Newspapers covering their own industry's collapse

Biting the dust: "Litchfield Independent Review"

A big fuss being made recently because of a batch of newspaper closures in MN. You have likely seen the stories, maybe even in a newspaper. I personally check out the Minneapolis and Morris newspapers at our public library. I used to check out the Willmar paper there. Then guess what happened to the Willmar paper? Well it became victim of the same headwinds that have wiped out so many papers. 

Here's a question that makes me smile: can newspapers be trusted to report in a fair and detached way on this death spiral that they themselves are experiencing? Well of course not. We are all motivated by self-interest. Should be elementary. 

A swath of newspapers has met the grim reaper. Sad? Remember the Brad Pitt line as Billy Beane in "Moneyball?" "Adapt or die." Things change, they do not necessarily get worse. 

Newspapers once had it made. I once read that owning a community newspaper was like "having a license to print money." Look at the huge family benefactor for UMM here in Morris: roots in the newspaper business. Nobody likes to lose such a position. Of course the family got out before the headwinds got worse. A regional chain took over the Morris paper and it lasted a few years. An old associate told me "the Forum never made money in Morris." No wonder the atmosphere there was so uninspiring. 

We have had covid since. That accelerated the trend but the trend would have continued anyway. The Forum is old news in Morris. It has a reputation for being pretty Machiavellian. But it's gone. And it's not just into newspapers. WDAY Radio of Fargo is a holding. I'm sure the diversification helps them greatly. 

The recent big news re. Minnesota newspapers, i.e. with the vultures circling, pertains to "Southwest News Media." What the heck is that? The company will stop publishing newspapers at the end of this month. 

Remember there was a time when the ice business phased out. I learned that Morris had an ice business up until the mid-1960s. I learned that Roy Lucken was involved in it, great guy and great public servant. I doubt that he pleaded about how we should continue supporting the business. Newspapers as they retreat are not so passive. If they truly practiced what they preached, they really could be dispassionate about this. 

 

In denial

Newspapers cling to the kind of influence they once truly had. They act self-important like they are in denial. I recently read the Star Tribune's article about the spate of newspaper closures. The writer just presumes that the owner of the "newspaper group" lacks a moral commitment. The writer assumes that newspapers have this mantle of intangibles for "serving the public." It sounds very nice, very worthy. 

Any business that chooses to pursue intangible things to be "nice" is surely welcome to do so. It's a free country this way. But you cannot blame any business for simply trying to do the best it can by the bottom line. 

The Star Trib and other sanctimonious voices from inside the business do a collective "harrumph." They ask re. the alleged carpetbaggers: How dare these impersonal and exploitative businesses just ravage what was once the proud newspaper industry? The industry that gave us the Watergate exposes? Nostalgia on steroids. Watergate was a story of a disgrunteld D.C. official Mark Felt of the FBI, funneling dirt to the Washington Post based on the oldest of human motivations: he was passed over for promotion. No stooge this guy, he could have found other means most likely to accomplish his mission. The Washington Post took risks for an extended time but decided to pursue the story. 

My thinking is that Washington D.C. is a "company town" and such towns always look out for their own interests. In this case the interest was the reputation of our national government. The welfare of the very prosperous city (thanks to government) was at stake. 

My, the '70s were the salad days for the established print media. Nobody questioned it because there were no storm clouds on the horizon for that business model. A dirty little secret is that newspapers did not thrive literally because of pushing this august news reporting tradition. All of that was quite cute. But the newspapers from their heyday carved out power because of their monopoly distribution model. And so, this is precisely why so-called "objective news reporting" became such a mantra. 

Whatever you do, do not offend anyone. We must keep the gravy train going. I'm talking the major metropolitan dailies of course. The community press tried as it might to ape their behemoth cousins. If the behemoths had this big "sports section," well then by golly let's do the same in Mayberry. The Morris paper has had its own sports section of course. 

 

The sports crutch

Why has sports occupied so much more space in our local papers, so much more than a reasoned mind would suggest? Well I do speak from experience: It's easier to fill a newspaper section with sports than to find alternative ways to fill it. The newspaper employees can fall back on a "routine" for covering the various teams. You know the material is coming in and will not be difficult to understand. It's not like a city council or county commissioners meeting. 

Your average small town newspaper publisher, I'm sure, shakes his head in private over how their staffs do cartwheels over sports. The Morris paper when the Morrisons were in charge had a company come in and do a survey or assessment once. One of the pronouncements made by this company was in response to sports coverage issues. And this read: "Be careful about this, the interest is limited." 

I don't recall that we made any changes. 

The Morris paper had various people come and go through the years who made such a fuss about sports. Three times I remember an editor typing multiple pages of Byzantine ideas about organizing sports, what the "priorities" would be for example. This is truly like a cat chasing its own tail. The person in charge did not follow up on the first two of these documents. Why? Well I have a theory or thought: "If we're going to fire someone for not following all this, then we'll have to make sure the new person is held to all of the (Byzantine) requirements. If we don't do that, we're susceptible to being sued by the fired employee." 

Only with the third of these documents, written when the Forum was here, did management ultimately act like it would press the matter. But I think the Forum was starting to get nervous about a lot of things. They decided to start chasing shadows. Then they just got out of town. Through all that I resigned under considerable duress. 

The Forum loses no sleep about shedding employees, let me assure you. So it defends what it does even if it might seem draconian.

 

Towns like Morris
But fast-forward to the present, and the whole batch of newspapers closing up shop like even in Hutchinson and Litchfield. The "meme" promoted by the Star Tribune in a subtle way is that so many newspapers have been acquired by these "meanie" companies that just "gut the newsroom" and watch the papers shrivel away and die. 

I assume that death is never the desired outcome. 

So what's the story? The "meanie" companies would say they buy newspapers in a time when it's obvious the business is collapsing, and they can keep the businesses going for a time and be gentle with them, guiding them to a demise that is really minimally disrupting. The company would say it is providing a service. 

And if they bought up so many papers, who were the owners of these papers so willing to sell? Should we point fingers at them instead? Seems they are left out of the discussion. You might say they "crawled out from under the pile and walked away." Heh heh. 

 

Inevitability?

I wish we could eliminate the suspense and just have the Morris newspaper close up shop. We in Stevens County will just have to get with the program of having a fully functional news/info ecosystem online. The paper's demise would speed up this process. Businesses would no longer be asked to forfeit $ to support the "sucker ads" in the paper. Man, the Forum really went to the well with those. "Have a happy and safe Fourth of July," and then you see a list of businesses on the page. 

I remember when the Forum was here, the ad appeared on the Saturday of July 4 weekend when all the people who were traveling for the weekend wouldn't even see it! And if a particular business was not in the list there, did that mean that the business did not want people to have a safe weekend? Surely you know that the businesses listed on the page had to pay to be there. Heh heh. 

Recently the Morris paper had a "Music in our Schools Month" sucker ad/PSA. Not there: Sarlettes Music. You know why? It's because the paper sells these sucker ads as a package deal so you have to support a whole bunch of them. Del Sarlette did not want to do that. Of course a reader could get the wrong impression. 

If no Morris newspaper, then no more "district court news" with all the names of people who get minor traffic tickets. Good riddance, Morris newspaper. The Morris librarian tells me "I never see kids with the newspapers." That says a lot. Whistling past the graveyard, the newspaper industry is.

 

Addendum: Southwest News Media and Crow River Media were acquired in 2020 by Denver-based MediaNews Group, which also owns the St. Paul Pioneer Press. MediaNews Group is owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, "which is known for buying and gutting newsrooms across the country," according to NPR. 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com