Dazzling coverage with hidden agenda?

It is 9:49 p.m. Monday as I write this. It has been hectic lately. We have had the sale of the Morris newspaper. We had the odd developments with a high school football program that we played twice: Kimball. I have been writing more often than I care to. I have been resolving to "push away from the table," not to eat less but to type less! For now I'll compile a few more thoughts.
So, later for a respite? We'll see.
The weather getting colder forces me to spend more time indoors. How much summer did we get this year? Maybe three weeks, truly. I planted my zinnias three weeks later than usual. Fortunately they came up well. My late mother would be delighted.
This evening I will gush with praise about the sports work of the West Central Tribune of Willmar. It's owned by the company that put tail between legs and left Morris. The Willmar paper posted stupendous coverage of the MACA vs. Eden Valley-Watkins football game. The game was played Saturday afternoon and was reviewed online "before bedtime," as I noted in my Sunday post. Yes, yours truly was pretty timely too. Why not work on Sunday?
The West Central Tribune's quality and effort with its work maybe shouldn't be evaluated at face value. Why would the Willmar paper assign someone to devote the equivalent of a full work day to deliver such a stellar product? These were two non-Willmar teams. The fellow doing this work was Patrick Bernadeau.
There are six outstanding game photos and they seem to showcase the Tigers rather than Eden Valley-Watkins. The headline makes reference only to the Tigers: "Tigers too little, too late." The subhead talked about our "spirited second half effort." Bernadeau's lead sentence noted "Morris/Chokio-Alberta was far and away the better team on the field during the second half." Just to eliminate any doubt, the writer made clear that our second half quality was not a case of beating up second-stringers.
The writer was incredibly detailed with his game review. It appears obvious he's a former player who can watch plays and come up with the specialized language to describe. The six photos could not be of better quality. Any MACA fans who checked out this coverage would be thrilled. None of this could appear in the Monday West Central Tribune because they have no Monday paper any more. Victim of all the tariff stuff, I guess. They have stated that themselves.
I am amazed that the West Central Tribune writer would stay keenly interested in this game after halftime. I would not be able to sustain interest. Assuming I had some decent photos tucked away from the first half, I'd split. The paper would have a system of collecting game details by phone anyway, right? Granted this system would not be as good as Barnadeau painstakingly recording his observations throughout. Clearly he deserves an A-plus.
But is there more to this story? Why would the Willmar paper apply these resources for an online game review that might be their best work covering a football game all season? That's one question, and another is why the coverage seemed slanted to emphasize the Tigers and to exaggerate the quality of our play?
Oh, without a doubt we excelled in the second half. It's great to see that aspect acknowledged. But the Eden Valley-Watkins fans, to the extent their interest was drawn to this article, might be puzzled and disappointed. Why the supreme effort by the writer/photographer in the second half, a guy paid appropriately for his efforts we can assume? We can be idealistic and say "hey, that's the way the job should be done!" But it seems quite out of proportion.
And why the obvious fawning over MACA? Heavens to Betsy, the score at halftime was 33-0 with EV-W being quite in command, n'est-ce pas? I'd be yawning at halftime of such a game, and just as likely I'd be hopping in my car to depart. My detractors would say "well, that's why you're not working for a newspaper anymore." Some name-calling might be tacked on at the end. (I ought to have a Don Riley type of rejoinder for that.)
Of course, I made my rounds for the Morris paper when it had at least twice as much content as today, spread over two issues a week, and it was impractical to spend so much time at one game when there was so much ground to cover. If I was present for a game that was 33-0 at halftime, no way would I stay. But Mr. Bernadeau sure did. What incentive could he have possibly felt?
At this point if you're turned off by conspiracy theories, you might want to depart. Can we at least weigh a possible theory in this regard? Please? I find the disproportionate emphasis on this game, and the overly generous tenor toward MACA, fueling some suspicion.
And remember, this truly outstanding spread was in the online version of the Willmar paper. Why deliver the goods so well online, when the presumed bread and butter of papers is still their legacy print product, ink on paper? And yet the Willmar paper did cartwheels covering this game and to put smiles on MACA fans' faces. The photos alone did that.
Shall I mention we lost the game 41-20?
This coverage has all the bells and whistles. The incredibly descriptive article, probably the best I've ever seen on a high school game, is accompanied of course by stat details underneath. And it was posted "before bedtime" Saturday? Why? Why?
Well, maybe the Willmar paper's owner is trying to make a point of what the Morris area readers are missing. To remind, the owner is the Forum of Fargo. If the Forum were still here, the outstanding coverage would be linked on the Morris newspaper website.
For sure the Forum doesn't like that Morris people are thankful they're gone from here. Certainly that has been the prevailing talk. The  Forum has retained ownership of the Morris paper's website. That is odd and perhaps a result of the hasty pace of the sale process. Or so I've heard. The Morris paper's website appears nearly dead, still with evidence of Forum stuff on it. Why can't it be allowed to die a proper death? Why can't the new owners hit the ground running with a new website?
The lack of a proper website stands to take the wind from the sails of the new owners' honeymoon. It is a Morris community issue. There is no guarantee that the new owners will set the world on fire, as it were. To date we have seen intangibles at work. People seem glad that the distant cold company known as the Forum is gone along with their manager who is not winning accolades.
Fine. For this transition to work, people must quickly see some dividends with the new outfit. The website could play into that in a huge way. But that's a minus now.
When all is said and done, the lesson to be taken from this might be, that we're all ready to just leave the print media behind. We can relegate our town paper to memories of Norman Rockwell magazine covers. Oh yes.
I must say, it is humbling to see Patrick Bernadeau's work that he delivered before bedtime Saturday. Soars beyond what I might turn in, surely for a game that seemed forgettable with a 33-0 halftime score. Garbage time does not mesmerize me.
But the Willmar paper's coverage will impress Morris parents and make them think "why is this on the Willmar paper's website and not the Morris paper's."
Which may have been the whole idea?
I am going to try to write less often in the coming weeks. That should make you want to applaud like when Ed McMahon said "I hold in my hand the last envelope."
 
Addendum: Thoughts linger in my head, like: isn't it ironic we see this newspaper building in Morris on Pacific Avenue, with offices manned by paid people, and yet there's almost no evidence of meaningful ongoing communication from them to their audience/customers. Using the web is child's play today. Simply focusing on a once-a-week print product is not going to cut it. It fails on the PR front if nothing else. The counter argument would be that papers probably get little if any revenue from their websites. But if that's true, that just reinforces the main question I ask with today's post: why would the Willmar paper fall all over themselves to deliver this rich coverage, online and three days before their next print product appears? Obviously they feel incentive. My conspiracy incentive is only an alternate or secondary theory. And if the Forum continues to own the Morris newspaper website, why can't they still post some decent stuff or links on it, because the whole idea of owning a website is to draw viewers, isn't it? Otherwise why retain ownership. Slap a link to the EV-W football game on the site, if you want some interest. Otherwise what's the point? I suspect some Morris community leaders were very involved to see that our Morris paper wouldn't just die if the Forum left us. I have been seeking to communicate with some of those leaders how essential it is, for the Morris paper to have a quality web presence, immediately. Can some pressure be applied on the Forum, if that's what it takes?
  
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com