Now it's Mad Magazine that has joined the list of defunct print products. The print version of Mad is being retired. Ten years ago this would have been a bigger story. It is hardly a blip now because we increasingly feel less need for on-paper everything.
Let me run this by you: do you share my feeling that our Willie's grocery store doesn't need to bother with the weekly ad circular? We get ours in the mailbox. It's a slight annoyance because I have to examine it well enough to be sure no letters are stuck inside. Then I just toss it. I know Willie's wants to trumpet prices so that we can be aware of how we might save pennies on certain items. I'm dubious about this.
Don't you think ads lure us into 1) buying items we don't necessarily want or need, 2) buying items in greater quantities than we might desire, or 3) buying brands or versions that would not be our top preference? I have told Paul Martin that more and more of us go to Willie's every day to simply buy a small number of items. I go there fixated on just buying a few specific things. I'm not going to be persuaded by an "ad" to do anything different.
There are more and more single people among us, more retirees who aren't shopping for a family with kids. Seems to me the deli should be continually expanded. The idea of filling our cart with raw materials for home-cooked meals is becoming impractical. It doesn't matter how you might save pennies on some of these items. If you still do things the old-fashioned way, from Norman Rockwell's America, you end up with dirty dishes at the end of the day, a hassle and a cause of eventually having a clogged drain if you aren't careful.
I'm not lazy when it comes to my attitude of "doing dishes," I just find it's not worth the trouble. Perhaps I'm no example for our population at large because I'm living alone. That's unfortunate but it's a forced circumstance. But I'll repeat: there are more and more singles out there.
We see a product called "Daily Harvest" advertised on TV. The commercial starts out "I haven't bought groceries in weeks." Wow! Not music to Paul Martin's ears I guess. But the Paul Martins of the world still have to adjust. Just as the car industry is adjusting to electric cars.
The Canary publication still gets distributed locally. On average it's much smaller than it used to be and it has "filler." Seems that we often see two full pages for Jim Gesswein Motors (Milbank?) while on many weeks I see no display for our Heartland. And Valu Ford? It seems not to be there at all, but does it matter? Obviously people go online to research major purchases of all kinds.
Is Gesswein an old-fashioned "holdout" or are there special reasons for their generosity with the stodgy old print media, with ads that get ink on your fingers?
Our Morris paper has canceled its free shopper, the "Ad-Viser." It's something for the museum now. When I worked at the paper, I'd spend Friday loading Ad-Viser bundles into the van in Lowry. Those memories are for the archive. Man, those bundles could seem endless, so one day an employee there teased me: "Brian, are you sure there's room (in the van) for you?" Now it's gone, gone with the wind I guess. And we don't care because whatever need was felt for that thing before, is gone now.
It's not "news" when such a thing vanishes, and it's only minor news that Mad Magazine is done as a print product.
A headline about Mad gets the interest of boomers like me for whom Mad was an essential part of growing up. I read a book called "The End of Victory Culture" in which the author noted a supreme irony: "Mad" poked fun at the very things that were symbols of the good, affluent lives our parents had given us. Our parents were the Depression/World War II generation. What a different life story they had from us.
Shortly after the Morris paper cut off my "comp" subscription - I didn't take it hard because I learned from Jim Morrison that Ed Morrison had been cut off the same way - the folks there must have thought I wouldn't mind getting the Ad-Viser stuffed in my mailbox. I actually felt enraged by that. I promptly left a note in their off-hours drop box that I didn't want it. They complied. I didn't want to speak face to face with anyone there.
I'd wager that the non-locally owned Morris paper has been a humorless place for some time. The paper often comes out as a mere 14 pages now - I think it was 16 last week. The material on pages 1-3 seems largely "fluff" or happy news - it's not necessary for us to see. What would be necessary, is articles on local government that are really probing, letting us know about issues or conflicts so we might help adjudicate. All the "happy" news seems like it might cause an inferiority complex as we see attention given so many happy, successful, award-winning people. Meanwhile as the saying goes, the majority of us "lead lives of quiet desperation."
A writer who poked fun at the "happy news" satirized this by giving a mock headline: "How I named my hamster." There's a headline for the Morris Sun Tribune or whatever it's called: "How I named my hamster."
As with the demise of the print Mad Magazine, the demise of the Morris paper when it finally comes will not strike us as a big deal.
Ten years ago the closing of Shopko would have been jaw-dropping. I don't think it is now, even though it should be. We are all too happy these days to defer to the big impersonal corporate world and its ethos, to just accept whatever happens and shrug. I guess I'm old fashioned.
When I was with the Morris paper, the summer Prairie Pioneer Days was a huge calendar highlight. Who could have foreseen that it would just disappear? Very odd. The Stevens County Museum should do an elaborate exhibit with lots of photos about what the summer PPD was like in Morris. It will be one of the most special chapters in the community's history.
So, Mad Magazine has been laid to rest as a print product. As the media world got more and more fragmented, I think it was hard for Mad to satirize things. Mad was at its best when we had the Big 3 TV networks. Entertainment was packaged for a mass audience which meant it had to be watered down, and this lent itself to parody. Today with niche programming taking over ever more, we can find what we truly want in the media.
Mad Magazine will be preserved in the pantheon of our nation's history. Here is how the boomer generation got its laughs. Will young people just be puzzled as they ponder what made us tick?
Addendum: I was at Morris library today and saw new Morris paper of 14 pages total. Only issue of the week. How can they continue with a staff of six people? The business could probably be managed from Alexandria. If Morris paper gets nixed, we'll probably be offered the Alex paper which has the same owner. What is the point of the Dairy Month page?
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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