Selma Sun celebrates 10 years of covering news for Selma-Dallas County

This year, the Selma Sun celebrates its 10th anniversary. 

Today, the Selma Sun is an award-winning newspaper serving thousands of readers with its weekly print edition and its website filled with stories that are impactful, fun, community-connecting and informative.  

The Selma Sun expanded in 2023 to serve six Black Belt counties through the robust regional news site the Black Belt News Network. The news organization now has a fiscal sponsor to take tax-deductible donations as the company works toward becoming a full nonprofit agency. 

Before all this growth, the Selma Sun had a humble beginning. It was started in 2015 by two Birmingham businessmen who wanted to bring positive, “sunny” news to Selma-Dallas County. Business partners Doug Marshall and Tom Ward shared this uplifting news in a tabloid-sized paper filled with columns, photos and stories about the community. 

The team also wanted to bring positive business practices to the Queen City in the form of lower-priced legal notices. Dallas County lawyers, residents and municipalities had to pay higher prices to post their legal notices when the county’s only newspaper had no competition. 

It took years and a new owner to get the permit required for legal notices. And that happened under the leadership of Cindy Fisher, a veteran journalist originally from Tuscaloosa, who bought the Selma Sun in the summer of 2018 and went to work turning it into the high-producing news product it is today. 

With 25 years of newspaper experience, Fisher took over ownership and made quick changes. She switched the format from tabloid to broadsheet. She enhanced news content and launched the newspaper’s first website, SelmaSun.com. And she moved her family from Hoover to Selma in early 2020 to make the Selma Sun a success. 

One early key to the paper’s financial success was when Fisher secured the permit to publish legal notices in April 2019. That not only provided a lower rate for required public notices, but it also gave Fisher’s company a steady revenue stream that made it possible to grow the Selma Sun into a powerhouse of rural community news. 

“I believed Selma deserved a strong, independent newspaper—and I was all in,” Fisher said. “From changing the format to building a website to earning legal notice status and moving to Selma, every move was about making the Selma Sun stronger for this community.” 

The Selma Sun has won more than 30 first-place awards from the Alabama Press Association since Fisher took over ownership. It also won first place in the nation for breaking news coverage of the January 2023 tornado that struck Selma. 

The Selma Sun hasestablished its position as the region’s go-to news agency by making stories available where the readers are – on their phones. Most of our readers access our online content on their mobile devices.  

The Selma Sun team hoststhe region’s only weekly live newscast.The Selma Sun also grew a huge following on social media with posts that reached1 million readers in 2024. 

While SelmaSun.com has been a successful standalone news site, its regional companion site, BlackBeltNewsNetwork.com, quickly surpassed its web traffic numbers to reach more than 100,000 page views a month.  

In July, SelmaSun.com will be folded into BlackBeltNewsNetwork.com. The homepage for the Selma Sun will display the Selma-Dallas County content they saw on SelmaSun.com, with easier access to news about the region. 

The Black Belt News Network will house the digital e-edition of the Selma Sun print newspaper for paid subscribers who choose to access the weekly paper online. But all other content on the Black Belt News Network is free and accessible to all residents, regardless of income, which is an important part of BBNN’s mission. 

To keep access to its news free, Fisher has obtained grants from foundations who want to keep news flowing in underserved areas. In 2024, the Black Belt News Network was awarded more than $140,000 in grants, the bulk coming from the national Press Forward grant that funds agencies reporting in rural and underserved communities. 

In summer 2024, Kingfisher Media established a partnership with Tiny News Collective to serve as fiscal sponsor that can take tax-deductible donations. Kingfisher Media is now working with Lawyers for Reporters to take the legal steps to become a nonprofit organization, with Fisher serving as executive director led by a board of directors. 

This year, the Selma Sun and Black Belt News Network staff will conduct a reader survey to gauge what we’re doing right and what you would like to see more of in our coverage. Stay tuned for a link to participate. The staff will also attend events throughout the Black Belt to meet readers, so let us know where we should go by emailing us at news@blackbeltnewsnetwork.com. 

Fisher said she has enjoyed the journey of bringing quality journalism to Selma-Dallas County and the rural communities in Alabama’s Black Belt over the last 10 years, and she looks forward to many more. 

“Being a journalist is so rewarding, but it’s even more rewarding knowing I’m helping to bring important news and information to an area that is often overlooked, especially by big cities around us,” Fisher said. “With the Black Belt News Network, we’re not overlooked anymore.”