New Year, new owners

Jellison passes the Hometown Newspaper torch

On Dec. 31, 2016, Stu Clampitt and Isaac Taylor met with Reporter Publisher Jeff Jellison to discuss an opportunity to work with Hamilton County’s Hometown Newspaper. They started the next day.

Exactly five years after that first meeting over Big Macs in Westfield, Clampitt and Taylor, along with attorney Ray Adler and broadcast legend Paul Poteet have purchased The Reporter, effective Jan. 1, 2022.

When the time came to sell The Reporter so he could focus on his calling – public service – Jellison only made one phone call because he wanted to be certain the newspaper he and his father Don had built would continue to live up to the standards they had established.

“We plan to continue growing what Don and Jeff Jellison built in this news organization: A newspaper made by people who care about everyone who appears in its pages,” Taylor said. “Their mission to cover as much of Hamilton County as possible will live on in the coming years.”

That is a standard all the new owners have vowed to maintain and exceed.

“Stu and I have had the pleasure of working with The Reporter for exactly five years,” Taylor said. “Now, I’m thrilled to own a piece of it. I, along with the other owners of The Reporter, believe in the value of local newspapers. You should, too.”

“Right now, national media has a bad rep, and to a large extent they have earned that,” Clampitt said. “Local news is the last bastion of what newspapers were meant to be: The fourth estate.”

Poteet says he will help ensure The Reporter stays hyperlocal, giving readers what no one else offers.

“We don’t have to answer to a big national media conglomerate,” Poteet said. “We make our own decisions for what’s best for covering Hamilton County news. Everyone who invested in this newspaper has a very big interest in what actually appears in the newspaper and doesn’t want outside control.”

When finalizing the details of this deal, Clampitt said, “Local news is the one thing you don’t have to consume in moderation.”

“Exactly!” Poteet said. “The more local the better. On television, every station looks alike and many of them don’t offer much useful stuff about where our readers live.”

Adler sees his involvement in The Reporter as a one more way to serve his community.

“I would like to express my appreciation for another opportunity to serve my fellow residents of Hamilton County,” Adler said. “I have been a resident of Hamilton County since 1976 and have had the distinct honor of witnessing our county’s incredible growth and prosperity through the last 45 years. Hamilton County’s success is attributable to the countless friends and neighbors who call it their home. As a new member of the Hamilton County Reporter family, I aspire to ensure that our community continues to be served with an accurate and relevant source of local news.”

Taylor, who started working in print media when he was in college and never looked back, is proud to finally call The Reporter his own.

“This newspaper offers not only widespread news reporting and fantastic high school sports coverage from Sports Editor and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Richie Hall, but we are blessed with some of the best columnists in the business,” Taylor said. “All you need to do is open the paper and read it for yourself.”

Poteet, who lived in Carmel for almost 30 years, will always have deep ties to the community.

“I raised my family in Hamilton County,” Poteet said. “The county is important to me. Hamilton County is such a fast-growing area that it deserves its own first-class newspaper that’s not only locally owned, but also expanding as fast as the county.”

The Reporter is the fastest-growing news source in the state’s fastest-growing county. Thanks for reading!

About the owners

Attorney Raymond M. Adler has been practicing law for over 40 years. He is a veteran of armed services and has also served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of Indiana. Currently, he is the President and Senior Attorney of Adler Attorneys. He is also President and Founder of seven private corporations, six not-for-profit corporations, and a member of the Board of Directors of 15 corporations. In his free time, he enjoys his work as President of the Hamilton County Election Board, his involvement with Life Church Noblesville, and most importantly spending time with his wife and their children and grandchildren. He has lived in Hamilton County since 1976 and now writes a column, “Ask Adler.” You can find him online at Noblesville-Attorney.com and on Facebook.com/AdlerAttorneys.

Stu Clampitt started his media career in small-market radio in 1989. He has worked in print media since, as he puts it, he wandered into a newspaper office in 2006 where he accidentally became an award-winning graphic designer, an occasional writer, a managing editor, a business owner, and now a newspaper publisher. You can find his work online at ReadTheReporter.com and Facebook.com/HamiltonCountyReporter.

Hoosier Weather Daddy Paul Poteet started his media career in radio in 1979. He has also been on television since 1985. He was a very early adopter of online media. His anchor TV station is now WKRC in Cincinnati, the station that inspired the classic 1970s series WKRP in Cincinnati. You can find him online at PaulPoteet.com and at Facebook.com/PaulPoteetDotCom.

Isaac Taylor is a proud native of Fountain County. A Wabash College ‘non-graduate’ who studied political science and philosophy, he began working in newspapers in 2015. He has covered a few events, taken a few photos, and edited tens of thousands of news stories and columns, but his true love is designing the news pages. By his count, he’s put together more than 2,000 individual newspapers. Don’t bother looking for him online – you won’t find him anywhere other than in the pages of The Reporter.