A dream realized

Teri Saylor

Special to Publishers' Auxiliary

Jan 1, 2026

Passion, optimism and strong subscriber support helps a small-town newspaper build momentum

Birth announcements, engagements, weddings and obituaries all find their way into the pages of the Hooker County Tribune, the newspaper she has owned in Mullen, Nebraska, since 2008.

For her readers, seemingly little things are the big things in their lives. For Peterson, recording them is tremendously satisfying.

“I see my role as documenting the history of the town, and that means running the birth announcements, the engagements, the weddings, and the obituaries,” she says.

She publishes them free of charge.

“It must be rare that I do not charge for those because most newspapers do, and I think people often turn away from things like that,” she says.

Peterson, at 40, is living her dream. Since she was 13, she has wanted to be a newspaper publisher, and the role is everything she had hoped it would be.

She’s a hometown girl who grew up in Mullen, a tiny town in the Sandhills region of northwest Nebraska, population 465. It’s the county seat of Hooker County, where the population is 698.

“Mullen is really the only town in Hooker County besides Seneca and Whitman, which are unincorporated little crossroads,” she said. “I like to joke that we have more cows here than people.”

But cows can’t read, so that isn’t why the Tribune’s circulation, at 720, is higher than the entire county’s population.

Peterson attributes the boost to the fact that when people move away from Hooker County, they don’t cancel their subscriptions; they simply change their address, and they make up about half her subscribers.

“We say that when you're from the Nebraska Sandhills, you never get the sand out of your shoes,” she says. “Mullen is a tight-knit community, and our readers want to keep getting the paper so they can keep tabs on what's going on.”

What’s more astounding to Peterson is how the number of digital subscriptions is ticking up. She says she was surprised when she noticed she was up to 74 online subscribers and counting.

“It's so funny because I offer paid digital subscriptions, but they’re free as an add-on to your print subscription,“ she says.

She encourages readers to subscribe online, especially those who can’t wait to get their Tribune in the mail. Sometimes, out-of-county newspapers arrive late or aren’t delivered at all. And there are days when several missing issues arrive at once, after a long dry spell.

“Just recently a subscriber said the papers are always in great condition when they finally make it to her mailbox,” Peterson says. “It’s like there was an ice jam and it broke free, and they all just flowed in at once.”

The Tribune goes to press at 7 a.m. on Tuesday mornings. It’s printed at the McCook Gazette, about a two-hour drive away. After putting her kids to bed on Monday night, she puts the newspaper to bed and sends the pages to the printer.

“It’s not a bad schedule,” she says. “I think the latest I’ve stayed up is around 11:30.”

She does all the labeling and hauls the bundles to the post office and news racks herself. Single issues are also available for purchase in the newspaper office, and she sells those herself, too.

As a one-woman band, she’s become an expert at juggling, and on a recent zoom call with NNA for this profile, she stopped the interview long enough to help a customer who happened to drop in.

They come first, after all.

As a child, Peterson was a book lover who grew up in a family of newspaper readers. It was only natural that she would be drawn to journalism.

When a classified ad appeared in The Hooker County Tribune seeking someone to write high school basketball stories, her mother called Lanita Evans, who owned the paper with her husband, Russ, and asked if she would be willing to hire a junior high school student to do that. The rest is history.

As Peterson got older, she joined the staff of the Bronco Beat, her high school newspaper. She also branched out into feature writing for The Hooker County Tribune and continued writing through high school and in college at Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska, where she majored in communication with an emphasis in public relations and journalism. She graduated in 2007 and returned home where she started writing for the Tribune full time.

She had already told Evans that she dreamed of owning a small-town newspaper. She encouraged her to reach out when she was ready to retire, but she had no idea how quickly they’d take her up on her offer. About six months after her college graduation, Evans told her they were ready to step down.

It was 2008, but Peterson, at 22, was undaunted by the recession that year. She reckons that in such a small rural town, the economy had little impact on her newspaper.

She also believes she is too optimistic to fail.

“My husband and I also purchased our house that year, and looking back, it wasn’t a l great time to do any of that,” she says. “On the other hand, I’m not pessimistic at all, and I’m more of a glass-half-full type of person.”

Peterson’s husband, Dane, who was her high school sweetheart, works for the U.S. Forest Service. They have two children, and their home is attached to the newspaper.

“Being originally from here and knowing most of the people here, the learning curve wasn’t too steep,” she says. “I felt I had a lot to prove because I was so young.”

Peterson credits the former owner with mentoring her and showing her how to run a weekly newspaper.

“Lanita literally taught me everything she knew about the business,” she says.

Peterson also relied on Deb McCaslin, former owner of the Custer County Chief in Broken Bow, Nebraska, and calls her a “huge mentor, supporter and cheerleader.”

“At our state conventions, I would show up as a one-person staff, but I always felt like I was part of the Custer County Chief staff because Deb took me underneath her arm and introduced me to everyone.”

Her tabloid-sized newspaper usually averages about 12-16 pages and is printed in black and white. The Christmas issue doubles in size.

The e-edition is in color, and it’s an enticement to subscribers to get the newspaper online. Plus, it arrives in email in-boxes hours earlier than mail delivery.

“The e-edition has 74 subscribers, and to me, it is super surprising because I envisioned that the younger people would go for it, but it’s the older folks that read it because they can zoom in and make the font bigger,” she says.

She publishes an annual saturation issue that goes to every household in the county and uses it to attract more local subscribers, touting the newspaper’s popularity.

“Last month, we had 62,000 views on social media and 2,200 views on website,” she says.

In addition to publishing the newspaper, Peterson creates special publications for customers with titles like “Voices of the Sandhills” or “Trails of the West”, and they're full of stories about the history of the area and pioneers.

“I do all the layout and ad design and everything for them, put them together and print them,” she says. “That’s makes up a pretty good chunk of revenue.”

She also does custom printing and specializes in producing small batches that other printers won’t bother with. And she never charges for shipping.

Greeting cards are also popular items.

“You can order cards from online commercial printers, but you’ll have to order in lots of 20 or more,” she says. “I can print odd numbers, and there’s no minimum order. If you need exactly 33, I can print them, and if you forget someone and need just one more card printed, I can do that, too.”

When the town’s only variety store closed, she started selling office supplies, coordinating inventory with the local grocery store so their merchandise doesn’t overlap.

And, as the only newspaper in the county, she benefits from publishing public notices, which help her bottom line and readership.

She attributes her success to her ability to do small things in a big way, to punch above her weight and to stick to her small-town roots.

“I'm not a big daily newspaper, and I focus on Mullen and Hooker County News exclusively,” she says. “I don’t publish any national news unless it's affecting us.”

As for the future, Peterson doesn’t stress.

“This is my niche, and that hasn’t changed in 18 years,” she says. “I’m still able to pay myself, we continue to evolve with the times, and I maintain a positive outlook.”

Teri Saylor is a writer in Raleigh, N.C. Contact her at terisaylor@hotmail.com