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| Oh, to be the headline-writer for New York Post |
We went through changes in our production schedule. For a long time we'd send the Tuesday issue to the printing plant at 3 p.m. Monday. Then we negotiated a change with Quinco Press where we'd get it there by late afternoon Sunday. Quinco had its own interest in how things were set up.
At first Jim Morrison wanted to have the whole Tuesday paper done by the end of the work day Friday. But wait, what about the Friday and Saturday football games? What about the time needed to get i's dotted and t's crossed, as best we could, on a whole range of stuff? I raised some of these obvious issues and we capitulated, to an extent anyway.
If it was hard keeping sports parents satisfied before, it had to become more difficult henceforth. However, we still had the luxury of putting out two papers a week, each of pretty fair size. At present there's no comparison.
The Morris paper at present is looking at new ownership. Frankly I have been surprised as I hear comments out and about, like last night at "senior night" at Detoy's, just how negative the feelings had gotten toward Forum Communications. I have heard people drop some pretty blunt comments. A couple of these people hold business positions that would normally make them reserved in comments they'd make about anything.
There is nothing to celebrate here. We might well have had reservations when the Morris paper was taken over by a chain. Given my standing as sometimes being "glass half empty," you might think I was brimming with skepticism. I actually was not. I tried to give the new arrangement a chance. I went with the "company line" thinking as articulated by Ed Morrison: a large operation like the Forum would have the necessary and up-to-date tools to optimize success in our new age.
How exactly did tech help?
I kept up with the tech advancements for a long time. I was proud of myself up to a point, then I began sensing I was just being overwhelmed. I pleaded with the manager that the rate of change with all our systems, weekly and almost daily, was getting to me. They were turning my brain to mush.
She responded by saying that when she began there, she knew relatively little - I think her exact words were more blunt - and that she was forced into a rapid learning process herself.
We now wonder what exactly was accomplished with all those changes. There's a consensus now that the period of Forum Communications ownership of the Morris paper was an abject failure. So much so, the concept of chain ownership has been shelved and we're going back to mom and pop. Absolutely amazing!
The big news has forced me into considerable reflection. I think back to our pre-digital world and how so much of our newspaper work seemed like bat out of hell. I remember feeling pressure to do so much work so fast. It was like the proverbial sausage-making. On Saturday morning I'd write all the headlines for the next issue. We never expected our work to be perfect. Anyone who has written a lot of headlines can remember a few that ended up seen as edgy.
Covering the local school (or area schools) was such a sensitive matter through most of my tenure with the Morris paper. It was unreasonably sensitive. School district matters or issues could not be handled in the kind of calm, orderly and quiet manner that we would like. The phasing out of the Cyrus high school became way too much of a hot potato.
I'm remembering a headline I once wrote pertaining to Chokio-Alberta. I think this was after a Morris school board meeting. My headline: "C-A coming to Morris? Hints reportedly heard."
Well. . . This kind of language certainly stoked feelings. Sorry, but sometimes we just have to acknowledge reality. I don't wish to seem callous about it. Certain people in C-A felt for a long time that stronger ties needed to be established with Morris. Their voices seemed futile. There was actually a letter to the editor after my headline, from someone saying that the paper should "not toy with people's feelings." That's the wording I recall.
Jim Morrison's take? He ended up flabbergasted at the flap, because he said the headline reflected what was in the article completely. That's the standard by which you judge a headline: does it reflect the article?
School days, school days
School-based issues were too contentious over the span of time I was with the Morris paper. C-A has accepted having its athletes play as "Tigers." Frankly things seem relatively peaceful now. Morris got voters to approve improvements and repairs on the older part of our campus. I might feel "flabbergasted" at how easily these school matters get OK'd by voters now. I was in Morris in the late 1960s when it was like pulling teeth to get any kind of school facilities issue passed. What happened? My sense is that more state money became available, relieving the local burden some.
And now, I have to wonder if more education spending and decision-making should come from the federal level, really. I know red state people are instinctively revulsed by that. By moving decisions further away, we'd be relieving many communities of the arduous process of making these funding decisions. The issues can divide communities horribly. In Morris we are spared that some. But if you regularly look at the Willmar paper, you'll read about "sob stories" of various school districts that plead about how hopeless and outdated their school facilities are, and how they'll have to spend considerable money to update.
We hear about needs for "new gymnasiums." Ask school people or government people about "needs" and they'll thrust a list in your face every time. Kamala Harris has suggested the federal government get more involved in education. Relieve these small communities of the contentious issues that often pit neighbor against neighbor. Look at Brandon-Evansville, BOLD, Montevideo and MACCRAY, among others. We are seeing this "needs" thing play out in those communities now.
I don't think schools need gymnasiums at all, how about that? I think government-funded education is solely for the purpose of making sure our young people master the three R's, not much beyond that. So I'm hardly sympathetic when reading these laundry lists of school "needs." Sometimes in their passion, these advocates describe the current facilities situation as being rather a dump, to the point it can almost make you ill. Why couldn't many of these facilities have been built better in the first place?
If you set the bar real high for elaborate school facilities, you're just encouraging the expansion of area-wide schools where the kids are subjected to a transportation burden every day. It contradicts contemporary common sense completely, because the availability of limitless info via one's electronic devices at home would seem to make de-centralized education ever more practical. But I don't want to "toy with people's feelings."
A problem: dealing with sports
De-centralized education would make it harder to continue with the longstanding model of sports teams and sports rivalries between communities. How Neanderthal! This is a model that should be retired to history's dustbin, the old world as presented by the movie "Hoosiers" with its parochial, small-minded characters.
A friend of mine says the traditional education model would have to be maintained because communities would not want to lose the sports element. "A lot of people think that's the only reason we have schools," he says. Overstatement perhaps, but overstatement often makes a point in a lucid way.
A headline about nonsense
I remember a headline I wrote after a game where a couple Morris players had been taunted for their allegedly long hair. The game was at the UMM P.E. Center. The taunting was done with a big cardboard "prop" of scissors. I don't think that would be allowed today. The opposing team as I recall was Hancock, a community with lots of Apostolics who keep their hair pretty short. This is the red state Trump crowd. By that I mean to suggest they aren't renaissance people.
My headline used the word "aesthetics." How often do you see that word in a sports headline? I asked if it was athleticism or aesthetics that mattered. I wouldn't be permitted to write such a headline today, just as I'm sure the offending student-fan behavior would not be allowed. We live in a more "tight" world. You get pulled over by cops for no seat belt today, for example.
Can the new ownership of the Morris paper accomplish anything special? Very good question. In the final analysis it's a business. All the rest is window dressing.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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