Only a small number of people turned out for the listening session hosted by The Oconee Enterprise last week, but it was a group that came with compliments, criticism, and suggestions for the staff of the paper.
The individuals praised the paper’s sports coverage, its crime news, its willingness to run letters to the editor, and its focus on local news.
“You all do a great job,” Bogart Mayor Janet Jones said. She was a short distance from Oconee County Commission Chair John Daniell in the audience.
“It seems to me that the localism is the fantastic strength of this paper,” Dr. Neal Priest, retired emergency room physician, said.
The sometimes poor quality of the printing and the limited ability to search the paper’s content were mentioned as weaknesses.
The participants praised the paper for its efforts to explore new ways to reach a broader audience but encouraged it to do much more to broaden the appeal of the paper.
Enterprise Co-Publishers Amanda and Michael Prochaska were joined by five others from their staff in a back-and-forth with the 10 persons in the audience at the Oconee County Library in Wire Park in an exchange that revealed much about the operation of the paper.
Amanda Prochaska offered her own criticism of the paper, saying it needs to be “more brave to ask everyone to help us, tell people about the newspaper. I don't think we've always been the best at marketing our own selves.”
Reason For Session
Caitlin Farmer, Community Engagement Director, introduced the hour-long session on June 5 by saying “the idea behind this was to bring some of the community together, see if you all had any feedback for us, anything that you're liking, any new ideas that you wanted to share with us.”
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| Farmer 6/5/2025 |
Self-introductions followed from Graphic Designer George Windate, Amanda Prochaska, Marketing Director Avery Moon, Reporter Nathalee Simoneau, Michael Prochaska, and Sports Editor Stuart Steele.
Common to the introductions was a call for ideas from the audience.
“I do a lot of different articles,” Reporter Simoneau said, citing business articles, government meetings, and people profiles. “So any story ideas that you have along those lines, feel free to give them, pass them along to me,” she said.
Sports Editor Steele gave a rundown on the stories he covers and then said “all the high school sports are done. So any story ideas right now on people I should be covering or talking to would be much appreciated, because we’ve got to fill that sports section.”
Michael Prochaska said he relies on others not present to produce the content for the newspaper each week.
“I'd be remiss if we did not talk about Chuck Cunningham, who's our cartoonist,” Michael Prochaska said. “There's very few newspapers, not just in Georgia, but across the United States, that have political cartoonists.”
“I appreciate all of our columnists,” Michael Prochaska said, citing the writers of a garden column, an extension column, young scholars, a hunting and fishing column, and a parenting column.
Michael Prochaska, who also is Editor, said he uses copy from Oconee County Observations, Capitol Beat news service, student interns, other students, and free lance writers.
Response To Localism
Neal Priest responded to the paper’s local focus in his comments.
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| Simoneau 6/5/2025 |
After saying that localism is the strength of the Enterprise, he said the content “is local, but it's also multi-generational, which to me is fantastic.”
“Seems to me that that's kind of a deficit of our society–that the different age groups have lost touch with each other. There's a certain siloing effect of all the different age groups.”
“And I think that's terrible,” he said, “but it certainly doesn't seem like that's what's happening in this county or with this paper.”
“So a lot of newspapers,” Michael Prochaska said in response. “They pay for Associated Press stories, or Reuters, or any other kind of wire service to run in their paper.”
“And we have chosen not to do that,” he said. “And so you won't see any national news in our paper...I always tell people that if you see a national story on the front page that doesn't have any kind of local angle to it, then we're not doing our job.”
The Enterprise is owned by local businessman Mark Martin.
Other Feedback
“I enjoy the paper,” Bogart Mayor Jones said. “It's like you said, it's varied, you have all types of topics and subjects, and I appreciate that.”
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| Enterprise Staff, Michael Prochaska Speaking 6/5/2025 |
“And your crime is pretty good,” another woman said. “Some of those stories are pretty interesting. You can't make them up.”
Pat Priest said when she compared the paper’s coverage of former District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez with its coverage of current U.S. 10th District Congressman Mike Collins and “I wonder why you're not holding his feet to the fire in the same way.”
“On the positive side,” she said. “I really like the sports photos. Wow, very good. The history tidbits--very, very interesting. The photos generally.”
“And thank you for the opportunity to put in our letters to the editor,” she said. “I appreciate that.”
“The search engine is bad,” Dan Magee said bluntly. He said he was looking for something that had appeared in the paper four years ago. “I tried to look it up. It's really, really hard.”
“We have great sports coverage,” he said. “It's awesome.”
Magee praised the paper for its initiatives in use of social media and its new podcasts, but said it needs to do more.
Young people are “just not going to read the paper,” he said. “It's got to be the quick social media.”
Magee said he needed to pass on a complaint from his wife on the quality of production of the paper, but he ended by saying “You all do a great job.”
Response To Change
“I'd love to have you speak to how you see the county changing,” Ann Hollifield said, “where you think the inflection points are in various areas of business, economics, politics, what have you, and then how, if at all, that shapes your thinking about the editorial directions and priorities of the paper.”
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| Audience, Taylor Speaking 6/5/2025 |
“We've noticed the suburbanization,” Michael Prochaska said, with new families and retirees moving into the county.
“I wouldn't say the county is a purple county,” he said, “but I do believe that it's a little less conservative than it was 10 years ago. So there is more diversity in terms of Democrat, Republican, liberal versus conservative.”
“It's in everyone's best interest that we have a strong local news,” Ian Taylor said.
Many of the younger people moving into the county “want to get everything instantaneously. How do you reconcile that with a weekly newspaper?” he asked.
“But also, doesn't it involve getting people to care about what's factual and what's not?” Neal Priest said. “If I read something in this paper, I know that it's been vetted, and I know that they, that they're making every effort--these young journalists are making every effort--to try and submit something that's factual.”
“But you certainly don't know that with a lot of the stuff that you're talking about,” he said, referring to the content of social media.
Response From Michael Prochaska
“I think there's three broad things that make a newspaper good,” Michael Prochaska said.
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| Michael Prochaska 6/5/2025 |
“And one is what you mentioned, which is verify facts,” he said. “Try your hardest to get it right. If you make a mistake, write a correction.”
“Another element is the personalization of it,” he said. “We're talking to sources, sometimes off the record, but a lot of times on the record. And so we're trying to understand what we're writing about.”
“And then the third element, I would argue, is time,” he said. “So we put in the time and the effort. I think the time commitment, trying your best to verify the information and then the personalization of it.”
“I think those three things combined, you're not always going to see on social media,” Michael Prochaska said.
“There are newspapers out there-- it's a one man show,” Michael Prochaska said later in the session. “And I don't know how they do it.”
“We don't have as many employees as we'd like to have, to be honest with you,” he said.
“I mean, if I had it my way, I'd have five more reporters. We'd be sending them to all sorts of meetings that we're not even going to. We'd be sending them to civic clubs, like Rotary Club meetings, and we’d cover middle school sports.”
“We're a small staff,” he continued, “but I have to say I'm really proud of our staff and what they do.”
Comments Of Amanda Prochaska
“I think we also need to be better cheerleaders” for the paper,” Amanda Prochaska said.
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| Moon 6/5/2025 |
She said bringing Farmer in as Community Engagement Director and Moon as Marketing Director were efforts to improve the promotion of the paper.
In her introductory comments, Moon had said “We offer advertising in our newspaper, our magazine, and...we also have internet ads.”
“And then Caitlin started rolling out ads for our newsletter and podcasts,” she said.
“So there's plenty of avenues,” she said. “And we have various sizes and design options available.”
“So, really, we have something for everyone,” Moon said.
Video
The video below is of the entire listening session, which began with the staff self-introductions and then moved to the exchange with the audience.
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