The Newspaper woman

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Missy Nester, Welch

Publisher of the The Welch News and The (Pineville) Independent Herald

IN THE BEGINNING My parents—Leonard and Edith Nester—used the newspaper as a learning tool. It was a rite of passage in our family to be able to go outside the gate to the box and bring back the newspaper to my parents and grandparents. Then, they would sit down and read the paper with us, teaching us how important it was to stay informed. I continued with my high school newspaper, where our journalism teacher—James ‘Duffy’ Angove, taught us the impact we could make with our stories.”

THE MISSION “It’s such a passion project of mine, working with small-town newspapers. I knew when I bought The Welch News that this business wasn’t about making a lot of money—it was about giving this underserved community its own voice. I have a deep-seated love for this newspaper and how the community and the newspaper interact with each other.”

THE IMPACT “By doing this, we’re creating jobs in our community and preserving access for thousands of residents to their local news. In Welch, we have six of us working in the office, and we run our own printing press—it’s a 1966 model. Then we’ve got about 12 drivers we put on the road who hit every hollow and every ridge three times each week. We are all about saving local journalism, we are all about home delivery to our very many elderly residents, and amazing relationships between our drivers and our residents develop. We have customers who will buy groceries on paper days and wait for the driver to get there to carry them in for them. In the winter, they deliver bread and milk with the paper.” AB

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