I think back to when newspaper people had a more confident and assertive perch in our society, due to their obvious advantages. Today the democratization of media has changed everything. It's for the better. Nevertheless we hear local voices say the quality of a local newspaper is still important.
You should be reminded: it seems unheard-of for a newspaper chain to sell a paper to local-based interests. Because of the novelty, we must wonder what this says about what's going on in Morris MN. Maybe it's not positive.
Certainly we have seen a negative turn with local businesses. And even if we didn't, would our business sector still choose to be as dependent on the newspaper? Or commercial media at all, the entities that feel entitled to reap a profit from simply distributing information?
I can see the Morris newspaper at three public places: the library, my church and the senior center. It is never necessary for me to buy it. I can remember buying it just once, when I wanted to get it early in the morning, so as to get info on the section track meet for a blog post. I got the paper from the laundromat vending machine - five quarters required? How many people have five quarters in their pocket?
The paper should discard vending machines. I remember seeing the Morris newspaper vending machine at the entrance to UMM's Oyate, when an old copy remained under the glass for several weeks before the problem got remedied. How embarrassing. Simple management oversight. One had to wince.
So I got my paper at the laundromat and sure enough, there was a big track and field spread, but it turned out to be coverage of the previous week's sub-section meet! It was not up to date. So I muttered a couple choice expletives and had to modify my plans for the morning.
I generally rely on the Willmar paper for information for my sports blog posts. Anyone who does this over a length of time will discover that the Willmar paper can be quite hit and miss, both in terms of consistency and accuracy. Although, it seems better than a few years ago. Perhaps an internal memo has been shared at Willmar: "Be extra careful writing about Morris sports because there's a blogger over there who will call us out."
The Willmar paper is owned by Forum Communications which is now selling its Morris paper to the Benson/Elbow Lake operation. We really do wish the new owners well. I say that with all sincerity. However, the task of jump-starting a newspaper in the year 2019 will be awfully daunting. Perhaps impossible. A chain is supposed to have a number of natural advantages to help newspapers keep going, even if there are compromises in quality. For a chain to give up on the Morris MN product is thus concerning, as if maybe we're a lost cause.
Was Forum Communications simply incompetent? Could we blame the whole thing on Dennis Winskowski of Detroit Lakes? He was the puppetmaster assigned to the Morris project. A couple employees were laid off here so Dennis could move the ad production work to his Detroit Lakes division. There's an example of "synergy." That leverage is gone now.
Nor will Morris be able to ride piggy-back on the Willmar sports coverage, as so often happened with the Forum.
The sports conundrum
Sports! Jim Morrison might say that was a bane of his existence. Actually it was a bane of mine too. As I look back, I am profoundly saddened at how I got trapped in a vise with this. I was trapped on a staff that had some assertive and emotionally-driven sports parents, which might not be a disaster in and of itself. But the problem was that all of these people had their kids in the small schools outside of Morris. Yes, all of them.
It was uncanny. The advertising manager was in that category. This was in a time when the small, Pheasant Conference-size schools had a different philosophy from Morris, seen most visibly in sports but evident in an underlying way. Morris meanwhile had gotten dragged down by what I have always called "the deconstructionist influences in education in the 1970s." Such influences suggested we should question traditional values.
The seeds for this were planted in the 1960s. I attended a state college in the 1970s where I was surrounded with the deconstructionist ideas and influences. I saw all this as rather a nuisance or maybe a fad, not that I would defer entirely to the traditional model. The traditional model might suggest, for example, that girls ought to be just cheerleaders in sports! Heavens! Remember the movie "Hoosiers" with Gene Hackman?
You know, something that bothered me about that movie, was that we didn't get to know the cheerleaders at all. (Secondarily, did Hackman ever "get the girl?")
It is very sad that our Morris school became phlegmatic during the '80s, due to more than one factor actually. It got to the point where a visible insurgency grew that became unpleasant. If you want verification on this, there are still local people around with memories, such as an attorney with the initials W.A., a good friend of mine and fellow UMM advocate.
Yes I am a UMM advocate who has put his money where his mouth is. So it's ironic and actually tragic that UMM was a catalyst for my ultimate downfall with the Morris newspaper: the coverage of the goalpost incident of 2005. I quoted an eyewitness account from the ESPN2 website. We laid out the paper over the weekend, when most of you probably assume you're not working at all. Well, I faced considerable work pressure over many weekends - hope you all appreciate it, though I doubt you do.
Weekend of infamy
Once I became aware of the goalpost incident, I began to figure there would be no football game info coming into my possession soon. I figured all the principals at UMM would be hunkered down in silence, or perhaps gone somewhere else.
So, I had several nice photos which I had taken in the first half of the game, in place on page 1B. Very nice. But I needed some text. If I had it to do over again, I would have beaten down doors to try to contact the coach and arrange for him to drop off info. I suspect the coach was walking on eggshells for the rest of the weekend. I suspect he'd be gun shy about the phone ringing or any attempt at communication with him. I "left him alone," what I guess was not prudent.
Communication? My phone at the office rang off the hook for the whole rest of the weekend. I got more than one call from NBC's Today Show. I had to admit I wasn't at the field when the incident happened. Do you realize how many teams our newspaper was responsible for in those days?
An obvious argument to be made here is: where was UMM's own sports information person? It was the now-deceased Brian Curtis (or Brian Brummond), who I guess has a part of Big Cat Stadium named for him. Well, I heard nothing from him. Nevertheless all fingers ended up pointed at me when it was all over.
Keep in mind that the year was 2005, when Internet-based information was not nearly as well-developed as it is now. College sports websites started out as rudimentary things, as nothing more than a promotional billboard in many cases. They could be attractive, as I could see when I checked the Winona State sports site, trying to get some fresh info. But there was no fresh info there - it was just an attractive billboard.
Today, come hell or high water, current sports news is posted in a timely way on college sites everywhere. It is assumed.
I'm sure Jim Morrison would understand the problem I pointed out with certain zealous sports parents on the Sun Tribune staff. He'd describe it as a distraction, a benign one and maybe humorous. Very often I saw it as anything but amusing. I had to deal with the fallout. My reputation was impacted.
Let's acknowledge too that the problems with the Morris school district were not myth, they were fact. Again, some people might reflect on this with amusement, like it couldn't have been that bad or it was simply "no big deal" (a staple of Minnesota vernacular - "no big deal").
So, these unpleasant thoughts are sifting through my mind as I'm forced to notice what is happening with the Morris newspaper now. You might say it induces something akin to PTSD.
Thought: Did the Forum acquire Morris with the idea of setting it up as a "zombie" business? We read about this sort of thing, a consequence of near-zero interest rates I guess. Or, for tax purposes? The details of these things are beyond my range of knowledge.
I live with the fallout of my newspaper career every day. I feel unjustifiably blamed for some things. It seems the Morris newspaper began its drastic descent at the precise time when I left the place. Obviously this could be coincidence. The conventional wisdom is that papers everywhere started feeling stressed at that time.
The great editor Marty Baron has said "newspapers have five years left," and I believe he gave that quote a year or so ago. Baron led the Boston paper at the time it exposed the Catholic Church as a boil on our society.
I should stop writing about the newspaper transition in Morris, because it's unsettling for me. Maybe this post will mark the end.
How paper can be gadfly
Sometimes the newspaper publishes stuff that simply embarrasses people, for no constructive end. Take a look at the current issue. You'll see a letter to the editor on the problem of whether or not to tip the carry-out people at Willie's Super Valu. Right away I thought: "Paul Martin is going to hate seeing this letter. It's a no-win for him." I shot off an email to Paul and I invite you to read:
Hi Paul! I'll wager that you didn't like seeing that
letter to the editor Saturday in local paper, on whether to tip the
carry-outs!!! I'll wager you don't even like seeing the discussion get
going. There's a nice favor the local paper does for us, eh? Like when
they embarrass people by publishing seat belt tickets (happened to me
once).
Tipping carry-outs?
Well, this is a real conversation-starter. You should know the whole
concept of tipping is coming under re-evaluation these days, with
momentum behind the idea of phasing it out. There was an article on the
Minnpost website about this. Tipping at restaurants came into practice
during the Great Depression. When I was young, you'd tip with COINS.
Once I realized it had to be paper, there was an issue of wet spots on
the table, so, should I just hand it to the server? Oh, and what if her
shift ends before I leave? Can I count on her getting it? Sometimes we
hear of controversy where tips are shared with the "hostess." Sometimes
the tips are shared among all servers, which makes me wonder, what's the
point?
At Willie's, what
about the employees who AREN'T in carry-out? Will they get jealous of
the ones who get the tips? If an employee helps me find something in the
aisle, should I feel expected to tip her? On and on and on, until we
have to conclude that employees should just get paid fairly by the
employer. I think tipping at restaurants is getting more awkward in this
age where more people are paying with plastic cards. I find the
practice annoying. Employees should be paid fairly.
Remember
how Juergensen's had the system where people would drive up to front
and sacks would be placed in car? Glen Helberg called that system
"partial carry." Glen said grocery stores everywhere are weighing
whether to continue carry-out. And you know the big box system where
people just push carts out into the lot and then leave them in
designated spots. Then you'd have "cart wranglers." Might be a good job
for me!
My two cents on
another topic: I frankly think you should consider discontinuing the
weekly paper ad circular. Given your position in this marketplace, I
just don't see where it's needed. People TRUST your store to have
reasonable everyday prices on things. I have delivered those big boxes
of circulars many times and it's a lot of fuss for what it does. Costs
money for you too.
New
newspaper owners? Well that is nothing short of amazing, and I'm not
sure it says anything good about our local economy. It is UNHEARD OF for
a chain newspaper company to sell a property to local-based owners. It
is man bites dog.
I missed Prairie Pioneer Days in summer. I thought after the initial announcement, it would be restored.
Nice
picnic once again. Hope to see the live music back again next year,
with pedal steel!!! I'm amazed at how those guys memorized so many
lyrics.
(end of email)
(end of email)
Examining the current edition
Another issue with the current Morris paper: the cartoon on the editorial page. It has the possibility of offending people. It suggests there are lots of "grifters" in our midst who simply want to get money from government. People defending the cartoon would say the message is directed at people who do this in an untoward way. But that is not clear.
Stevens County has many aging citizens who are past their productive years. They are going to have to depend on government in various ways. I started getting Social Security two years ago. I'll sign up for Medicare in January. I resent any suggestion or even hint that I'm a grifter. It's just right wing grandstanding to make an issue to point fingers.
The people who are fond of pointing fingers, themselves try using any machinations to get what they can out of government. Like the big farmers who surely know how to "game the system" to get maximum subsidies in the current trade war. (Don't you hate anything that has the word "war" in it?)
So, do we really need to see this finger-pointing cartoon in the Morris newspaper now? Or, the letter about tipping that is only going to cause headaches for our local grocery store owner? Or, the district court news which always embarrasses good local citizens by publishing info about minor traffic tickets? I almost felt I had to stay away from church for a while, after getting a seat belt ticket and being teased. Maybe it was good-natured but it was still annoying.
So, to conclude re. the local newspaper sale: the fact a chain would give up on us, may well be a red flag. Perhaps Reed and Shelly Anfinson got ahold of this enterprise with a fire sale price, eh? Whatever, we might as well hope for the best, even if "newspapers" have five years left.
I will continue to blog as best I can about Tiger sports, using available info from other media. It's simply part of my DNA to do this.
Will Sue Dieter be allowed to write an ax-grinding column for this coming Saturday? Such high drama! She stood by while I was cast adrift by the company, but I wouldn't want to wish the same on her.
A former manager of Quinco Press, Lowry, said he thought Ed Morrison sold the paper because of an employee theft problem (scandal) within the paper. The offending person's initials were D.D. She's deceased now, God rest her soul. We had an inside joke where we'd pout at each other. The word on the street was that the amount taken was substantial.
Odious to be around, to be sure, but more odious for yours truly was an adulterous affair involving two staff members. I had to work within a few feet of that. Later I felt like telling Morris Community Church who moved into the building, that they ought to fumigate the place.
Will the paper still be called the Stevens County Times or might we see it return to the Sun Tribune?
I'm recalling a hint I sensed in December that something might be up with the Morris paper. I could not find the usual staff photo for a "Merry Christmas" greeting. I looked hard. I recall that the previous year, the size of the photo was reduced sharply. When Jim Morrison and I were at the paper, this thing would be a whole page. We often enlisted cartoonist Del Holdgrafer. Del was a throwback: all he asked as compensation was enough money to fill his gas tank.
"Merry Christmas": Is that something that has to hinge on your current business performance? Shouldn't that just be a stand-alone gesture? Well, not in the days of big, impersonal, centralized businesses. Consider Wells Fargo.
Peace,
Brian R. Williams, Morris MN
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| Say hello to the new Morris newspaper owners: Reed and Shelly Anfinson. I use this image on a "fair use" basis. It's from the Stevens County Times. Will they continue with that name? |
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