MANSFIELD — An idea conceived by Mansfield businessman Carl Fernyak, shepherded by second-generation publisher Jay Allred, and implemented by a staff of passionate young adults, celebrates its five-year anniversary today.
Richland Source, Richland County’s lone online-only news agency, published for the first time on June 18, 2013. Employees celebrated the milestone with a cookout and reflection on Monday.
“I just felt that local news was not representing our community, it was mostly just crime and problems,” Fernyak said. “On a Leadership Unlimited field trip, we asked local businesses what their largest challenges were, and they said negative press was very problematic.
“So it became a mission to change the conversation about our awesome community, which has worked.”
Allred, a Montana native who came to town when his father was tabbed publisher if the News Journal in 1990, took over as publisher at Richland Source just a few weeks before the site launched in 2013.
“I trusted Carl’s leadership and his motives. Richland Source, even though it had not launched yet, had a clear reason to exist,” Allred said. “We were here to change the conversation about Mansfield and Richland County by reporting the whole story of our community. We were different, and that was crucial.
“There are probably fewer than 200 sites like Richland Source anywhere in the country at this point, so in a sense we are really inventing a new category. That’s always challenging.”
Allred said he feels best about what the site has accomplished.
“When readers tell me that they read us every day, and that we’ve changed their perception about the place in which they live, that makes me feel the best about what we’ve done,” he said. “We don’t make people happy every day — you’ll get that when your job is to tell the truth — but we’re helping people understand their community in a more complete way.
“And when they tell us that, we know we’re on the right track.”
The company’s commitment to solutions journalism has sparked the interest of the local business community, too. Earlier this spring, 22 local agencies and one national entity pledged a total of $75,000 in support of Richland’s Source’s two solutions journalism projects to run over the next year, Gray Matters and Rising from Rust.
That financial endorsement was earned through the staff’s expertise on reporting in this discipline.
On Dec. 18, 2016, reporter Brittany Schock’s series on Infant Mortality was chosen the No. 1 solutions journalism story in the nation by the Solutions Journalism Network. The New York Times recognized another solutions journalism piece, When the River Rises, for national attention.
Richland Source has been selected to present its storytelling methods before national journalism programs in both New York City and Chicago over the past 14 months.
At the end of 2016, the Richland Area Chamber of Commerce tabbed Richland Source as the Small Business of the Year. In May of 2016 the Columbia Journalism Review touted the company’s growth, which doubled from 2015 to 2016, and tripled from 2015 through 2017.
Since its inception, Richland Source has expanded three times, sprouting Crawford Source, Ashland Source and purchasing Knox Pages — all in just five years. The company has been featured in national stories by the Nieman Lab and the PBS site Media Shift.
Reporter Emily Dech, an Ontario graduate, is the longest tenured member of the newsroom. She was hired right out of Ohio State and began her reporting career leading up to the initial launch.
“I’ve always appreciated how the company has endeavored to shine a light on the positives in Richland and surrounding counties,” Dech said. “I’m a sucker for human interest pieces — they’re my favorite stories to write. Although it’s hard to narrow it down, some of my favorites include the feature I wrote on my former cross country and track coach Phil Giffin, a story about a man who fixed up a house for his mom, and a piece about a family who helped save a man’s life.
“These are the stories that remind me what a great community we have.”
Support from readers and the community at-large has been overwhelming, and carries with it a responsibility Allred said the company embraces.
“Richland Source will continue to provide tightly focused, solutions-oriented, local news coverage for any area that we serve,” the publisher said. “We are always evolving to fit the medium. Podcasting, video, newsletters … The business is always changing and we’ll change with it.”
