In an old mining town in western Arizona, at the back of a small plaza, stands the office of the Kingman Miner. Inside, editor Michael Zogg and sole reporter Olivia Tobias toil away while an oppressive 110-degree afternoon bakes the pavement outside. This is Mohave County, where the sun shines nearly 300 days per year.

The Miner serves Kingman, the seat of Mohave County, with a population of over 30,000. It’s a print weekly, with a distribution around 3,000, plus another 1,200 clicks per online edition – they come out three times a week. The paper is 144 years old, and is now owned by River City Newspapers (RCN), a joint venture by Wick Communications and Western News & Info. Together, the two companies own a large portion of the newspapers in northwestern Arizona, placing the Miner in a larger network of dozens of publications. This is a very different situation from the independent papers we’ve covered so far, but big newspaper groups are becoming more and more common as the news becomes harder to monetize.

“I don’t think I’d call River City Newspapers big,” said Zogg.

He explained that the offshoot comprises just five local Arizona papers, plus one in neighboring California and another in Nevada. Communication between the tiers of bosses from RCN, Wick, and Western is largely amicable, but there is a clear hierarchy.

“There’s definitely a lot of dictating down to RCN. One side finds something that they’re really excited about that they want to push out to all their newspapers, and RCN gets lumped into that,” he said. “It’s all dictated to me.”

Zogg senses that the RCN president, his direct boss, takes heavy direction from the owners as well, due to the fact that RCN owes both Wick and Western money. In the wake of Covid, the Miner scaled back from a daily to a weekly and got rid of its in-house paper carriers, switching to the post office for delivery. Ad sales have not returned to 2019 numbers, and the newsroom has shrunk by two positions since 2022. RCN has tightened the Miner’s margins, and the paper now sources their designer from India.

“We’re in the black now,” said Zogg. “But we’re in a position where we have to say ‘ok yeah, we’ll do that,’ because it’ll save money.”

Zogg emphasized that this has not been at the expense of journalistic integrity.

“On Facebook, people like to lump us in with big media and portray us as sitting in our ivory tower,” he said. But the Miner provides the kind of local news that can break through that distrust. “They see the same reporter at all the meetings,” he said.

At Zogg’s previous news gig in Crescent City, California, he saw a conglomerate strip his newsroom far worse than this. Country Media Inc. bought the Del Norte Triplicate in July 2019, promptly fired the editor and senior reporter, and told everyone else to bring in a resume and interview to keep their job. Some quit in a huff, others were fired. Zogg, then a sports editor, was the only one left in the newsroom.

“That was pretty painful, because that newsroom was probably still the best I’ve ever worked in,” he said. “We were all kind of like family.”

Zogg quit the stripped-down Triplicate after four weeks and came to Arizona, where corporate journalism has been kinder. But still, he knows he’s at the mercy of a larger business vision.

“I’ve kind of come to accept that no one’s position is actually safe, everyone can be cut given the right circumstances,” he admitted. “I’ve been through a lot in this business, and I’m always ready for the unexpected, ready to pick myself up and move on to the next stop.”

This is true beyond corporate journalism. An estimated 80% of news jobs have disappeared in the last two decades – that’s tens of thousands of jobs, at independent and group-owned publications alike. Zogg’s pessimism is merely picking up on a trend.

But in the meantime, Kingman provides him colorful coverage. Zogg recalled the recent mayoral primaries, in which he and Tobias interviewed challenger Mark Berry.

“Fantastic mustache, bit of a seedy past,” Zogg described. “We did some background research on him, talked to him about all of his felonies, mostly meth possession, some kidnapping – light kidnapping to hear him tell it.” He lost to the incumbent.

As a sports writer to begin with, Zogg has had to broaden his scope, and this is where RCN comes in handy. He reached out to another regional reporter for help with government coverage, and he says this pooling of resources is what makes the Miner possible.

“This operation wouldn’t be possible with just Olivia and myself,” he said. “We’re able to punch above our weight thanks to the close relationship we have with the nearby newspapers.”

There is ever-present pressure from RCN, and Wick/Western above it, for the Miner to turn a profit. If earnings start to dip, that’s when management steps in. Faced with this, Zogg takes comfort in the news community RCN offers, which afford him the journalistic reach Kingman deserves.