One last gunfight for newspapers?

"Today is my birthday. Give me the best you've got."
- John Wayne as gunfighter J.B. Books, arriving at a saloon counter in the concluding scene in "The Shootist" (1976)

I celebrated my 55th birthday at the end of January and did so without alcohol. Turning 55 makes be eligible for the weekly senior citizens drawing at DeToy's Restaurant in Morris. The prize is a chicken dinner. It's a matter of time before my name will show up on the winners board (I hope).
"The Duke" as J.B. Books entered the saloon as a terminally ill man - an old, celebrated gunfighter who was being ushered into obsolescence by more advanced, civilized times. He took a quick glance at a "horseless carriage" just before entering the saloon, as if thinking to himself "we're entering a new age." And soon he was locked in an expected gunfight with some hombres. (This was Wayne's last movie.)
The fight went well until it seemed as though it was all over. Then, from behind, the forgotten saloon keeper raised a double barrel shotgun and filled Mr. Books with buckshot.
The young "Gillom" (Ron Howard), who befriended Books early in this story and grew close, retrieved the old gunfighter's iron, raised it and gunned down the saloon man. Then, after making pained eye contact with Mr. Books for several seconds, Gillom flung the pistol away, whereupon Books smiled, approvingly. . .and died.
A message from all this was that the gun, as with the horse (as primary means of travel) was fading into the past, replaced by a higher level of civilization.
And so it is today with newspapers, fading out of the picture while a new ecosystem of electronic communications advances.
It's my old profession - newspapers that is - but one that has become merely the fodder of memories. I suspect that the transition in that business has made many of its practitioners scared and cowering. The grim reaper might be around any corner, ready to announce "new efficiencies" or "restructuring." And the grizzled veterans of the trade, as I would have been had I stuck around, can end up getting filled with buckshot.
The "dead tree" newspaper industry, seemingly in a daze about the walls caving in, stammers about how its web presence can be transformative. About how color photos can be a significant facelift, despite the fact people view exquisite color photos on their computer screens all day.
Newspapers trumpet their websites but it's almost like Don Quixote lunging at the windmill. Newspapers thought in the early days of the Internet that their product would simply "migrate" to the new medium. The term "migration" implies business as usual, only in a different setting. Instead there has been a rude awakening for the "dead tree" profession as its practitioners (or I should emphasize its owners) realize their anticipated "soft landing" on the web is going to be a catastrophic crash.
The Internet empowers individuals. It is a bottom-up communications model instead of top-down. The new information ecosystem is a meritocracy. No longer must we wait for the gods up on Mount Olympus to decide "what's news" on a given day. No longer do a group of caffeine-injected middle-aged stuffed shirts in a New York City building dictate what the day's headlines will be. Shouldn't there be a collective "amen" to that?
The first shot across the bow might have been the Clinton-Lewinsky saga, which initially was a no-go journalistically in the minds of those stuffed shirts. After some (albeit panicked) deliberation they decided to pass, in the same way the press looked the other way with JFK's dalliances. But not so fast. The new media pioneers became entranced by the story and they felt no barriers. Indeed those barriers have been knocked over, more than ever in the year 2010.
Someday I'd like to see a movie about that seminal moment, when Internet mavens collectively decided that a story, however tabloid-y, needed to get in front of the public..
Lyle Christiansen of Morris once paid a private detective to get a movie script idea to Nora Ephron. His idea was about the D.B. Cooper legend and how his brother was likely the notorious fellow. (I admire Lyle's intrepid spirit but am puzzled why he would want to connect his family name to criminal notoriety.)
My suggested movie would begin with scenes portraying the "old media" - those boardrooms and harried men wearing white shirts and ties (neck loosened), many puffing on cigarettes (from days when it got a pass indoors) - men thinking themselves entitled. Scenes too of bundled newspapers, mountains of them, getting sacked and heaved into delivery trucks, etc., etc., etc.
Then I'd shift to the "geeks" (now considered normal people) ushering the new media out of obscurity, who with a few keystrokes and click could propel the likes of the Clinton-Lewinsky "scandal." And where did that take us? Perhaps nowhere in terms of political fallout. But the media landscape would never be the same again. As we were reminded again when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth bypassed a hesitant establishment media and got out in front of the public. The undaunted (but I feel needlessly venomous) Swift Boaters delivered a seeming roundhouse punch to John Kerry's presidential aspirations.
Continuing the theme of roundhouses, there was the one delivered to the jaw of old media stalwart Dan Rather. "Superscript" went right over his head. The blogosphere took the lead, advanced like army ants and devoured the veteran newsman who had almost been created by Watergate.
Nothing changes overnight. Old habits and systems can be stubborn in stepping aside for as long as any money is to be made perpetuating them. So "dead tree" newspapers and shoppers are thrashing about, trying to demonstrate their relevance in an age in which they more accurately could be described as pollution.
A couple years ago the Alexandria, Virginia, city council considered a "do not deliver" law as a way to confront a "free circulation" newspaper, the Examiner, that was the cause of frequent complaints. (I never checked to see how the issue was resolved, but the point is made.)
The newspaper industry is a plodding dinosaur while people like me (with "I Love Morris") are the little mammals scurrying around among the rocks while the behemoths go extinct. Frankly I thought the process of evolution would progress faster. But the current transformative process is partly generational, with the oldsters - and that increasingly includes baby boomers - clinging to papers largely out of sentiment and habit.
The dinosaurs are dropping and the mammals are getting bigger.
I notice that there's no longer a green vending box for the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the south side of Stevens Community Medical Center. And so the fading goes, gradually, like splotches of sunlight during twilight.
The company that owns the Brainerd Dispatch has fallen into bankruptcy. That company, Morris Publishing Group of Georgia (Georgia?), also owns the papers in Pequot Lakes and Pine River (superb deer hunting country among the pines, I might add).
The St. Paul Pioneer Press has taken its turn in the bankruptcy line, following the lead of the venerable Star Tribune. A newspaper filing for bankruptcy isn't the man-bites-dog story it once was. It's a yawner more like the bulletin of Sarah Palin signing with Fox News.
The Pi Press is thus humbled, although I'm puzzled how these papers always spin their bankruptcy stories as if the move is a good thing. Typical: "Our day-to-day operations won't be affected and we can restructure now."
Oh good, everybody likes a happy ending, with emphasis on the word "ending."
The Pi Press was a favorite of mine in college mainly because of Don Riley's "Eye Opener" sports column. Don was an earthy sort who wouldn't have known the meaning of political correctness. As an example, he wrote of female golfer Laura Baugh that "she's the only golfer on the women's tour that I would care to share a rhumba with."
I'm not sure what's more dated in that statement: the sexism or the "rhumba." But I loved Don's uninhibited perspective. How, for example, he'd respond to a harsh critic by writing "And you'll love the view at Happy Acres." (Come to think of it, that's non-PC too.)
His intro lines for various topics were trademarks: "I'll talk, you listen". . . "Scattergunning from the catbird's seat". . . "Behind the lockers."
Here in the Morris area, it's time we heed the words of Stevens Forward! and expedite the recommended new "virtual community" in which we optimize new media.
I was ahead of my time four years ago when I went around tapping people on the shoulder, so to speak, suggesting this. I broached the subject with people I considered to be progressive and community-conscious, you know, "Blandin" type people. And they were nice and polite and little more. Their eyes would get glazed over, they would smile reflexively and say "thank you, Brian."
But now it's official with the proclamation from Stevens Forward! that we not take such a yawning attitude. We are in fact to pursue a new ecosystem of local information sharing and reporting. An example is the "Friday Facts" community schedule which is e-mailed to a host of people by the Chamber of Commerce and University of Minnesota-Morris. If UMM puts its imprimatur on this, it will have legs.
If Stevens Forward! succeeds in fostering that "virtual community," we may not need the traditional newspaper. We as a community won't need to heave tons of intrusive and unwieldy ad circulars (like for Alexandria businesses) into the local waste disposal. Well, maybe not tons. It only seems like it. Recycling? This only starts the whole process over again.
The outstate newspaper travails may be worse than in the metro. Does that surprise anyone? One reason we all seem to be screaming for the Riley brothers to get a break is that we're feeling such economic pain out here, right?
David Brauer of Minnpost, in writing about the Duluth newspaper situation, began a post as follows: "Over the many months I've done this blog, I've tried to bring attention to the newspaper meltdown in non-metro Minnesota. In some cases, the reductions are far worse than what's happened at our local dailies. Case in point: the Duluth News-Tribune."
The company that owns the Duluth paper also owns the Morris and Hancock papers.
Esteemed media analyst Michael Wolff, who wrote a biography of mogul Rupert Murdoch (available at the Morris Public Library), predicted last April that 80 percent of all newspapers would be gone within 18 months.
"A fool, a knave, heresy," were remarks of derision in response, in effect. But it reminds me of "Fulton's Folly" and other mocking, skeptical reactions to when change moved rapidly at our doorstep, propelled by the inexorable force of technology and how it chisels persistently. I have told some friends via email that I consider Wolff to be totally correct.
The idea of abandoning newspapers creates a level of discomfort with a lot of people, in the way any kind of major change creates discomfort. Change is unsettling. It means adopting new behavior patterns and a new mindset. But as with a toddler plugging his nose and going underwater in the pool for the first time, the initial trepidation gives way to a surprising new comfort level.
"Hey, that was no big deal."
-Brian Williams - Morris Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com