The only news agency in Ford County has gotten a lifeline, thanks to a state tax credit funneling $4 million into Illinois newsrooms.
A law passed in 2024 is aimed at curbing the steady decline in local journalism jobs and helping to address news deserts— a term used to describe areas with no local news presence. Illinois was the first state to feed money directly to newsrooms, allowing organizations to apply for up to $15,000 per journalist, plus $10,000 for new hires.
A news desert is exactly what Ford County, just east of McLean County, would be without the Ford County Chronicle that who was among the first to apply for the tax credit.
“They’re basically going to wipe your liability away,” co-publisher Will Brumleve said in an interview with WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
With co-publisher Andrew Rosten as the Chronicle’s two reporters, they’ll receive $30,000 in tax credits for the next five years. Brumleve said that's lot of money for a small operation like the Ford County Chronicle — about 10% of their annual budget. But the overall impact is bigger than that.
“If it wasn’t for this tax credit our paper would be closed,” said Brumleve.
The Chronicle is co-owned and operated by Brumleve and Rosten, both former reporters and editors for the Ford County Record.
“We started this thing from nothing on July 1, 2020,” Brumleve said. “My brother wrote me a $5,000 check and we started it. We had no subscribers, we had very limited advertisers. So, that first year, we basically didn’t get paid.”
Five years later, the Chronicle is hobbling along, but it hasn't been easy — especially now. They had to establish S-Corporation status in order to qualify for the tax credit. That included putting Brumleve and Rosten, who were essentially independent contractors of the paper they own, on payroll, a transition that has meant paying two years of taxes at once.
Brumleve and Rosten had their personal 2024 tax liability, plus now having to pay quarterly business taxes for the current year.
“We didn’t budget for that,” said Brumleve, adding they put the whole paper on the line in hopes of getting the tax credit— which they ended up having to apply for twice after initially being denied on a technicality.
“I set up the payroll with the hope that we’d make it through this year and somehow, we have. We get a bunch of subscriptions coming through in a month. We get our tax credit check, hopefully that helps. I’ve had to cut back on my salary so we can get through the summer. Without it, we would not have been able to make it until Aug. 13. It’s just impossible.”
Rosten and Brumleve are the Chronicle — from writing and editing stories to providing photography, design and layout of the paper, selling ads, managing subscriptions — even hand delivering the paper to newsstands across the county. They have weekly print circulation plus a website and an active Facebook page.
Case in point: that page was especially active this weekend. Officers are still looking for a gunman who allegedly shot two police officers and set his house on fire in Gibson City early Saturday morning. Brumleve was on the scene, along with a television station out of Champaign. He's been pushing state police, who are leading the investigation, for more information.
“I do this because I care, not just about the importance of news and information to the public,” Brumleve said. “I live here. I’ve lived here for 22 years. I just couldn’t stand to see this county have no paper or a crappy paper, a ghost paper.”
The Ford County Record was that ghost paper, gutted and eventually shut down by its owners, the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette. Brumleve was the news editor when sports editor Rosten was let go.
“So, I quit. Andrew and I started a website a week or two later. And then a year later, the Ford County Record closed, giving us all the legal notices for Ford County, which really helped,” Brumleve said.
According to Capitol News Illinois, 40 newsrooms received this first round of tax credits that are designed to help them avoid getting gobbled up by big parent companies that have beleaguered the industry. The country's two largest publishers, Gannett and Alden Global Capital — which owns of the Chicago Tribune — got nothing.
Most of the money went to organizations outside the Chicago metro area, including one in McLean County. According to data from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development, The Bloomington-based Pantagraph received a $150,000 credit.
The Pantagraph is among a handful of papers owned by parent company Lee Enterprises, the only big company to receive the tax credit. Lee collectively received $375,000 for four of its newspapers, including The Pantagraph, the largest share of the state's $4 million pot.
That's frustrating to Brumleve. But he's happy to have had support from several Central Illinois lawmakers, who advocated for the Ford County Chronicle.
The paper now has a way to soldier on with a little wind at their backs.
“I’m thinking when we get the $30,000 check next year, if I’m not $100,000 in debt, I’m pretty sure it’s going to swing things in the opposite direction.”
And they can reapply for a new round at the end of that five years, hopefully hiring another reporter and adding a $10,000 bump.
