I remember being at a UMM Retirees meeting where the subject of communications came up. The site was at the odd little addition to the old Sunwood Inn on the west side. The whole place seems to be getting revitalized now. Maybe that odd little addition will be the site for activity again. Would be nice to see.
"Old Sunwood Inn" is sort of a default way of referring to the place. Would be logical for people my age. Other names have come and gone. So why not just fall back on the default?
This reminds me of the medical clinic downtown in the old Willie's building. Been through several names, and now there's a sign that says "Lake Region Healthcare." That's a familiar name for yours truly, used to take Mom to the Fergus Falls Lake Region Healthcare. Those were enjoyable trips as they were not emergency situations - something just had to be maintained. Toward the end of our experiences there, they put on a rather "futuristic" entry area - dazzling frankly. I thought of the "Jetsons."
I attended the UMM Retirees meetings with my late parents for a time, obviously because of their mounting limitations. No one would mistake me for a retired UMM prof, would they? I must have sat in for one of my parents for a group photo once - the photo was on the first page of a newsletter. So maybe I could be mistaken for a UMM prof. I must say it was enjoyable being part of it all.
I got involved with several things due to my parents, most notably Sons of Norway. My old high school classmate Edith Martin of the grocery store family, referred to the group as "Sons of Knutson." She was talking about our old teacher Marilyn Syverson being such a leader with the group. To this day I have a Sons of Norway sticker on my 2004 Chevy Malibu.
Yes I must contemplate getting a new vehicle. Problem is: electric, hybrid or standard gas? I have gotten on the Internet machine about this and have not found good enough guidance.
The Internet is go-to for so many things. Sometimes we can still end up head-scratching, as I was when researching a diabetic diet. I went to sites that seemed so promising. Typically the host for these sites rambles and throws around terms that are not easily grasped. It gets aggravating. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say it'd be nice seeing a short list of readily understood and available foods. Something to wrap our arms around. Not so easy.
At the UMM Retirees meeting, our esteemed retired choir director came right out and said something so obvious about the Morris newspaper. This could be said about nearly all community newspapers. Nearly all of us must think this as we peruse the typical community paper. Maybe just don't care much. If we seek the paper at all, it's probably because there are some narrow categories of info we're looking for. In my case, I go to the Morris library on many weeks to just open the paper to where I might find announcements of upcoming community events. Like public suppers or receptions for retiring people etc.
But people who are buying the paper are buying the whole thing, right? The retired choir director was spot-on with his comment and it's something we may not think of much. We take the product for granted as it is. It's part of the scenery? Part of our assumed way of life: a sports section that looks like it occupies half of the paper.
The second section is in fact designated "sports." A whole sports section just like we see for the big-time metro papers. Is that why the small town papers do it too? Are they aping their city cousins? You might ask "well why not have a full-fledged sports section?" The counter argument is that people do not follow the local teams like they would the truly big-time teams or professional teams.
The interest in the high school teams is more confined to those who have a direct interest. Obviously it's wonderful that our schools offer all this. It's wonderful that a fair number of people turn out for the events. But a local paper with seemingly half of its space devoted to sports?
"Recognition" is fine. But I'm not sure that a raft of articles about games played a week previous are really going to be a magnet for attention. So they are there merely as a rite of small town life? Rhetorical question.
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| Ken Hodgson |
The Morris paper published two editions a week then. The Hancock paper has ceased to exist. It was telling that I sensed no uproar when the Hancock paper was closed. I would have expected some controversy. The fact there wasn't any, or so little, said something about how society has been moving on from the local paper.
We have naturally been seeing a renaissance of communications developments. We are not nearly so reliant on the local paper. An excellent source told me the Morris paper came close to closing when Forum Communications decided to abandon Morris. I have a theory that certain community leaders got wind of this and felt around to try to get new operators here. Which they did.
But could we have really gotten along without a Morris paper? Hancock could. Hancock continues having a K-12 school system, yet it has lost its paper. Many towns without such a school asset have a paper that is at least surviving. But the ranks are thinning.
I have taken the long way around the barn with the post you're reading here today. I was going to explain why your typical small town paper has this obvious feature of a bloated "sports section" as pointed out by Hodgson. BTW I learned on Sunday in church that our current UMM choir director Laura Wiebe is leaving us. Maybe it's not good to get to know UMM staff people because these days, so many of them are "transitory," to borrow the word made popular by the Federal Reserve not long ago.
Wiebe went beyond UMM to get involved with my church of First Lutheran. She exercised her choir chops. She will be missed here.
So here we go on what I can share about sports sections in the local press. Many years ago the number of local organized teams was far fewer than today. I have a hard time getting this out: no girls teams! Oh my, girls were associated with "home ec." Girls needed time to establish sports skills so they could truly parallel what the boys were doing. They were like "The Little Engine That Could."
"I think I can." And they most surely did.
You might suggest that girls today have it better than boys: none of their sports imperil their health, not like football and wrestling. Wrestling imposes an unreasonable need for weight loss. Football? It's in the news.
Sports that were once on a sandlot level, most notably hockey, "grew up" and got totally organized just like the other prep teams. Newspapers, having to react to all this, wanted to stick with established habits. If certain teams were being covered with a detailed "boxscore," for example, well let's incorporate this.
Gymnastics and swimming came along. I remember when swimming was nascent here and we had the "Tiger Sharks." One by one the various teams gained a real imprimatur of legitimacy.
The local newspapers could have responded to this by condensing sports reports more. Make it fill the usual amount of space. Newspapers resisted that logic. So now we have pages and pages coming at us all the time. The average reader may not take note the way Hodgson did. Rather, they take for granted how things are - an often irresistible instinct in small town life.
"Too much sports?" Well obviously there is. So what's your point?
Addendum: To this day I take pride in my sportswriting. I'm looking up at the wall in my home at a framed T-shirt. It is signed "To Brian, best wishes to a great sportswriter." It was from Fuzzy Thurston who affixed "#63" after his name signature - that was his number when he starred as guard in the Green Bay Packers offensive line in their glory years. The framed item is a prize possession of mine.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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