The midsummer of newspapers' discontent

We have entered that most blessed time of year known as "midsummer." The weather for June was pretty mild with lots of cool and wet days. That's pleasant enough but it is not the apex of our cherished summer season, a time of year we know has a fleeting quality to it. Right now we can bask in hot and humid weather, overbearing some of the time - make no mistake about it - but a part of us wants to say "hallelujah."
We can reflect on this time period over the very long and overbearing winter. How wonderful now to get your skin baked a little. We see it as an excuse to slow down. The atmosphere seems laid-back for everyone. School activities are suspended. Many years ago I covered the various levels of summer baseball for the Morris newspaper. The newspaper was so much bigger then and I could roll up my sleeves for any one issue and really mine the sports scene.
VFW and Legion baseball were the highest priorities. I never felt totally comfortable around the Little League diamonds, perhaps sensing that these kids should compete free of media attention. Nevertheless I covered both this and elementary softball for girls. Softball for kids did not exist when I started at the Morris paper. The Legion team seemed like a continuation of the high school season.
Our Legion team placed second in state a few years ago. I thought that was such a tremendous accomplishment, so it was with great displeasure that I observed the mediocre coverage given by the Willmar newspaper. That paper prides itself on area youth sports coverage. The coverage goes beyond what you would expect the newspaper there to do. The Legion season of that summer reached its climax on a Saturday, and the Willmar paper has always seemed to have trouble reviewing games played on Saturday. Saturday games are generally rare. I suspect the sputtering has something to do with the work schedules of the Willmar sports people. In the final article that summer, the name "Mac Beyer" was spelled "Mac Beier." Had I been responsible for a glitch like that, it would be cause for serious name-calling.
I wanted to use the Willmar paper as my info source for a final, triumphant blog post to write about the Morris Legion team. Second in state! That was quite a deal. I could not write the kind of post I wanted. Instead I wrote a brief post that mostly complained about the Willmar paper's deficiencies.
How much longer will the Willmar paper try to hang in there with area-wide sports coverage? There are already leaks in the dike: games that don't get reported for whatever reason - uncooperative or lazy coaches? - and mistakes and discrepancies in the coverage.
News reports are telling us that the decline of newspapers continues apace. The trend is not "flattening out" the way Warren Buffett reportedly expected it would. And now there is a new threatening specter for newspapers: the Trump tariff war. The U.S. Department of Commerce levied its first tariffs on Canadian uncoated groundwood paper six months ago. This has resulted in a big increase in the cost of newsprint. Publishers have done what they had to, by cutting page counts, decreasing issue frequency and laying off employees. And, we learn that small, local papers have been the hardest hit! Oh my. You can find case studies in the news about how papers are struggling to adapt. This is after retrenchment had already reared its ugly head like here in Stevens County, Minnesota, where Forum Communications has had to apply the scythe in several ways.
The tariff exacerbates the situation badly, not that we really need papers in our age of the Internet, but we really hate seeing them disappear too. One CEO is quoted saying the tariffs are "a kick in the teeth." And oh my God, the new landscape with tariffs is impacting those ad circulars that come as a stack with each week's Morris newspaper! Maybe some people look at these - Elden's? - but those people are not in the same orbit as me. Mostly the fliers are for Alexandria businesses. I set them aside when I have occasion to page through the Morris paper.
Have you noticed how much "fluff" is on pages 1-3 of the Morris paper? Instead of real hard news, which might be useful for us to comb through, there's feel-good material about people doing good things, to be sure, but so what? A disaster drill? I would expect local agencies to do such drills and for the drills to be successful. Again, so what? If the drill were not successful, would we read about it? I know how these things get covered: some guy with an agency calls the paper and requests it. The paper obliges with a nice pat on the back spread. But do we as readers need to consume this?
Anyway, the tariff thing has caused U.S. commercial printing companies to pay more for paper, thus the increases get passed on to customers, including advertisers who run prepaid inserts in papers. The Alexandria prepaid inserts used to come here as the Lakeland Shopper. The Lakeland Shopper is a Forum Communications product. When the Forum invaded Stevens County to take over our print products (which used to include the Hancock paper), I guess it was a matter of time before that ungodly pile of Alex ad fliers would get pushed into the Morris paper.
Thankfully I don't buy the paper, I just look at it in public places. The circulation of the Morris paper has been in a tailspin - I wonder when we'll see all the fallout from that.
Advocates for youth sports need to pay attention to what is happening with our hallowed Fourth Estate. The decline process of papers means sports will need promotion and reporting from other quarters. Those avenues online certainly present themselves. But youth sports has been way too slow in adjusting, in harnessing the new media to stay high-profile and to make sure it keeps getting the desired resources.
Football practice begins at around the time of the county fair. Maybe football doesn't deserve support any more. I have tried putting forth a clarion call about this. News items surface regularly about how we must simply reject football, and the sooner the better. Most recently we learned of Tyler Hilinski, Washington State quarterback, who took his own life. He had the brain of a 65-year-old, not to disparage people who actually are 65 years old. Hilinski's parents blame the changes in his brain on CTE, a traumatic and degenerative brain disease detected in many older athletes.
I felt defensive in high school over not having the talent or inclination to play sports. It doesn't help that newspapers like in Willmar shower such endless special attention on athletes. Increasingly I feel concern about this. Issue after issue of the West Central Tribune gets churned out, always with a sports section that has the effect of glorifying kids who play sports like football. Are the kids lured by the opportunity for "glory," as it were? Well, I think they obviously are. And I look at the death of a single person like Hilinski as reason enough to negate football, to wipe it out, and to make us look closely at the risks kids take in all sports.
It's nice for someone like me to realize I won't have any cognitive issues related to football, because I didn't play it, but I feel for all my peers who did. Why can't we as a society be smarter?
Enjoy getting your skin baked the rest of July. That's one risk I do take.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com