For some local newspaper publishers, the most pressing challenge isn’t finding enough readers or advertisers, it’s figuring out who will carry the torch when they move on.

That’s the case in La Conner, where the century-old weekly closed last month after publisher Ken Stern couldn’t find a buyer at the price he sought.

Now this question is looming for Don Nelson, an icon of Washington state’s local news industry.

After working at dailies in Oregon and Minnesota, and editing the Puget Sound Business Journal and Skagit Valley Herald, Nelson acquired the Methow Valley News in Twisp in 2011.

The weekly is a standout among the hundred or so remaining local newspapers in Washington, both for its strong, steady journalism and the stable business that Nelson built amid the industry’s decline.

It won 63 awards in the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Better Newspaper Contest last year, including first place awards for government, breaking news and education reporting.

But Nelson buried the lede when I asked last week how the paper’s doing and what 2025 may bring.

Nelson said it’s a mixed bag. Revenue was flat in 2024 and the Methow Valley News lost the contract to publish Okanogan County legal notices to another paper.

That was offset by the arrival of a refundable tax credit the paper is receiving because it didn’t lay off employees during the pandemic.

“It’s substantial and very helpful to give us some breathing room, and it gets us off to a good start in 2025,” he said.

The paper employs five people, supplemented with contributors. Nelson said some publishers nowadays would consider that oversized for a weekly with 2,400 subscribers.

“But we’ve been able to make it work and hopefully still can,” he said. “It just makes an enormous difference to me to have that additional, great, professional help in the office.”

We talked about La Conner and how a group of people there is working to launch a new weekly.

Then Nelson finally mentioned that “this is probably a transitional year for me.”

“I’m 75 years old, I love what I’m doing, I love this community,” he said. “But it’s also, I think, incumbent on me to look ahead for me and the paper and the community, and make sure that it transitions in a way that I’m good with and the community is good with.”

Nelson isn’t formally announcing retirement. But he’s begun letting people know here and there that this is the year he’s looking into what’s next.

Perhaps he’ll learn from the La Conner debacle and find an easier exit, without interrupting service the paper provides.

Like La Conner, the Methow Valley is a pocket of prosperity in a rural area, boosted by retirees and urban escapees, with an economy that can support a healthy newspaper.

But it’s a daunting business nowadays, even for papers with devoted readers. Housing costs in desirable places make it harder to find and retain employees, advertising is scarce and costs keep going up.

There are also fewer experienced people looking to run their own paper. Newspaper employment fell by two-thirds over the last two decades.

That’s contributed to consolidation, as some papers are sold to chains that cut newsrooms, and to the steady pace of newspaper closures that’s left more than half of U.S. counties with little to no local news coverage.

In Washington, Nelson and Stern are among several weekly publishers looking to move on, according to Ellen Hiatt, WNPA executive director.

“Succession is a big concern for newspapers,” she said.

Nelson isn’t looking for a windfall from the paper.

“I don’t need to get a lot of money,” he said. “My motivation is to see that it continues in the community, with community support, and a product that really serves the place. And you know, it may be high-minded, but I think achievable.”

Stern tried to get $250,000, double what he paid for the La Conner Weekly News in 2017. Lower offers came in, including a last-ditch effort by a group of residents who raised $30,000 late last year. But Stern opted to close instead.

The paper may yet be sold. But those residents have now raised $40,000 and found a crew to start another paper, the nonprofit La Conner Community News.

Kari Mar, a former journalist who went on to a technology career, is serving as publisher with hopes of getting paid after fundraising picks up. We briefly overlapped at The Seattle Times when she worked as a news producer and her husband, Rod Mar, is a former Times photographer.

Mar, who lives in Seattle, said she tried to buy the paper herself. Now she’s working with the residents’ group and plans to publish with Cascadia Daily News veteran Staci Baird as managing editor and Bill Reynolds, who previously worked for Stern, as reporter.

They’ll start producing a newsletter in the next week or so and launch a website in February. They plan to start a print edition in March.

“La Conner is an incredible, enthusiastic newspaper reading community,” Mar said. “It’s one of those rare places where you can really make the case for print. The people here love to read their newspaper, they love to hold it in their hands.”

I’m glad La Conner will have a newspaper, one way or another, but this is a rocky transition. It’s harder to build something new than refresh a longstanding paper, with its established brand, subscribers and advertisers.

A startup also can’t bid on contracts to publish legal notices, a cornerstone for weeklies, until it’s been publishing for a year, Hiatt noted.

What’s heartening, though, is that both of these situations demonstrate how much people value a local newspaper, despite national grumbling about “the media.”

They’re also providing lessons to other publishers when they decide it’s time to move on.

Andrew Ashmore, a La Conner retiree involved in the newspaper effort, said he’s learned how “communication to the community is so important.”

That’s harder once the paper is gone. Though enough people in La Conner still heard about a meeting this week at the library to discuss the newspaper that “people were being turned away at the door,” he said.

Expect a similar turnout if Nelson doesn’t find a buyer and his community needs to rally to save the Methow Valley News.

“It’s a big part of the quality of life here,” said Tom Jones, board chair of the Methow Valley Citizens Council.

Okanogan County Commissioner Andy Hover said Nelson has “been really good for that newspaper.”

Its political viewpoints are “a little more left leaning but that’s the way our community is over there,” Hover said. Either way, the paper is “super important, it’s critical.”

“For the most part he’s done a really good job,” Hover said. “If he leaves I have no clue, I don’t know what’s going to happen if he leaves.”

This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at https://company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.