By MICHELLE DURHAM
J Alumni News staff
Kay Philips Lavene
Kay Philips Lavene balances work on the family farm with publishing and editing her hometown newspaper, The Bertrand (Neb.) Herald. It’s a job she took to keep the paper going after its former owners quit four years ago.
“I literally worked night and day at first trying to get a newspaper out,” Lavene said. “That first fall while my husband was harvesting corn and soybeans, I was fortunate that I had help from people in the community who were so appreciative that we would be continuing with the paper.”
Lavene and her husband, Doyle Lavene, own a farm near Bertrand. Although Kay Lavene had reported regional news for the Kearney Hub for several years, neither she nor Doyle had owned or run a newspaper — a job that includes selling ads, assigning and editing stories, laying out the paper, keeping books and managing the entire operation. Sharon Liljehorn, a longtime friend, said Lavene was up to the task.
“Kay has always been very adventurous and loves to learn about new things,” said Liljehorn, who writes a monthly book review for the paper.
Work hard; be responsible
Lavene graduated from the J school in 1968 with majors in broadcasting and home economics and a minor in English. She said her education — especially her classes with former J school professor Wilma Crumley — taught her to work hard and to be responsible for her work.
“I feel that it’s so important to give the true picture — not just the one that I see,” Lavene said.
Lavene does all the writing and sells all the ads for The Bertrand Herald. Three part-time workers help her put together the paper, which is printed at the Kearney Hub and is published every Thursday. It has a circulation of a little under 500. Doyle — one of the part-timers — also writes a history column. The other two employees paginate the pages and proofread the paper, which is typically six to eight pages each week.
Lavene’s byline often appears on the front page, on her feature stories about Bertrand-area residents: the teacher who experienced the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia; the manager of a farmer’s co-op elevator in nearby Smithfield. Lavene said she wants to tell everyone about people who live in Bertrand, population 780.
Newspaper is the glue for the community
Ruth Brown, Lavene’s friend and a current J school professor, said she is proud of Lavene for taking on the newspaper.
“Lavene couldn’t let her hometown paper die. She believed in the importance of the community paper and that it was the glue that holds a town together,” Brown said.
Being responsible for The Bertrand Herald every week has led to some adventures.
One winter, around Christmas, an ice storm caused a major power outage in south central Nebraska, and Lavene called people from the Kearney Hub for advice. They told her that, despite having no power at the newspaper building, she had to print her paper 52 weeks consecutively or it would no longer meet legal advertising requirements. Lavene and her team loaded up some of their equipment, including computers and a printer, and drove over icy hills to Oxford to finish the newspaper.
“By midnight that night we had a paper e-mailed to the Kearney Hub,” Lavene said. “It wasn’t a prize-winning one, for sure, but it met the specification for the 52-week law.”
Doyle drove to Kearney the next day and picked up the newspaper. Then, because the farm still had power, the Lavenes sorted and bundled papers on their kitchen table and took them to the post office for mailing.
This job means you do it all
The Lavenes have learned that publishing a weekly newspaper with a small staff means being responsible for every step of reporting, writing, publishing and distribution.
“I don’t sell ads like I should because I don’t have time,” she said. “I guess when I dropped into this situation it was to help the town out, and I had to keep it so it was profitable.”
Lavene was a regional-news reporter for the Kearney Hub for more than 10 years and also wrote for a couple of magazines. She has won writing awards from the Nebraska Press Women and the National Federation of Press Women, and she received the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Andy Award for International Writing one year.
“While these awards were great, I feel it is the people I have met and the information I have gathered that have been my real achievements,” Lavene said.
With all the hustle of working on the newspaper and being a farm wife, Lavene still finds time to do other things she enjoys, such as reading, spending time with her grandchildren, making quilts and crocheting.
“I have written and am selling a cookbook I compiled and have another one about ready for print,” Lavene said.
At some point, she said, she’d like to sell The Bertrand Herald and take some vacations without worrying about deadlines.
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