Alongside the news stories, op-eds, and ads for local businesses that run in the Herald of Randolph, there’s a new addition to the paper’s weekly print edition.
It first appeared between ads for a general contractor, an attorney, and a lawn-mowing service. But the new ad didn’t offer any business or service for sale. In fact, it featured just two cartoon chickens and a question: “Why does a chicken coop have only two doors?”
A few pages later, the answer: “Because if it had four doors, it would be a chicken sedan!”
The ad was placed by Jessamyn West, a librarian in Randolph and a fan of the local newspaper. She bought a few weeks worth of ad space to fill with jokes, in the hopes of bringing some joy to her neighbors stuck at home.
“It’s kind of a lot of money for a joke, but it’s not a ton of money to get space in the paper,” West said.
But spending some money, she said, was part of the point. West loves Randolph’s paper, and wanted to put a few dollars towards its “dynamite reporting” at a time when its revenue from ads is significantly down.
West got the idea from one of her neighbors, who posted in a Randolph Facebook group about someone who’d done something similar — taking out an ad in the Herald that said “Carole Baskin did it,” a reference to the hit Netflix-series “Tiger King.”
West hasn’t seen Tiger King, but she understood the joke. She said all her friends were laughing about it, and what a fun idea it was to take something that everyone was doing in their own houses and putting it out into the community in a whole new medium.
“We were all like ‘we should do this,’” West said. “And I was like, ‘I’m just gonna, then.’”
So West called the Herald and bought the ad space. Then she flipped through some old books to find pictures of chickens she could use for her design. Picking the joke, she said, was easy. The “chicken coop” joke is a longstanding favorite of hers.
Brandy Comette, who runs the Herald’s ad department, said in addition to West’s joke and the Carol Baskin reference, she’s also seen a poem printed in the paper, and many continued ad buys from businesses — even ones that have closed and wouldn’t benefit from the advertising — all to support the Herald.
“People think they’re hilarious,” Comette said. “I think it caught them off guard that we could actually laugh about something right now.”
“We’re all in this together, and I feel like a part of that is finding ways to make other people’s lives a little easier,” West said.
After her first joke ran in the paper, West took to Twitter to crowdsource for more. She asked her followers to brainstorm jokes that were clean, funny, non-Covid-related and hopefully had a rural sense of humor.
“I was looking for that folksiness that people enjoy — but a folksiness that isn’t punching down at people who are rural,” West said. “Some jokes are kind of like ‘this goofy farmer,’ and that’s not what I’m looking for. We’re proud of our rural heritage.”
She said it was also fun to engage with her Twitter community as part of the endeavor, and tell jokes online with her friends, even though very few of her Randolph friends are on the social media platform.
“I can probably count on two hands the number of people in town on Twitter,” West said. “And only about three of them are very active.”
Though they may not be on Twitter, West said the people of Randolph do interact with both each other and the news of the day in one shared space: the local newspaper. For her, keeping the newspaper alive is the most “Vermonty thing to do” she can think of.
“I know other people are in similar situations as me — they’re doing OK, and they could spend some money at the paper that would put a smile on people’s faces,” West said. “I think they should.”
Get the latest statistics and live updates on our coronavirus page.
Sign up for our coronavirus email list.
Tell us your story or give feedback at coronavirus@vtdigger.org.
Support our nonprofit journalism with a donation.
