Editor’s note: This was produced with the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School. The Seattle Times is publishing it as a three-part series that began Thursday.

A growing number of newspaper publishers see printing as an antiquated drag on their business.

Not Nathan Alford, the fourth-generation publisher of The Lewiston (Idaho) Tribune.

To keep churning out quality journalism, Alford turned The Tribune and its production facility into a skunk works.

He’s developing a series of startups, drawing on the company’s 133 years of experience producing, bundling and distributing printed materials and advertising. Six ventures have launched since 2011, with a seventh coming in 2026, all to support The Tribune’s core mission.

The developments are physically represented by a modern production facility standing tall next to the newspaper’s single-story, midcentury offices in downtown Lewiston, at the intersection of the Snake and Clearwater rivers.

“We’re growing so much over here to underwrite the stuff over there — it’s like a big team effort,” Alford, 54, said in the production facility, waving toward the newsroom.

The facility has a growing collection of purchased, scavenged and customized machines producing new products.

“So every dollar we make over here goes back into covering the losses of the newspaper,” Alford said over the whir of forklifts and hum of presses. “We’re still not making enough, we need to get better, but we’re fighting.”

The Tribune remains a for-profit but is also pursuing partnerships with local foundations to support several coverage areas.

Alford said the strategy is to push innovation across the company, channeling the entrepreneurial drive that brought his great-grandfather and great-great uncle north from Texas, via Portland, with a printing press in 1892.

“We need to have the pioneering spirit of our founders to evolve into a sustainable, adaptable, ever-increasing business,” he said.

To reach younger audiences, The Tribune started a weekly, events-oriented publication called Inland 360 in 2011. A direct-mail business and an outdoor advertising venture operating electronic billboards followed.

Coming soon is a video lab, in a converted press workers’ break room, that will broadcast short news segments to social networks and produce sponsored content.

Alford began hacking The Tribune’s production facility in 2019, after the family acquired a commercial printing company in Spokane.

The Tribune worked with the manufacturer to do more with its main press while also buying and reassembling other equipment to create new lines of business.

One machine was used to make the plastic films covering the face of new iPhones. After the manufacturer in Ohio went bust, Alford got the machine free and converted it to handle paper products.

In one corner of the facility are pallets of wrapping paper, printed by the main press on recycled paper, bound for national retailers this holiday season.

In another corner is a product Alford dubbed “e-commerce paper.” Its modified press produces the recycled “void fill” material that online retailers use to wrap products. One customer, an outdoor equipment company, gets the paper printed with maps of wild rivers.

Alford’s company also works on papers certified for use with food products and provides an ammunition manufacturer with paper used to make bullets.

Yet another machine prints special materials for packaging medical devices.

Instead of seeing the press, production crew and mailroom as places to trim costs, Alford saw them as places to innovate.

“Our mindset is so important,” he said. “I think many newspapers across the country adopt kind of a custodial mindset, where you’re more managing the current climate and you’re trying your best to cut expense, to match the declining revenue, or you’re the custodian of that legacy business. Versus waking up and hitting the front door in the morning with more of a founder’s mindset.”

Chains tried repeatedly to acquire The Tribune over the years.

It happened once, after other descendants of the founders sold 67% of their shares in 1981. That led to The Tribune being owned by the parent company of The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah, which in turn was acquired by Denver-based cable TV giant TCI.

Alford’s father, A.L. “Butch” Alford Jr., bought The Tribune and several smaller papers in the region back from TCI in 1998.

“Nothing against the chains,” said Butch Alford Jr., 87, “but they’re a bunch of financial bastards.”

Buying back The Tribune recommitted the family to the paper’s survival.

“That was really the turning point,” Nathan Alford said. “Most folks at Butch’s age at that point, I think, would have said OK, well, I’ve had my career and we’ve had our three generations. But counter to the corporate trend at the time — most of these papers in the late ’90s were being swallowed up by larger companies — Dad put all his pennies and dollars back into our community newspaper.”

In those years, Nathan Alford was studying law in Spokane and working summers in the newsroom. After graduating in 2001 he decided to try keeping the paper “going another generation.”

He became publisher in 2008, just as recession and technology disrupted the news business, major advertisers evaporated and many in the industry made painful cuts to stay afloat.

Today the newsroom has around 25 employees and the overall company employs 105, including 44 in the production facility.

Margins are 2% to 3%, Alford said, but they need to have at least 10% operating profit for stability and sustainability.

Butch Alford Jr. said his biggest accomplishment in 40 years as editor and publisher was persuading his son to join The Tribune instead of practice law, because Nathan brought the “entrepreneurial spirit and passion” that newspapers need to diversify and survive.

“There isn’t any way otherwise,” he said, “unless you cut the hell out of everything.”

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/.