been the norm for more than 100 years through subscriptions to printed newspapers.
Internet giants like Facebook built platforms that sucked up millions of dollars in local ad revenue that used to go to community publications. All of this left local newsrooms flailing, trying to cover more and more with fewer and fewer resources.
Amid all the signs of decline in the industry, we’re proud to be an example of “what could be” in local media. As Harvard’s Neiman Lab and NPR’s Morning Edition have noted, thousands of readers have stepped up to support us through digital subscriptions and given us the foundation to build something durable.
Still, we’ve got a lot of growing left to do if we want to give Johnson County the full coverage it deserves. Our newsroom currently has six employees. Our ultimate goal is to have at least twice as many people out there covering Johnson County.
To the more than 7,200 of you who already subscribe, thank you for helping us get to this point.
If you haven’t stepped up to help fund local news in your community yet, we hope you’ll take a moment and sign up for a trial subscription today. It’s just $1 for your first month. (We think you’ll see why so many Johnson Countians love what we do — but if you decide it’s not for you, we make it easy to cancel).
Thank you for your support of truly local news here in Johnson County. We’re committed to bringing you truly local news here in Johnson County — today and for years to come!
